Forgiven People Forgive Others
An Uncomfortable Message
It is so good to be with you again. If I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you yet, my name is Mike Slaton. I’ve been around here for a number of years, and I have the great privilege of opening God’s Word with you today.
If you have been with us through this journey in the Gospel of Matthew, we are going to pick up right where we left off last week. Last week, our senior pastor, Brad, did a marvelous job walking through a very difficult passage. The overarching theme we are talking about in this section of Matthew is “family business.” Jesus is dealing with how those in His family ought to relate to one another. We looked at what to do when a brother or a sister wanders off the path into sin: How do we invite them back, and what is our responsibility as fellow believers to help restore them?
Right on the heels of that discussion, it is no accident that we immediately step into the reality of forgiveness and mercy. Colossians reminds us that while we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our sins and canceling the certificate of debt that was hostile to us. God reconciled us to Himself through the person of Jesus Christ. Understanding, obeying, and embracing our great need for Jesus—and living under His rule and reign—is the heartbeat of Matthew’s Gospel.
I have to be completely honest with you: in all my years of teaching, I have rarely had a message mess with me more than this one. One of the blessings of not preaching every single week is that I have the luxury of preparing well in advance. For weeks, this passage has been weighing heavily on me. The challenge is not figuring out what the Greek verbs mean or what Jesus is trying to say. What Jesus is saying is crystal clear. The difficulty is in how radical and impossible the standard seems. When we truly understand what it means to live under the reign of King Jesus, His standard for forgiveness seems completely countercultural.
The High Bar of Forgiveness
According to Jesus, vertical forgiveness from God and horizontal forgiveness toward others are inseparable. Peter approaches Jesus with what he thinks is a very generous offer.
Matthew 18:21-22 (NASB)
Then Peter came and said to Him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ’I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
Peter is essentially saying, “Lord, there has to be a limit. When someone’s sin sends shrapnel into my life, hurting and wounding me, how many times do I have to extend mercy? Seven times?” In that culture, forgiving someone three times was considered exceptionally generous. Peter doubles that and adds one, thinking he is being remarkably gracious.
Peter is connecting the dots back to what Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Peter understands there is a link, but Jesus completely shatters his math. Jesus tells him, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times”—or seventy times seven.
Jesus isn’t giving us a literal quota of 490 times so that on offense 491 we can finally write someone off. He is using hyperbolic language to say the number is infinitely high. Under the reign of King Jesus, an infinite amount of forgiveness is expected from those who have received infinite forgiveness.
To drive this home, Jesus tells a story.
The Incalculable Debt
Jesus is a master storyteller, and He paints a word picture of how citizens of the kingdom of heaven are called to live. He introduces two primary characters: a king with absolute authority—a clear picture of God—and a servant who owes him a debt.
Matthew 18:23-27 (NASB)
’For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. ’When he had begun to settle [them], one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. ’But since he did not have [the means] to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. ’So the slave fell [to the ground] and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ ’And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
The text tells us that this servant owed ten thousand talents. A talent was not a coin; it was the largest unit of weight used in the ancient world for measuring precious metals like gold or silver. To put it in perspective, a single talent was equivalent to about sixteen and a half years of wages for a common laborer. Ten thousand talents represented roughly 164,000 lifetimes of income. In today’s economy, comparing it to a minimum wage worker, this debt is in the billions—perhaps even trillions—of dollars.
Jesus intentionally uses an absurd, astronomical figure. It is an unpayable, incalculable debt. There is no scenario in a million lifetimes where this servant could ever repay what he owes.
Do you see the picture? This servant represents every single one of us. Because of our sin against a holy God, we have amassed a moral debt that we cannot possibly repay. The law demands payment, and the payment for our debt is our very lives. Because the man cannot pay, the king commands that he, his wife, his children, and all his possessions be sold.
The servant falls on his face in desperation and cries out, “Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.” It sounds humble, but it reveals that the servant still does not grasp the magnitude of his debt. He genuinely thinks that with a little more time, he can work it off. How many of us make the exact same mistake with God? We think that with enough effort, good deeds, and religious resolve, we can pay God back for our sin.
The king has every right to sell the man and recoup whatever meager fraction he can. But look at what happens: the king is moved with compassion.
In the original Greek, this word for compassion refers to a deep, gut-level stirring—being moved to your very core. Compassion in Scripture is never just passive pity; it is an emotion that always compels action. The king doesn’t just feel sorry for the man and send him to jail anyway. Driven by compassion, the king releases the man and cancels the entire debt. He gives him his life back.
Forgiveness means releasing control, letting the offense go, and refusing to hold the debt against the person any longer. That is precisely what God did for us. He took our colossal debt of sin, placed it upon the back of His Son on the cross, paid it in full, and credited us with Christ’s righteousness.
The Heart of Unforgiveness
Tragically, the parable does not end there. Look at what happens next.
Matthew 18:28-30 (NASB)
’But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and [began] to choke [him], saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ ’So his fellow slave fell [to the ground] and [began] to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ ’But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed.
This same servant, who has just walked out of the courtroom completely debt-free from an incalculable fortune, finds a fellow servant who owes him one hundred denarii. A denarius was a single day’s wage. One hundred denarii was about three months of work—roughly a few thousand dollars today.
