A certain king has servants, whom he gathers together to give in
their reckoning. And one of them is brought that owes him ten
thousand talents. Now, it is to be noticed at the very outset that
the analogy between debt and sin, though real, is extremely
imperfect. No metaphor of that sort goes on all fours, and there has
been a great deal of harm done to theology and to evangelical
religion by carrying out too completely the analogy between money
debts and our sins against God. But although the analogy is
imperfect, it is very real. The first point that is to be brought
out in this first part of the parable is the immense magnitude of
every man's transgressions against God. Numismatists and
arithmeticians may jangle about the precise amount represented by
the thousand talents. It differs according to the talent which is
taken as the basis of the calculation. There were several talents in
use in the currency of ancient days. But the very point of the
expression is not the specification of an exact amount, but the use
of a round number which is to suggest an undefined magnitude. 'Ten
thousand talents,' according to one estimate, is some two millions
and a quarter of pounds sterling.
But I would point out that the amount is stated in terms of talents,
and _any_ talent is a large sum; and there are ten thousand of
these; and the reason why the account is made out in terms of
talents, the largest denomination in the currency of the period, is
because every sin against God is a great sin. He being what He is,
and we being what we are, and sin being what it is, every sin is
large, although the deed which embodies it may be, when measured by
the world's foot-rule, very small. For the essence of sin is
rebellion against God and the enthroning of self as His victorious
rival; and all rebellion is rebellion, whether it is found in arms
in the field, or whether it is simply sulkily refusing obedience and
cherishing thoughts of treason. We are always apt to go wrong in our
estimate of the great and small in human actions, and, although the
terms of magnitude do not apply properly to moral questions at all,
there is no more conspicuous misuse of language than when we speak
of anything which has in it the virus of rebellion against God, and
the breach of His law, as being a small sin. It may be a small act;
it is a great sin. Little rattlesnakes are snakes; they have rattles
and poison fangs as really as the most monstrous of the brood that
coils and hisses in some cave. So the account is made out in terms
of talents, because every sin is a great one. I need not dwell upon
the numerousness that is suggested. 'Ten thousand' is the natural
current expression for a number that is not innumerable, but is only
known to be very great. The psalmist says: 'They are more than the
hairs of my head.' How many hairs had you in your head, David? Do
you know? 'No!' And how many sins have you committed? Do you know?
'No!' The number is beyond count by us, though it may be counted by
Him against whom they are done. Do you believe that about yourself,
my friend, that the debit side of your account has filled all the
page and has to be carried forward on to another? Do we any of us
realise, as we all of us ought to do, the infinite number, and the
transcendent greatness, of our transgressions against the Father?
But the next point to be noticed is the stern legal right of the
creditor. It sounds harsh, cruel, almost brutal, that the man and
his wife and his children should be sold into slavery, and all that
he had should be taken from him, in order to go some little way
towards the reduction of the enormous debt that he owed. Christ puts
in that harsh and apparently cruel conduct in the story, not to
suggest that it was harsh and cruel, but because it was according to
the law of the time. A recognised legal right was exercised by the
creditor when he said, 'Take him; sell him for a slave, and bring me
what he fetches in the open markets.' So that we have here suggested
the solemn thought of the right that divine justice, acting
according to strict retributive law, has over each of us. Our own
consciences attest it as perfectly within the scope of the divine
retributive justice that our enormous sin should bring down a
tremendous punishment.
I said that the analogy between sin and debt was a very imperfect
one. It is imperfect in regard to one point--viz. the implication of
other people in the consequences of the man's evil; for although it
is quite true that 'the evil that men do lives after them, and
spreads far beyond their sight, and involves many people, no other
is amenable to divine justice for the sinner's debt. It is quite
true that, when we do an evil action, we never can tell how far its
wind-borne seeds may be carried, or where they may alight, or what
sort of unwholesome fruit they may bear, or who may be poisoned by
them; but, on the other hand, we, and we only, are responsible for
our individual transgressions against God. 'If thou be wise, thou
shalt be wise for thyself; and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt
bear it.'
The same imperfection in the analogy applies to the next point in the
parable--viz. the bankrupt debtor's prayer, 'Have patience with me,
and I will pay thee all.' Easy to promise! I wonder how long it would
have taken a penniless bankrupt to scrape together two and a quarter
millions of pounds? He said a great deal more than he could make good.
But the language of his prayer is by no means the language that
becomes a penitent at God's throne. We have not to offer to make
future satisfaction. No! that is impossible. 'What I have written I
have written,' and the page, with all its smudges and blots and
misshapen letters, cannot be made other than it is by any future
pages fairly written. No future righteousness has any power to affect
the guilt of past sin. There is one thing that does _discharge_ the
writing from the page. Do you remember Paul's words, 'blotting out
the handwriting that was against us--nailing it to His Cross'? You
sometimes dip your pens into red ink, and run a couple of lines
across the page of an account that is done with. Jesus Christ does
the same across our account, and the debt is non-existent, because
He has died.
