So Matthew chapter six, verses 14 and 15 is our first reading. And this is after the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and he’s taught them the bulk of the Lord’s prayer. And in verse 14, he says, If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. And then Ephesians chapter one, verses three through 14, these verses speak of our grand position in the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians chapter one, beginning at verse three. Remember this is a one long run on sentence. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. Amen. Well, tonight we want to think of the petition, the fifth petition, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the classic story that teaches this passage is the parable that Jesus gives of the king who wished to settle his debts. He wished to settle all his accounts, and so he called in a servant who owed him 10,000 talents.
Now, talents and dollars don’t equal out, and so In today’s dollars, it would be about 12 and a half, 13 million bucks. That’s a lot of money. If you were to pay that back at a 30-year amortization rate at 0% interest, it would be $33,000, $333.33 a month for 30 years. That’s a lot of money. And this was 2,000 years ago. Today, I figure you’d get the loan for about 7%. And so instead of $33,333.33, your payment would be a whopping round up 80,000 bucks. And you would pay about 16 million in interest on that $12 million debt.
This is a lot of money. The man could not pay it. And so the king said, I’m gonna sell all your stuff. I’m gonna sell you and your wife and your children into debtors prison until the payments are made. But the servant fell to his knees. He begged for patience and said, I’ll pay you everything. The king had pity. Uh, the king released the man and he forgave his debt.
Uh, I would imagine many of you in the room are, are debt free, but you can think back to your early days in life when you got your first mortgage and you couldn’t sleep at night. And some of you probably back in the day had a mortgage that was in the $100 range. Nowadays, I cannot imagine what young people are having to take on for a mortgage. It’s got to be over $2,000. But could you imagine a debt so great that cannot be paid being forgiven?
Insert yourself into the story now. God is this king. And God is the righteous king, the holy king, the just king. And you are his servant, and you are in debt. And it’s not in terms of millions, but it’s a debt that you have incurred, and this debt keeps going and going and going.
Perhaps you’ve paid attention to the US national debt. I forget what it is now. I know it’s in the trillions, and I know it’s above 40. And I think you can go to a website, US Debt Clock, and it will blow your mind, because it ticks and ticks and ticks and ticks.
When I was a kid, in New York City, we took a little hired van to drive us around the city to see all the wonderful things, if you can call it that, of New York City. And I remember seeing the Empire State Building, probably saw, you know, Trump Towers, Statue of Liberty in the distance, all that good stuff. But one of the things I remember seeing, I believe it was above a service station, was a debt clock. And it was like a bank you know, digital bank clock, not digital, but it had the lights that lighted up.
And so, uh, I remember seeing that, uh, clock just roll, roll, roll and said to my parents, I was 12 at the time. What is that? Oh, that’s our national debt. And it was just going and going and going and debts and dollars are one thing, but debts before the Holy righteous, just God with sin is a whole different matter.
Remember what the Bible teaches us, we are born in Adam. We are born in Adam who was our first parent, he is our representative. And because we are born in his genealogical line, because we have his genes, we’ve inherited his disobedience. And so Adam has caused us to be born guilty and not only to be born guilty, but to be born polluted with a sin nature.
And that sin nature, given a little time and a little bit of motor skills will commit actual sins. That’s why babies are given to parents. That’s why parents are to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They are to teach them what is right and to punish what is wrong and to hopefully raise them up along the way so that when they land on their own two feet, they will not only love God and love neighbor, but obey God’s commandments.
But because we are born with original sin, we will commit actual transgressions and our sin ticker, our personal debt ticker will keep ticking and it will tick and it will tick and it will tick. As our rebellion continues, our transgressions add up, As we miss the mark, as we are defiled by our sin, our hearts under sin’s dominion will cause us to pursue pride and idols and sins, and our debt will grow, and we will never be able to pay it.
But we can say with the Apostle Paul, thanks be to God for Christ Jesus. God, the righteous King, has settled his debts. He has settled our debts with Jesus Christ. Because God is holy, because God is righteous, because God is just, he must hold sin to account.
He cannot lift up the rug and sweep the Cheerios under it. He cannot lift up the rug and put all the dust underneath it. It has to be dealt with, paid for, put away. And so, God does not overlook sin. We, however, make light of sin. We have gotten away in our vocabulary from sin words. We live in a therapeutic culture that takes horrible things and where a former term that was commonly used for those horrible things is watered down to something that is more palatable. And that new term persuades us that the horrible thing is not a horrible thing.
