"How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?" but how
Peter's question springs from the preceding context does not so readily
appear. The Natural History of the process in that apostle's mind was
probably something of this sort: The Master had instructed his disciples
how they should act in the event of a brother doing them an injury:
three distinct steps are indicated, rising one above another like courts
of appeal; first, a private remonstrance; if that prove unavailing, then
a remonstrance in the presence of one or two witnesses; and lastly, an
appeal to the Church. These rules are very specific, and together
constitute a complete code on the branch of the subject to which they
refer. In the matter of dealing with an offending brother with the view
of bringing him to a better mind, you can no further go: if all these
efforts fail, you must separate yourself from the offender, lest by
continued intimacy you should seem indifferent to his sin. After this
the Lord proceeds to give instruction on other subjects, and especially
on united prayer. Peter, I suppose, had allowed his mind to be so
completely occupied with the question of forgiving injuries, that he
failed to follow his Teacher when the lesson glided into another theme.
I could suppose him to have been so busy with the thought of injuries
received, and the difficulty of forgiving them, all the time that the
Lord was discoursing on united prayer, that he scarcely observed his
Master's words. All the more readily might this happen, if the impetuous
fisherman had a quarrel with some of his neighbours on hand at the very
time, and was exercised in conscience about the duty of bringing it to a
close. At the first pause, the current which had been for a time flowing
under ground, burst out on the surface. Taking up and again abruptly
introducing the subject which had been for some time dismissed, he
asked, as if unconscious that the theme had been changed during his
reverie, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive
him? Till seven times?" He wanted to have a number specified, beyond
which he should not be bound to forgive repeated offences. In suggesting
seven he seems to have had in his mind some Pharisaical formula:
probably he thought the allowance was liberal, and expected to be
approved for his magnanimity.
The formula, seventy times seven, while it serves to intimate that there
is in the law no limit to the exercise of a forgiving spirit, seizes
upon Peter's narrow proposal and makes a show of it openly. It is
possible that he may have fallen into a mistake here through the
misapprehension of a lesson on the same subject given by the Lord. He
may have heard the Master teach, as at Luke xvii. 4,--"If he trespass
against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again
to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." But evidently the
number seven in that discourse has substantially the same meaning with
seventy times seven here: seven times a day, even when literally
understood, includes as much as the absolute seventy times seven. The
doctrine in both cases is that it is not lawful to set any limit to the
principle and the practice of forgiving injuries.
To repeat, expand, and enforce this lesson, the parable is introduced.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man king--[Greek: anthrôpô basilei].
Expressly the divine is in this respect analogous to the human. This
ruler proposed to take account of his servants. It was not the final
reckoning, but a periodical balance. A king is in this respect like a
merchant: he takes account from time to time of his own affairs, and the
intromissions of his servants. "Short counts make long friends."
These servants were not slaves, the property of their master; for
afterwards it is assumed that he may sell them, not as an ordinary
right, but as the special penalty incurred by an insolvent debtor. A
king, in ancient times and oriental regions, entered into pecuniary
transactions with his servants on a great scale. One man, who owes all
to the personal favour of the sovereign, is the governor of a wealthy
province. Bound by no written law, and living at a distance from the
seat of government, that servant possesses always the power, and too
frequently seizes the opportunity of oppressing the people on the one
hand, and defrauding the royal treasury on the other. In many cases
fortunate or powerful dependants farmed the taxes of a district, paying,
or at least promising to pay, a certain sum yearly to the supreme
government, and obtaining authority in return to levy contributions on
the inhabitants for their own behoof, sometimes almost according to
their own pleasure. Vast sums passed through the hands of these great
officers, and vast sums also remained in their hands that should have
passed through them.
