Pastor Shannon Bond, Cherokee Baptist Church
My wife is a math teacher. Her goal every day is to teach math so that students can not only understand it but can apply it as well. Watching her work a math problem can help a student understand the concept, but the student demonstrates understanding when she can correctly complete some practice problems. These problems reveal her level of understanding, allowing for further teaching and correction. My wife’s ultimate goal is mastery of the concept on a test.
Christianity has some similarities to math. We learn concepts, not as an intellectual exercise, but for the purpose of application— which is to say, in order to glorify God through Christ-like living.
Let’s take the Christian teaching of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a difficult concept to understand, is it? Even children understand it. Application? Well, that’s another thing altogether.
Peter, in Matthew 18:21, asks Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
To say this another way, “Lord, if I forgive my brother seven times, have I demonstrated mastery of the concept?” Jesus responds in verse 22, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Jesus sets the passing grade much higher.
Then Jesus tells a parable of a king who wished to settle accounts with his slave. He had one slave who owed him 10,000 talents. One talent is 15 years’ wages. At the current minimum wage of $7.25, that comes to $2.262 billion dollars the slave owed his lord. The king was going to settle the account by selling the man and his family. Instead, the man pleaded with his lord to be patient and asked for time to repay. The king showed mercy on the slave and forgave the debt.
The slave just watched the king teach the concept of forgiveness. Now let’s see if he can do a practice problem. The text records that the forgiven slave goes to another slave who owes him 100 denarii ($5,800) and begins to choke him, demanding his debt be repaid immediately. When the debtor slave asked the forgiven slave for the same patience with his debt that he had asked of his king, the forgiven slave threw the debtor into prison. He failed the practice problem. When the king found out about it, he threw his previously forgiven slave in prison.
The king in the parable is God. Christians are the forgiven slaves. We learn forgiveness from being forgiven. God removes our transgressions as far as the east from the west (Psalm 103:12). He puts them all behind his back (Isaiah 38:17). He hurls them into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). He blots them from the record and remembers them no more (Isaiah 43:25). This is forgiveness.
Forgiveness practice problems will come. They always do. We demonstrate understanding and mastery when we forgive as we have been forgiven.
Father, help us to forgive others as we have been forgiven!