For example, we think of the issue of abortion. And instead of calling it abortion, what are we aborting? We’re aborting an unborn child. We call it women’s reproductive rights. And we think that new term, that persuasive term, persuades us, oh, it’s not so bad. It’s just a woman exercising a right. And you could go through the list. Homosexuality is no longer called what it used to be. And you could go on and on.
We make light of sin. We think of it in our culture as a mistake. We think of it as a parking ticket, something that we can easily repair. But R.C. Sproul was so good to give us the phrase that sin is an act of cosmic treason. It is an act of cosmic treason against a holy and infinite God. And this holy and infinite God demands justice to be satisfied for the wages of sin is death.
We are born in Adam. We are enslaved to sin. We are dead in our sins and trespasses. We are separated from God, apart from God. We are estranged from God. We’re under his wrath. We’re under his curse. We are cut off and we have no hope. We live a life of rebellion and gratitude. And that life of rebellion and gratitude degenerates into more and more sin. And that will be judged at the last day. And if we are not found in Christ, we will be cast off forever.
But there’s always the little bitty word in the scripture, but God, but God who is rich in mercy, but God who is gracious in Christ freely offers his son He freely offers forgiveness. He freely offers the good news. He freely offers the gospel. And so the mercy of God is offered to us in Christ. The king will have pity on any who are indebted to him, who repent of their sin.
But we need to understand what our sin is. We think of this catechism because of Christ’s blood, do not impute to us poor sinners that we are. the transgressions that we do or the evil that constantly clings to us. We understand where our sin comes from, Adam. We understand why we commit sin. We have a sin nature, but what is sin?
It is any want or lack of conformity to God’s standards. You go to the park and you gotta be this tall to ride. If you don’t measure up, you can’t get on the ride. And the same is true. If we don’t meet God’s standards, we fall short of his glory. But God also draws lines. He places boundaries around us. He told Adam and Eve, you could eat everything in the garden, everything except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he put a boundary around that tree. Do not cross that line. Do not transgress the protective border, which was his standard, his law. And so sin is a transgression of God’s commandments. We don’t measure up or we cross a boundary that we know not to cross. And so sin is dangerous. It is filthy. It is smelly or odious. It’s a debt that mounts up and the king will settle accounts.
And if we do not run to Jesus Christ, if we do not flee to the cross, if we do not look to the bronze serpent, if we do not run to the, the lamb of God, we will be doomed and have no hope. And so we understand sin. but we also understand mercy. God sent his own son. He sent his own son in the world to obey in Adam’s place and to go to the cross and die in our place. And so God’s own son became man and for us, as we say in our creed every once in a while on a Sunday, for us, Jesus kept the law. For us, he atoned for sin and for us, he satisfied God’s wrath. And so we understand our sin and misery, but we also apprehend, we understand the mercy of God and Christ. But then we must also understand the gift. Christ took our filthy rags and he gave us his righteous robe.
And so justification, we learned this wonderful answer Good definition back in question 30. Justification is where God sees us as if we have never sinned or have been a sinner. And then he also sees us as if we have always obeyed him. What a wonderful gift justification is. Our shorter catechism says justification is an act. And think of act like a judge pounding his gavel on the bench. It’s an act of God’s free grace. It’s a judicial act where he declares us righteous in his sight. And he declares us righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us and received by faith.
And so the little phrase in our catechism says, because of Christ’s blood, do not impute to us poor sinners that we are, any of the transgressions that we do, or the evil which constantly clings to us. Forgive us, we pray. And we can say that because the sins that we have committed past, present, and future were laid on Jesus on the cross. He bore in his body on that cursed tree your sins, my sins. We have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer we who live, but he lives in us. And so we understand the gift. We understand justification. But we also need to understand new life. Think in our culture, we have heard salvation like it’s a bus ticket, salvation like it’s a train ticket.
You don’t wanna go to hell, do you? I haven’t got to say that in a while. That’s evangelism these days. And the answer is no. So you buy a fire insurance policy. You get your monopoly, get out of hell free card. You get your bus ticket, your train ticket, and you stick it in your pocket. You pray the prayer, you get the card, you tuck it in your Bible.