The amount specified in the parable--ten thousand talents--is very
great, of whatever species you may suppose the talent to be. The inquiry
which has been prosecuted with a view to determine precisely the value
of the talent in this case is difficult, and does not lead to any
certain or important result. The question is interesting to Biblical
scholars and antiquarians, but the solution of it is by no means
necessary to the perception or the application of our Lord's meaning in
the parable. The sense is completely obtained by taking the ten
thousand talents as a vast but indefinite sum. A hundred talents of
silver constituted the hire of a great army, 2 Chron. xxv. 6; and
notwithstanding the lavish use of gold in the construction of the
Tent-Temple in the wilderness, only twenty-nine talents were employed in
all (Ex. xxxviii. 24). Besides the distinction between gold and silver,
other variations occur in the value of a talent, depending upon time,
place, and other circumstances. In any view of its worth, however, the
disparity between the sum which this servant owed to the master, and the
trifling amount which a fellow-servant owed to him, is as great as the
imagination can effectually grasp; larger numbers would not sensibly
intensify the impression.
"One was brought to him:" this servant would not have come to the king
of his own accord; but he could not escape the interview and the
reckoning. Aware of his enormous debt, he would fain have kept out of
his master's way, but could not. God looks on the heart, and grasps the
conscience, whether the man will or be unwilling.
The punishment is very severe, but in accordance with law and custom. No
complaint is made against the sentence as if it were unjust in
principle, or excessive in degree: the culprit appeals only to the mercy
of the judge, and thus the righteousness of the verdict is tacitly
acknowledged.
His promise to pay means nothing more than his desire to escape. He made
the promise, not in the expectation of being able to perform it, but as
the most likely means of escaping from punishment. His worship was
prompted by selfish fear, not by filial love. He did not know his
master's heart: he thought he would gain his object most readily by
leading the king to expect payment in full.
The king did not grant his servant's request: he did more; he forgave
that servant all. The absolved debtor, as soon as he obtained his
liberty, went out, and met a fellow-servant, who owed him an hundred
pence. I suppose, if that fellow-servant had come to him while yet he
was in his master's presence, he would not have dared to act the tyrant;
but "out of sight, out of mind." He forgot his own prayer, and his
lord's compassion. He grasped the fellow-servant by the throat and threw
him into prison, until he should pay.[30] The amount is comparatively
small, as is fit between servant and servant: the smallness of the debt
brings the cruelty of the creditor out in high relief. His neighbour's
pleading is expressed in the same terms as his own: the sound should
have reminded him of his duty.
[30] Die am meisten geschont sind erweisen sich als die
Schonungslosesten. Unter den Flügeln der Zärtlichkeit wird die
Grausamkeit ausgebrütet. (Those who get most mercy give least; and
cruelty is hatched under the wings of tenderness).--_Dräseke vom
Reich Gottes_, ii. 141.
Fellow-servants observing the outrage were at once indignant and
compassionate. They informed their master. The master displeased,
pronounced his condemnation in full. He who showed no mercy to his
brother, received judgment without mercy for himself.
Before proceeding to the exposition of the parable in its spiritual
meaning and application, I shall submit a remark of a general character,
bearing on the parables at large, as well as on this in particular,
which can be made more conveniently now than at the close.
The more I examine the structure and use of the parable in the teaching
of the Lord, the more I am convinced that men make a great mistake when
they betake themselves to a single feature of the natural scene as a
defence of some specific and controverted dogma. The rule may be made
absolute, or if there are exceptions they are few, that the parables are
intended to expand, illustrate, and enforce what is elsewhere clearly
taught in the Scriptures, and not themselves to constitute the grounds
or evidences of the doctrines. But to whatever extent such a general
rule may be applicable, it is most certain that those who run to a
corner of a parable and take their stand on it, as impregnable evidence
of some doctrine which they hold, are in all cases egregiously mistaken.
The controversies, for example, on the question of Church discipline,
which were made to turn on the tares among the wheat, and the net that
caught all kinds of fishes, are a mere waste of words. Those parables do
not afford material for the decision of the question; they do not speak
to the point.
