THE grace which forgives to the uttermost is characteristic of Christianity. Christ Himself bore witness of it habitually, and expressly to the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee. It is the prime message of the gospel; and the church assumes it to be settled for the least member of Christ's body.
But grace believed and received creates practical responsibility; for where that is real, there is also life in Christ to follow Him, and the gift of the Spirit ensues, a spirit, not of fear any more than of severity, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. But where there is only the profession of the natural man, without a vital work of God, the soul (not being purified by faith) betrays its unrenewal by heartless cruelty to one's fellow. And here it is set out in the strongest light, not only in its total antagonism to God, but by the aggravation of an immense debt forgiven him a servant, followed at once by the most extreme punishment of his fellow for a small debt due to himself.
In a previous section of the chapter the Lord had laid down the grace that saves the lost, illustrated by the owner's earnestness to seek one stray sheep out of a hundred. No trouble is begrudged. He leaves the safe ninety and nine, he traverses the mountains in quest of the wanderer, and, if he find it, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety and nine that had not gone astray. This grace, as it filled His own heart and gave meaning to His death, the Lord proceeds to press on the church or assembly, which was soon to supersede Israel for the present, as He announced in Matt. 16. Founded in God's righteousness on His own death and resurrection, so that the gates of Hades should not prevail against it, the Christian, no less than the church, is called to walk in grace. The injured one is to seek, not vengeance, nor yet retribution, but to gain his brother that sinned against him. If the latter should not hear, one or two are to be taken with the injured, in painstaking love; but if he heed not the assembly also, “let him be to thee as the heathen and the tax-gatherer.” How worthless the state that rejects all overtures of love! Grace refused condemns more than violated law. Indifference would deny righteousness as well as grace. The Lord is in the midst of even two or three gathered to His name.
Peter suggested what he regarded as a perfect limit of forgiveness, and inquired whether seven times satisfied; the Lord answered, Until seventy times seven. Grace declines a stipulated term and demands the widest margin; but the parable indicates solemnly the doom of him who has no heart fox it. Whatever the man pretended to, the only true God, the Father, was unknown, and Jesus Christ Whom He did send: life eternal was not his.
“For this the kingdom of the heavens is likened to a king who would make a reckoning with his bondmen. And when he began to reckon, one debtor for ten thousand talents was brought to him. But as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and the children and all that he had, and payment to be made. The bondman then falling down did him homage, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay all. And the lord of the bondman, moved with compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. But that bondman, on going out, found one of his fellow-bondmen who owed him a hundred denarii, and having laid hold he was grasping his throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. His fellow-bondman then, falling at his feet, besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay what was owing. But his fellow-bondmen, having seen what was being done, were greatly grieved, and went and fully explained to their lord all that was done. Then his lord, having summoned him, saith to him, Wicked bondman, all that debt I forgave thee, since thou didst beseech me: oughtedst not thou also to have pitied thy fellow-bondman, as I also pitied thee? And his, lord, in wrath, delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was owing to him. Thus also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if ye forgive not from your hearts each his brother” (Matt. 18:23-35).
But one debtor is specified, and his debt enormous. Even if of silver, Haman offered no more in lieu of destroying the entire Jewish people. Not less guilty is the sinner before God. No wonder he “was brought to Him “: of himself he would never come. All depends on the reality of one's submission to God's righteousness. If he be not born of God, it is superficial. Profession may have no root of faith, but spring from the mere feeling of terror on the one hand or of sympathy on the other. It may be but creedism or deference to public opinion. It is often mental apprehension. In all such cases there is no thorough self-judgment, no divinely formed repentance, and hence no true sense of the grace of God, nor real appreciation of Christ and His work, whereby faith knows. But the sentence of judgment (for God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of them that hold the truth in unrighteousness) may alarm souls into the profession of the Lord's name apart from living faith. So it was when our Lord preached; as He warned such as quickly received the word with joy, and soon gave it up in trial. So it was yet more, when the gospel went out in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. A single case is more impressive than a crowd. Further, as individually one believes, so too judgment will be individual.
Here the debtor who did not keep the word, nor bring forth fruit with patience, “on going out,” soon betrayed his emptiness. He, being a dead stone, who had never tasted that the Lord is good, ruthlessly assailed his fellow that owed him a comparatively small debt. And his lord, incensed at cruelty so selfish after such grace, consigns him not to prison only but to the tormentors in irretrievable ruin.
O my reader, deceive not your soul: God is not mocked. Read not only Gal. 6:7-10 but Rom. 2:7-11, which press not the grace that saves, but the indispensable character of those that are saved. “He shall have judgment without mercy that showed no mercy.”
How is it then with your soul, my reader? Have you received Christ and believed the gospel to the remission of your sins? For this is the A B C of God's message based on Christ's redemption. There is far more given in His grace; but with this most needed and touching answer to our deep want God begins. He remembers no more our sins and iniquities, as He often assures us; but He would have us to know them blotted out by the Savior's blood, as we remember Him and show forth His death habitually. What can be conceived more contradictory of His grace than a hard vindictive spirit? Are not we who are forgiven distinctly charged to forgive? Nay more, are we not solemnly warned that Christ's heavenly Father will award unsparing judgment, not to open adversaries only, Jew or Gentile, but to the Christian professor especially, if from his heart he forgives not a brother's trespasses? Can any course be more fraught with danger than glossing over Christ's plain meaning under the fond claim that, whatever come, we are safe? He that believes to the saving of the soul is neither presumptuous nor cowardly where Christ is at stake, but keeps His word and denies not His name, sharing His life and displaying His character.
But this does not exhaust the full bearing of the parable, which (like others such as Matt. 22:2-14; 25:1-13) not only admits a personal application but is dispensational. For it needs little insight to discern that, in accordance with the kingdom of the heavens in its present mysterious form to which the Christ's rejection gave rise, God will have consistency with His own grace, and, as He is forgiving to the uttermost, insists on the same spirit in His children who call on the name of the Lord. Legal retribution is not in keeping with the kingdom of the heavens, least of all with His sufferings and death Who is gone on high, and Whom the Christian is to represent here below. The bondman with the debt to God of 10,000 talents is historically the Jew, availing himself greedily of a gracious oblivion of all in the gospel, but so little imbued with the Spirit of Christ, as to hate and persecute, forbidding any mercy to the Gentile because of his injustice to Israel, little indeed compared with the Jew's wickedness against God. Therefore, as the apostle shows, is wrath come upon them to the uttermost (1 Thess. 2:16). So also we see in the Acts of the Apostles, that though the blotting out of their sins was preached to them on their repentance and turning to God, they did not truly profit by His mercy. They dogged enviously and as enemies the steps of His messengers, whom He sent next to the Gentiles. Thus they pleased not God and were contrary to all men, and afford the sad witness that, if the despiser of Moses' law died without compassion on proof of two or three witnesses, much sorer must be the punishment of those that trample down and count unholy the blood of the covenant and do despite to the Spirit of grace.