You live life as if there is no God, where you sprinkle a little Jesus here and there on your life. And then when you get near death or you die, people say, oh, he was a good person. He prayed the prayer. He walked the aisle. Here’s his card. He must be in heaven.
But what Jesus saves us from, we’ve talked about from sin, from wrath, from curse, but he also saves us from those things to save us to something, and that’s new life. We have new life in Jesus Christ. We are now in the kingdom of light. No more the darkness. We are a new creation. If anyone is in Christ, he is new creation.
We grieve our sin. We hate our sin. We turn from our sin. We desire to live a godly life. It’s back two steps, couple steps forward. The life of sanctification, what do we say? It’s a lifelong and perpetual an irreconcilable war. We will struggle with sin. We will struggle with our sin nature. We will struggle with the devil and the world until we die. But we desire as believers in Jesus, new life, obedience, and that new life obedience is our desire. It’s our goal.
But if we are justified, if God sees us as if we’ve never sinned, And if God sees us as if we have always obeyed, why then do we pray, forgive us our debts? Because your brain is saying, I’m justified. Your mind is saying, he sees me as if I never sinned. Your mind is saying, he sees me as if I’ve never been a sinner. He sees me as Jesus. He sees me as righteous. He sees me as perfect obedient.
So why then do I pray, forgive us of my sins. Remember the phrase, I think I mentioned it this morning, the Luther coined phrase, simul justus et peccator. The peccator would be the sins. The justus would be just. The simul would be the simultaneous. We are simultaneously just and sinners. We are just because God has legally and judicially declared us right in his sight. He does indeed see us as if we’ve never sinned. He does indeed see us as if we have always obeyed.
But the other truth is we have remnant sin in us. When we come to faith in Jesus, our sin is pardoned. And when we come to faith in Jesus, the sin nature in us is subdued. We are a new creation, but there are remnants of that original corruption in us. And we will struggle with those original or remnants of corruption the rest of our lives. We will struggle with the devil the rest of our lives, and we will struggle with the world the rest of our lives. So yes, we are justified. We are pardoned. It’s past, it’s present, it’s future.
It cannot be erased from God’s law books, but we still do daily break God’s law in thought, and in word and in deed. And when we break God’s law daily and thought word and deed, we have not erased that judicial declaration of righteousness, but we have broken fellowship with God.
And that fellowship needs to be restored. We need to run to God for grace. He freely offers it and he promises to give it. And so our life, as Martin Luther would say in the beginning of his 95 theses that he nailed to the chapel door there on Reformation Day, way back when, the Christian life is a life of repentance. We daily need God’s grace.
Now think about the Lord’s prayer as a whole for just a moment. The Lord’s prayer is about a person, our Father in heaven, whose name is hallowed. The Lord’s prayer is about purposes, God’s purposes, his kingdom and his will. God’s or the Lord’s prayer is about God’s promises. His is the kingdom power and the glory forever. But it’s also about his provision.
Last week we looked at daily bread. You got to have bread to live. And tonight we look at forgive us our debts. You have to have forgiveness not to die. For the wages of sin is death. And so we pray forgive us our sins. but also for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. The Lord Jesus in this parable, the catechism in its answer turns our attention to our attitude. We want to be Christ-like to others. Christ has forgiven us and we want to be forgiving like Jesus. No Christian should be unforgiving. No believer should be bitter. No follower of Jesus ought to hold grudges, and no new creation in Christ ought to be vengeful.
Those things will imprison you with your own hatred. Try it out. Be unforgiving. Be bitter. Be a grudge holder. Be vengeful. And as has been said before, you’ll bite your own lip or your own tongue, and you will die of poison. Christians are supposed to forgive others. And so the question always comes, what if I’m offended by a person who will not acknowledge their sin? What if someone has offended me? I’ve gone to them, they won’t acknowledge their sin.
Well, you’ve got to be ready to forgive. What does Paul say in Romans? As far as possible, be at peace with all men, be ready to forgive. A transaction must be made, forgiveness is relational, Forgiveness is transactional. A boundary has been crossed. A standard has not been met.