In like manner, when theologians gravely refer to this parable in order
to prove that after a man's sins have been all freely forgiven by God,
he may yet fall from grace, and the guilt of all his sins be laid upon
him at the last, they waste their own time, and trifle with the
scripture. True, in this picture you see one whose great debt was all
freely forgiven by the master brought back into judgment, and made
answerable for the whole amount; but this incidental feature of a human
procedure will not bear the weight which men would fain lay on it. This
king, whose conduct is represented in the parable, is expressly called a
_man_ king. No doubt his procedure in that case is employed to
illustrate some laws of the kingdom of heaven; but this is done by
analogy. Analogy is not identity; the very essence of it lies in
coincidence in some points, with diversity in others; if the two were
identical, there were no longer an analogy. Take two pictures of a
person printed from the same negative photograph; you do not say they
are like each other, they are the same. It is most dangerous to fasten
on any point of the depicted human procedure, and found on it the
affirmation that the divine must be precisely the same.
But besides this general consideration demanding caution, there is
enough in the parable itself absolutely to refute the notion, that God
may forgive a man all his sins, and thereafter lay these very sins all
to his charge. It is indeed said in the earlier portion of the parable
that the lord of that servant forgave him the debt; but it is as clearly
indicated in the close that the debt was not forgiven. The man was cast
into prison until he should pay it all; he was held bound for all the
original debt, and was punished accordingly. If he was forgiven all that
debt, not one penny of it can afterwards be placed to his account; and
if it is afterwards placed to his account, the fact proves that it had
not been forgiven.
The meaning of the phraseology must be determined by the necessary
conditions of the fact. That word of the king, "I forgive thee," was not
a discharge; if it had been, mere justice demanded that the debt
discharged should not be charged again. The fact that it was all charged
again, proves irrefragably that it was not discharged. The meaning in
the light of the facts must be that these terms were offered by the
king. His terms are free forgiveness, bestowed in sovereign love by the
giver, and accepted in grateful love by the receiver. The servant, as is
shown by his conduct, did not accept these terms, and so there was no
transaction.
* * * * *
The key-notes of the parable are found at the beginning and the end. It
was spoken in order to show that a man should set no limit to the
forgiveness of injuries; and in order to show this, the parable goes
into the deep things of God. It shows that the motive power which can
produce in man an unlimited forgiveness of his brother, is God's mercy
forgiving himself. At the close it lays down the law, that the act or
habit of extending forgiveness to a brother, is a necessary effect of
receiving forgiveness from God. If you get pardon from God, you will
give it to your brother; if you withhold it from your brother, you
thereby make it manifest that you have not gotten it from God.
As the king determined to take account of his servants during the
currency of their work, and before the final winding up of their
engagement, so the King Eternal in various ways and at various periods
takes account of men, especially of those who know his word, and belong
externally to his Church. One by one the servants are brought into their
Lord's presence. The messenger that brings them may be a commercial
crisis, a personal affliction, or a revival in the neighbourhood. The
King has many messengers at his command, and he employs now one and now
another to bring a professing Christian forward to his presence. When
one who has contrived to keep out of the way, both of his own conscience
and of God, is at length compelled to open his heart to the Omniscient,
and fairly look into it himself, he discovers that his debt is
unspeakably, inconceivably great. The sum of ten thousand talents in the
picture is not an exaggeration; it does not indicate all the guilt which
God detects in the conscience, and which the awakened conscience detects
in itself. It is a dreadful moment when a sinner is brought face to face
with God, and charged with his guilt; it is then that the law performs
its terrible yet merciful work of conviction.
The first purpose that springs in the heart of the alarmed transgressor
is to satisfy the demand: Give me time, and I will pay all. Whether he
deliberately expects to be able to pay it may be doubted; but one thing
is clear, he thinks that nothing else will appease the Master, and he
makes the promise accordingly. This is, in point of fact, the first
proposal of an alarmed conscience, "I will pay thee all." The natural
history of the process is here.
God does not hold the convicted transgressor to his own rash promise.
Treating the criminal, not according to his desert, but according to his
need, the Judge announces the terms of his own covenant--a pardon
immediate, complete, and free.
