Forgiveness Sermon

The Debt We Could Not Pay and the Grace We Must Pass On

There is a moment that most of us have faced, or will face, when someone wrongs us deeply. Not a small inconvenience, not a misunderstanding that clears up over coffee, but a genuine wound. A betrayal. A broken trust. A word spoken that cannot be unspoken. And in that moment, something rises up inside us that feels entirely justified. We want the account settled. We want what is owed. We want justice.

That instinct is not entirely wrong. God is a God of justice, and the pain of being wronged is real. But Jesus, in one of the most searching parables He ever told, takes that instinct and turns it inside out. He does not simply tell us to forgive. He shows us why forgiveness is not only possible but required of those who have received the mercy of God.

Open your Bible to Matthew chapter 18, beginning at verse 21.

Peter's Question And The Parable That Answers It

Peter comes to Jesus with what he probably thought was a generous question. "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?" (Matthew 18:21, CSB). Peter was likely being sincere and even magnanimous. The rabbinical tradition of his day suggested forgiving an offense three times was sufficient. Peter doubled that and added one for good measure. He was expecting a compliment.

Jesus answered, "Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy times seven." (Matthew 18:22, CSB). Some translations render this as seventy-seven times. Either way, Jesus is not giving Peter a new arithmetic limit. He is saying that the forgiven person does not count. The one who has truly understood grace does not keep a ledger.

Then Jesus tells a parable to explain why.

A king decides to settle accounts with his servants. One servant is brought in who owes ten thousand talents. This is a staggering sum. A single talent represented roughly fifteen to twenty years of a laborer's wages. Ten thousand talents would be an amount so enormous that no common person could ever repay it in multiple lifetimes. It is not a debt that could be worked off or negotiated down. It is an impossible, crushing, hopeless debt.

The servant falls on his knees. He begs for patience. He promises, almost absurdly, that he will pay it all back. The king, moved with compassion, does something no one in the room expected. He does not restructure the payment plan. He does not reduce the debt by half. He forgives the entire debt. He cancels it completely. The servant walks out of that throne room with nothing owed. He is free.

What happens next is one of the most jarring scenes in all of Jesus' teaching. That same servant, still warm from the mercy he just received, goes out and finds a fellow servant who owes him a hundred denarii. A denarius was a day's wage. A hundred denarii was a real debt, not nothing, but it was a fraction of a fraction of what had just been forgiven. The servant grabs his fellow by the throat. He demands payment. When the man begs for patience, using nearly the same words the first servant had just used before the king, the forgiven man refuses. He has the debtor thrown into prison.

When the king hears what happened, he summons the servant and says, "You wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" (Matthew 18:32-33, CSB). The king hands him over to the jailers until the debt is paid, which, given the amount, means forever.

Jesus closes the parable with a sobering word: "So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart." (Matthew 18:35, CSB).

The Central Claim: Forgiveness Flows From Forgiveness

Here is the heart of what Jesus is teaching. The reason a follower of Christ forgives is not willpower. It is not personality. It is not because the offense was small enough to overlook. The reason a Christian forgives is because a Christian has been forgiven a debt beyond all calculation.

Every sin we have committed against a holy God is a debt we could not pay. The wages of sin is death, and no amount of good behavior, religious effort, or sincere regret could cancel what we owed. But God, in His mercy, sent His Son. Jesus took the full weight of that debt to the cross. He bore the judgment we deserved. He rose from the dead, and through faith in Him, we are forgiven. Not reduced. Not restructured. Forgiven.

If that is true of us, then the way we treat those who have wronged us must be shaped by that reality. The servant in the parable was not wicked because he wanted justice. He was wicked because he had forgotten, or perhaps never truly grasped, what had just happened to him. He walked out of the king's presence and acted as though nothing had changed. He lived as a forgiven man who did not know he was forgiven.

What Ephesians Adds To The Picture

The Apostle Paul puts the same truth in a different frame in Ephesians 4:31-32. He writes, "Let all bitterness, anger, wrath, shouting, and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ." (CSB).

