079 Stories of the Kingdom: Settling the Score
Whenever you deal with people, there will inevitably be conflicts. People will hurt you. You may be facing that right now – in your family, your neighborhood, your job, or your church.
And our response is to want to settle the score. Even as Christians we have ways of making them pay, such as:
Silence. You get wounded, so the walls go up and the words shut down
Distance. You withdraw, ostensibly to keep them from hurting you further; but deep down inside you’re doing it to hurt them.
Sabotage. Gossip, slander, back-biting...even veiled prayer requests. It’s one more way we can get back at them.
Here’s the irony: such revenge is always a losing proposition. When you throw mud, ultimately it’s the Kingdom that loses ground.
Jesus knew that, so He frequently taught about relational integrity. The parable in Matthew 18 is one such case.
A king wanted to settle his accounts with his servants, so he called them in one by one. One particular servant came in who owed his master a massive amount of money – more than he could possibly repay. The king, as was his right, declared the man, his family, and all that he owned should be sold to recoup something of this debt.
The servant begged for mercy, pleading for more time. The king took pity on him, canceled his debt, and let him go.
That brings us to the first theme in this story.
The cost of the master’s forgiveness
It was neither easy nor cheap for that master to let his guilty servant go. He canceled the debt at a huge personal cost.
That word, “canceled,” is also used in Colossians 2:13-14. Each of us owed God a massive debt because of our sin. That debt was real and none of us had the capacity to repay it.
If we were going to be set free, someone else was going to have to pay. Somebody was going to have to absorb the loss. And according to Col. 2, someone did. Jesus paid our debt…with His very life.
Back to the parable.
When the man left, he found another servant who owed him a few bucks. He attacked him, saying, “Pay back what you owe me!” The other servant begged for mercy, but the wicked servant refused and had him thrown in prison until he could repay the debt.
We read this and think, “How could this guy do such a thing?” Yet, we all likely have faces that appear on our mental screens. People we won’t forgive because they shattered our hopes and broke our hearts.
To be sure, there was no excuse for their actions. But the question isn’t, “Were they wrong?” The question is, “In light of the staggering amount we have been forgiven, what possible right do we have to withhold forgiveness?”
When the king heard what had happened, he was incredulous. He called in the servant and said, “After all I did for you, shouldn’t you have shown mercy?” The king then threw him in prison and turned him over to the torturers.
This brings us to the next theme.
The price for the servant’s unforgiveness.
Jesus is making a powerful point here: If you choose to hold onto your hate…if you will not forgive…you will pay a high cost. Studies have shown the connection between harboring long-term resentment and numerous emotional and physical illnesses…and even death.
In contrast, there’s forgiveness. Though it appears to be foolish, in reality, it's one of the smartest moves you’ll ever make. Lew Smedes writes: “The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness… When we forgive we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.”
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Originally recorded August 2, 2009, at Fellowship Missionary Church, Fort Wayne, IN.