* * * * *
"The same servant went out:" the moment of close dealing between God and
the soul has passed: the man who has trembled at the sight of his sin,
and the prospect of judgment, has heard the Gospel, and gotten a
respite. He goes out from that solemn and searching communion: he is
released for the moment from the presence of the Judge, and from the
sense of his sin. He glides again into the world. He has not been
converted; he has only been frightened. He has not been forgiven; he has
only been respited. He has not accepted God's grace, and therefore is
not under law to God. The fright is past, and faith has not taken its
place. The heart, after terror had driven the evil spirits out, does not
open to the Lord, and therefore the evil spirits come back, and possess
the empty room in sevenfold power. As soon as he comes in the way of
temptation, the unsubdued carnality of his soul asserts its life and
power. A fellow-servant who has in small matters offended him, begs for
pardon, as he had done from God, and begs in vain. He shows no mercy;
the fact proves that he has not himself accepted the mercy that was
offered by God. If the channel of his heart had really been inserted
into the fountain-head of mercy for receiving, mercy would infallibly
have flowed in the way of giving, wherever the need of a brother made an
opening; if the vessel had been charged, it would certainly have
discharged. No compassion flowed from that heart to refresh a
fellow-creature in distress, because that heart had never truly opened
to accept mercy from God; the reservoir was empty, and therefore the
outbranching channels remained dry.[31]
[31] Dräseke expresses the same conception in his own peculiarly
terse and antithetic way:--So gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die
Schulderlassung die wir empfangen; so gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne
die Schulderlassung die wir leisten. (As certainly as there is no
kingdom of God without the forgiveness which we receive, so
certainly there is no kingdom of God without the forgiveness which
we bestow.)--ii. 147.
Beyond all question, the design of the Lord in this parable is to
enforce the duty of forgiving one another. In teaching this lesson, he
touches matters greater than itself; but these occupy here only a
secondary place. The drift of the parable is to take off the artificial
limit laid by Peter, and by the Pharisees before him, on the disposition
to forgive an offending brother, and to leave it limitless,--infinite,
as far as the faculties and the time of men can reach.
I think the substance of the lesson may be expressed in these two words,
the _practice_ and the _principle_ of forgiving injuries. These two are
in effect the _ultimate act_ and the _secret power_ that produced it.
They are at once distinguished and united in that new commandment which
Jesus gave to his disciples,--"That ye love one another, as I have loved
you" (John xiii. 34). The first part of that commandment tells what
they ought to do, and the second part tells what will make them do it.
It is when they place themselves under the power of Christ's forgiving
love to themselves, that they are impelled in turn to forgive each his
brother. The duty corresponds to the moving machinery, and the motive to
the stream of living water which makes the machinery go.
1. The PRACTICE of forgiving injuries. The terms employed indicate
clearly enough that the injuries which man suffers from his fellow are
trifling in amount, especially in comparison of each man's guilt in the
sight of God. There is a meaning in the vast and startling difference
between ten thousand talents and a hundred pence. Even when the injury
is the greatest that human beings are capable of inflicting on the one
side, and enduring on the other; even when an enemy has killed the body
and ceased then, because he has no more that he can do, it is still a
measurable thing. Love in a finite being's heart may swell high over it,
and exult in bestowing forgiveness on the murderer with the victim's
dying breath. In the beginning of the Gospel a vivid example of that
very thing stands recorded: "Lord," said Stephen with fainting heart and
failing breath, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Great as the
injury was, according to earthly measurements, the imperfect love that
lived in a man's heart was more than a match for it, and the martyr with
his dying breath forgave his murderers. But how rare are those injuries
that rise to this extreme height! Most of the injuries with which we are
called to deal are small, even in relation to human capacity: they are
very often precisely of the size that our own temper makes them. Some
people possess the art of esteeming great injuries small, and some the
art of esteeming small injuries great. The first is like a traveller
who throws a great many stones out of the burden which he carries, and
so walks with ease along the road; the other is like a traveller who
gathers a great many stones on the way-side, and adds them to his
burden, and is therefore soon crushed by the load.