And so, yes, while that person may be a believer in Jesus and may be legally and eternally justified and forgiven of their sins, it doesn’t remove their duty to have a right relationship with God and a right relationship with their neighbor. Another question that pops up, what if I get tired of forgiving a person? Maybe you’re sitting next to a person you’ve been married to for a really long time and you understand what Jesus means by forgive them 70 times seven. And if you’re keeping count, it’s probably been way more than that. If you are in close fellowship, close relationship with another human being, you should expect to be sinned against. It’s just the math. It’s just the way it works. And so what if I get tired of trying to forgive a person? Peter asked Jesus about this. Should I forgive him seven times? And Jesus said, no, 70 times seven.
And our heart sometimes says, but, but, but they’ve hurt me. But, but, but their track record, but this, but this, but we cannot forget how often we go to Jesus and we say, Lord, here I am again, same old stuff. Rinse and repeat. You know, Lord, I told you yesterday I was sorry. Here I am again, same old thing, I’m sorry. And does Jesus ever say, you know, I’ve had it up to here with you. You know, my blood on the cross only goes so far. I can’t forgive you this time. He never says that.
And so we ought to have that same grace towards others. Perhaps you’re estranged from someone because of sin, remember? our great separation from God, we who were far off had been brought near by the blood of Jesus, which has brought peace. And so there’s been an estrangement because of sin between us and God, and that can bring a estrangement between us and other people. And so if you have been wronged and someone is not responding to you, be merciful, show goodwill, be Christ-like, be like the heavenly father who is on the front porch watching the distance for the sun to return home.
It takes years sometimes for people by God’s grace to come to their senses. I can think of things in my own ministry where someone a long time ago did something they shouldn’t have done. And I can think of things I did to people a long time ago. And you finally realize years later, geez, that was, really wrong. And when the Holy Spirit reveals that to you, you go and take care of it. What a wonderful thing repentance and forgiveness is. But perhaps you’ve been wronged. Be merciful. Show good will. Be ready. What if you are in the wrong? And deep down you know it.
Ask the Holy Spirit to convict you of your sin. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you exactly where you have fallen short or transgressed a standard with God or with another. And as our confession of faith says, repent of your sins particularly, and you can have restored fellowship both with God and man. But if you are living estranged with someone because of sin, it can hinder your worship, it can hinder your relationships, and it can hinder your blessings, especially if you are living in a spot of being unwilling to forgive others. And that’s where the rest of Jesus’ parable comes in.
The king had forgiven a man the $12 million debt, $33,333.33 a month payment at 0%, or if you want to add interest, an $80,000 payment at 7%. Well, as soon as the king releases the man who owed him $12 million, This man went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, about three months pay.
I mean, it’s like going to the payday loan place. It’s like pawning something and, you know, you’ll go get it back in a few months or however it is we do small loans. Three months pay. He finds the guy. He seizes him by the throat and chokes him and says, pay up. Guy can’t. pay up, he falls to his knees, he pleads with him, have patience with me, I will pay you. But the man who had just been forgiven, the 10,000 talents, refused to forgive him, even though he was just released and forgiven, he had the man imprisoned.
Now in the gospels, we don’t have the little word that’s in the Psalms, that’s that little Selah word. I think unofficially that means put this in your pipe and smoke it, right? Think on it, ponder it. It’s the modern version. We ought to have a little Selah here. Think about that for a moment. Just forgiven an enormous debt and goes and chokes a man, imprisons a man for three months. The fellow servants saw it. They were greatly distressed. The king found out about it. And he heard the report and he summoned the man and said, you’re a wicked servant.
You have been forgiven. everything, all that you owed, and you pleaded with me, should you not have had compassion and mercy on your fellow servant as I have had on you? This is the question, isn’t it, when we are challenged to forgive others. Should not you have mercy on your fellow servant as I have had on you? In anger, the king summons the jailers, and in anger, the king sends this man to prison, he had been forgiven, but no more, pay your debt. And Jesus gives the challenge, he gives the point to us. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
This is the word of God, let’s ask for his help and blessing. Our God in heaven, we thank you for teaching us The way to forgiveness, the way to salvation. But we also pray that you would teach us. To live out of that salvation towards others. We want to be kind and merciful and gracious and forgiving. You have not exacted justice from us for you have laid our sins on Jesus and so help us to take care. in our relationships with our neighbors to be forgiving. We can only do this by your help, and we can only do it with your grace. So help us, we pray in Christ’s name, amen.