But the prayer is the expression, if not of penitence yet of
petition, and all the stern rigour of the law's requirement at once
melts away, and the king who, in the former words, seemed so harsh,
now is almost incredibly merciful. For he not only cancels the debt,
but sets the man free. 'Thy ways are not as our ways; ... as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so great is His mercy toward' the
sinful soul.
II. So much, then, for the first part of this parable. Now a word as
to the second, the forgiven debtor and his debt.
Our Lord uses in the 27th and 28th verses of our text the same
expression very significantly and emphatically. 'The lord of _that
servant_ was moved with compassion.' And then again, in the 28th
verse, 'But that _servant_ went out and found one of his
fellow-servants.' The repetition of the same phrase hooks the two
halves together, emphasises the identity of the man, and the
difference of his demeanour, on the two occasions.
The conduct described is almost impossibly disgusting and truculent.
'He found his fellow-servant, who owed him a hundred pence'--some
three pounds, ten shillings--and with the hands that a minute before
had been wrung in agony, and extended in entreaty, he throttled him;
and with the voice that had been plaintively pleading for mercy a
minute before, he gruffly growled, 'Pay me that thou owest.' He had
just come through an agony of experience that might have made him
tender. He had just received a blessing that might have made his
heart glow. But even the repetition of his own petition does not
touch him, and when the poor fellow-servant, with his paltry debt,
says, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,' it avails
nothing. He durst not sell his fellow-servant. God's rights over a
man are more than any man's over another. But he does what he can.
He will not do much towards recouping himself of his loan by
flinging the poor debtor into prison, but if he cannot get his
ducats he will gloat over his 'pound of flesh.' So he hurries him
off to gaol.
Could a man have done like that? Ah! brethren, the things that would
be monstrous in our relations to one another are common in our
relations to God. Every day we see, and, alas! do, the very same
thing, in our measure and degree. Do you never treasure up somebody's
slights? Do you never put away in a pigeon-hole for safe-keeping,
endorsed with the doer's name on the back of it, the record of some
trivial offence against you? It is but as a penny against a talent,
for the worst that any of us can do to another is nothing as compared
with what many of us have been doing all our lives toward God. I dare
say that some of us will go out from this place, and the next man that
we meet that 'rubs us the wrong way,' or does us any harm, we shall
score down his act against him with as implacable and unmerciful an
unforgivingness as that of this servant in the parable. Do not believe
that he was a monster of iniquity. He was just like us. We all of us
have one human heart, and this man's crime is but too natural to us
all. The essence of it was that having been forgiven, he did not
forgive.
So, then, our Lord here implies the principle that God's mercy to us
is to set the example to which our dealings with others is to be
conformed. 'Even as I had mercy on thee' plainly proposes that
miracle of divine forgiveness as our pattern as well as our hope.
The world's morality recognises the duty of forgiveness. Christ
shows us God's forgiveness as at once the model which is the perfect
realisation of the idea in its completeness and inexhaustibleness,
and also the motive which, brought into our experience, inclines and
enables us to forgive.
III. And now I come to the last point of the text--the debtor who
had been forgiven falling back into the ranks of the unforgiven,
because he does not forgive.
The fellow-servants were very much disgusted, no doubt. Our
consciences work a great deal more rapidly, and rigidly, about other
people's faults than they do about our own. And nine out of ten of
these fellow-servants that were very sorry, and ran and told the
king, would have done exactly the same thing themselves. The king,
for the first time, is wroth. We do not read that he was so before,
when the debt only was in question; but such unforgiving harshness,
after the experience of such merciful forgiveness, rouses his
righteous indignation. The unmercifulness of Christian people is a
worse sin than many a deed that goes by very ugly names amongst men.
And so the judgment that falls upon this evil-doer, who, by his
truculence to his fellow-servant, had betrayed the baseness of his
nature and the ingratitude of his heart, is, 'Put him back where he
was! Tie the two and a quarter millions round his neck again! Let us
see what he will do by way of discharging it now!'
Now, do not let any theological systems prevent you from recognising
the solemn truth that underlies that representation, that there may
be things in the hearts and conduct of forgiven Christians which may
cancel the cancelling of their debt, and bring it all back again. No
man can cherish the malicious disposition that treasures up offences
against himself, and at the same moment feel that the divine love is
wrapping him round in its warm folds. If we are to retain our
consciousness of having been forgiven by God, and received into the
amplitude of His heart, we must, in our measure and degree, imitate
that on which we trust, and be mirrors of the divine mercy which we
say has saved us.
Our parable lays equal stress on two things. First, that the
foundation of all real mercifulness in men is the reception of
forgiving mercy from God. We must have experienced it before we can
exercise it. And, second, we must exercise it, if we desire to
continue to experience it. 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy.' That applies to Christian people. But behind that
there lies the other truth, that in order to be merciful we must
first of all have received the initial mercy of cancelled
transgression.
So, dear friends, here are the two lessons for every one of us.
First, to recognise our debt, and go to Him in whom God is well
pleased, for its abolishment and forgiveness; and then to go out
into the world, and live like Him, and show to others love kindled
by and kindred to that to which we trust for our own salvation. 'Be
ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in
love, as God also hath loved us.'