But more than this: the foolish man who made his burden heavier, retains
the redoubled weight upon his back; while the wise man who made his
burden lighter, contrives to throw off even the smaller weight that
remained. The same spirit that induced the suffering Christian to
diminish his estimate of the injury, induces him to forgive even that
which remains, and thus he gets quit of it altogether; for to forgive
it, is equivalent to throwing it away, in as far as it had power to
burden or irritate you. On the other hand, the same spirit which in an
irritable man magnified and multiplied the actual injury which he
received, prevents him from forgiving the great and exaggerated mass;
thus in effect he is crushed under the accumulated weight of all the
real injury he has sustained, and all the imaginary injury he has added.
The compassionate, loving man, who counted the great injury small, was
relieved even of that small remnant by forgiving it: the selfish,
unloving man, who counted a small injury great, could not forgive his
neighbour, and so was compelled to bear the heavy burden on his heart.
In this case that sublime rule of the Scripture takes effect: "To him
that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that
hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." [32]
[32] Fred. Arndt puts the lesson warmly and well; his appeal is in
substance this:--"A man without compassion has all against him, God
and the world; and meets as many adversaries in judgment as he had
associates in life. Woe to him who is arraigned in secret by the
tears of the feeble and oppressed! The sighs which he has pressed
out, the plaints which he has generated, cry up to heaven against
him, and their echo clangs horrid from heaven down again upon the
life of the loveless and revengeful.... And can we sleep in peace
another hour, as long as there are men upon the earth with whom we
live in unpeace and enmity? Cannot be written the happiness, the
inward bliss of the peaceful and peace-making. Revenge, indeed,
seems often sweet to men; but, oh, it is only sugared poison, only
sweetened gall, and its after taste is bitter as hell. Forgiving,
enduring love alone is sweet and blissful; it enjoys peace and the
consciousness of God's favour. By forgiving, it gives away and
annihilates the injury. It treats the injurer as if he had not
injured, and therefore feels no more the smart and sting that he had
inflicted. Forgiveness is a shield from which all the fiery darts of
the wicked one harmless rebound. Forgiveness brings heaven to earth,
and heaven's peace into the sinful heart. Forgiveness is the image
of God, the forgiving Father, and an advancement of Christ's kingdom
in the world. Your unalterable duty is clear: as surely as we are
Christians, men who have experienced great compassion, who see in
every man a brother in Christ, and are going forward to God's
righteous judgment, so surely we must forgive. Of no commandment
will the fulfilment be demanded of us with such stringency, no
divine rule so strictly enforced as this, without the slightest
exception to leave a loop-hole of hope to the transgressor. If we
forgive not those who injure us, neither will our heavenly Father
forgive us; and this would be the greatest calamity that could
befall us in time and in eternity."--_Die vergebende Liebe; oder
Gleichniss vom Schalksknecht_.
But we must carefully discriminate here, and ascertain what the Lord
means by forgiving a brother. There should not be a little, narrow,
grudging forgiveness; it should be large, loving, and free. But parallel
with forgiveness there must be faithfulness. Faithfulness to the
evil-doer himself, and to the community, comes in here to modify, not
the nature, but the outward form of forgiving.
For example, there is no virtue in simply permitting a man to wrong you
as often as he chooses,--forgiving him and doing nothing more. In the
immediately preceding context the Lord has taught that the injured
should tell the injurer his fault. Tell him faithfully in secret his
sin: if he repent, thou hast gained thy brother: if he do not listen,
tell it in the presence of two or three witnesses: if he is still
obdurate, tell it to the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church
withdraw from his company; let him and all the world know that you do
not make light of his sin.
Again, in some kinds of injury, it becomes your duty for the sake of the
community to aid in bringing the criminal to justice. To bring the
discipline of the righteous law upon the criminal, is not revenge: to
shield him from its stroke is not love. So far from being necessarily
inconsistent with forgiveness, such faithfulness in action may be
associated with a Christ-like love to the sinner, and a thorough
forgiveness of his sin, as an injury inflicted upon you.