Notice what Paul lists before he gets to forgiveness. Bitterness. Anger. Wrath. Shouting. Slander. Malice. These are not abstract vices. They are the things that grow in the soil of unforgiveness. When we refuse to forgive, we do not simply hold a grievance in a neutral container. We cultivate it. It grows roots. It shapes the way we speak, the way we see people, the way we carry ourselves through ordinary days.

Paul says these things must be removed. The word he uses carries the sense of being lifted off and carried away, like clearing out debris. And what fills the space? Kindness. Compassion. Forgiveness. And the standard Paul gives is not our own emotional readiness. It is the forgiveness of God in Christ. "Just as God also forgave you in Christ."

That phrase "in Christ" is doing important work. The forgiveness we extend to others is not generated from our own reserves of goodwill. It flows from our union with Christ, from the mercy we have received, from the Spirit who lives in us and produces in us what we could not produce on our own.

What Forgiveness Is And What It Is Not

Before we talk about how to forgive, we need to be honest about what forgiveness is and what it is not, because confusion here causes real harm.

Forgiveness is not saying the wrong did not matter. The king in the parable did not pretend the debt was fictional. He forgave a real debt. When you forgive someone, you are not minimizing what they did. You are releasing your claim to be the one who settles the account. You are trusting that God is the just judge, and you are stepping out of the seat of vengeance.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation requires two people. It requires repentance, trust rebuilt over time, and changed behavior. Forgiveness can happen in your heart before any of that occurs. You can forgive someone who has never apologized, who has never acknowledged the harm, who may never change. That forgiveness is not for their benefit alone. It is for yours. It is the act of releasing a weight that was slowly crushing you.

Forgiveness is not the same as removing all consequences. A person can be forgiven and still face the natural or legal consequences of what they did. Forgiveness does not require you to place yourself back in a harmful situation. Wisdom and forgiveness are not enemies. You can forgive someone and still maintain a boundary that protects your safety or the safety of others.

What forgiveness is, at its core, is a choice rooted in the gospel. It is the decision to release the debt, to refuse bitterness, to trust God with justice, and to treat the person who wronged you as someone for whom Christ also died.

The Hard Work Of Forgiving From The Heart

Jesus says the forgiveness must come from the heart. That is the hardest part. We can say the words. We can perform the gesture. But Jesus is after something deeper. He is after the release of the internal claim, the surrender of the right to punish.

This kind of forgiveness is rarely a single moment. It is often a daily decision, sometimes a moment-by-moment decision, to bring the wound back to the cross and leave it there. When the memory surfaces, when the anger rises, when you see the person and feel the old heat, you return to what God has done for you. You preach the gospel to yourself. You say, I was forgiven a debt I could not pay. I will not hold this debt over someone else.

That is not weakness. That is the most costly, courageous, and Christ-like thing a human being can do.

A Closing Charge

If you are here today and you are carrying an unforgiven wound, I want to speak gently and honestly. God is not asking you to pretend the hurt did not happen. He is not asking you to rush past the grief or manufacture feelings you do not have. He is asking you to bring it to Him, to receive again the mercy He has shown you in Christ, and to let that mercy do its work in you.

And if you are here today and you have never received that mercy yourself, that is where this must begin. Before you can pass on forgiveness, you must first know what it is to be forgiven. The same Jesus who told this parable went to a cross and bore the weight of every debt you have ever owed. He offers you full forgiveness, not because you have earned it, but because He is the king who cancels what we could never repay. Receive that today. Believe in Him. And let the grace you receive become the grace you give.

Go in the mercy of Christ, and extend that mercy to the world around you.

Sources Consulted

Carson, D. A. "Matthew." In The Expositor's Bible Commentary, vol. 8. Zondervan, 1984.

France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 2007.

Thielman, Frank. Ephesians. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Baker Academic, 2010.

Blomberg, Craig L. Interpreting the Parables. InterVarsity Press, 1990.

Stott, John R. W. The Message of Ephesians. The Bible Speaks Today. InterVarsity Press, 1979.