Now, a few thousand dollars is not nothing. If someone totals your car and causes thousands of dollars in damage, that is a real debt and a genuine inconvenience. But compared to the billions of dollars he had just been forgiven, it is practically pocket change.
Instead of extending the mercy he had just received, the servant grabs his fellow servant by the throat and demands immediate payment. The second servant falls down and uses the exact same words: “Have patience with me, and I will repay you.” But the first servant refuses, throwing him into prison until the debt is paid.
Matthew 18:32-35 (NASB)
’Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ’You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ‘Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ ’And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ‘My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.’
The king calls the servant back in and asks a piercing question: “Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?” The king is filled with righteous anger and hands him over to be punished.
Jesus concludes with a sobering reality: if we are unwilling to forgive our brothers and sisters from the heart, we demonstrate that we have never truly understood or received the vertical forgiveness of God.
Consider how often Jesus emphasizes this truth throughout the Gospels:
Matthew 6:12 (NASB)
’And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
Matthew 6:14-15 (NASB)
’For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ’But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Mark 11:25 (NASB)
’Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions.
Jesus is not saying that our forgiveness of others earns God’s forgiveness. Rather, extending forgiveness is the undeniable evidence that we truly comprehend the grace we have received. It is like James 2—faith without works is dead. An unforgiving heart reveals a broken understanding of the gospel. When we respond to others with bitterness, legalism, and a demand for retribution, we are living completely contrary to the kingdom of God.
The Reality of Deep Pain
It is relatively easy to apply this teaching to the minor offenses of life. When a kid accidentally throws a baseball through your window, or someone cuts you off in the parking lot after church, you can overlook it. Those are minor inconveniences.
But what about the things that cut straight to the core of our souls? What about the deep, agonizing wounds that cause real devastation?
I want to share something deeply personal that I don’t often speak about publicly. With her permission, I want to read my wife Michelle’s testimony. She wrote out her story, and I want you to hear her words directly:
“How do you begin to comprehend the magnitude of forgiveness when God allows very painful circumstances in your life?
Unfortunately, most of my childhood memories begin around the age of four because of a sexually abusive uncle. This lasted for five years while I kept it hidden out of fear and helplessness. Through a series of circumstances, my parents found out, and I was finally able to tell them what happened. While there was a tremendous sense of relief, the aftermath was a mess. I was angry. I felt robbed of my childhood. I was embarrassed. More than anything, I didn’t want to talk about it; I preferred to pretend nothing had ever happened. My parents did everything they could, but I refused to acknowledge how deeply I was affected and chose to remain silent. I simply wanted to bury it and move on.
For ten years, I couldn’t even see my need to heal. But God in His mercy began to orchestrate events that prepared me for a long journey of growth in my relationship with Him. While intellectually I understood the gospel, I lacked a true understanding of God’s sovereignty and the forgiveness I had received for my own sin.
When I was nineteen, I attended a conference where a woman on stage shared a story very similar to mine. I had never heard someone speak of so much pain while remaining completely resolved in the belief that God loved her and was still good. After the session, I shared the gist of my story with her, expecting sympathy. Instead, she looked into my nineteen-year-old eyes and told me the hard truth:
‘Michelle, you have two options. You can continue to ignore the pain, stuffing the anger and bitterness deep inside—which will hold you captive. Or, you can understand that while sin deeply grieves God, He is the author of your story. He allowed this in your life for a reason. You can choose to believe that He will use this for good, surrender it to Him, and let Him be the one who ultimately makes it right.’
By God’s grace, that truth broke through. I realized I had a choice to make. As I began taking steps toward forgiveness, there were many moments where the desire for vindication and a confession of wrong would creep back in, tempting me toward bitterness. What I learned is that all the counseling and self-help in the world is useless unless we anchor ourselves to God’s Word. I recognized that the only way to forgive was to love with a love I do not possess in myself.
Thirty-five years later, the memories remain, but my heart genuinely feels compassion for a broken, lost man who could not turn from his sin. There was never circumstantial closure. Closure came when God helped me see that I, too, had sin that required forgiveness. Realizing that all of us have been shown love, compassion, and mercy we do not deserve changed everything. I gave up my demand for vindication and traded it for the opportunity to extend the same forgiveness I had received. The cross is where I ultimately found closure.“
What Forgiveness Is—and Is Not
As you can imagine, the shrapnel of that abuse affected Michelle, her family, and eventually me. When Michelle and I were dating and she first shared her past with me, my immediate fleshly reaction was rage. I thought, “Lord, if I am ever in the same room with that man, God help him.” I understand that first servant grabbing the debtor by the throat. I know what that desire for vengeance feels like.
Over the years, God had to work on my heart. Jesus challenges us in the Sermon on the Mount:
Matthew 5:43-44 (NASB)
’You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’ ’But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
Can I genuinely love this man? Can I pray for his soul? I can only do that when I recognize that the greatest offense in the universe is not what another human being has done to me, but what my sin did to a holy God.
Many of you carry wounds and trauma from the sin of others. Because of that, we need to be crystal clear about what biblical forgiveness actually is and what it is not:
- Forgiveness is not excusing or minimizing sin. We never call evil good. Sin is horrific—so horrific that it required the death of the Son of God on a cross.
- Forgiveness does not bypass legal justice. There are offenses that violate civil laws, where governmental and legal consequences must be carried out. Forgiveness simply transfers your personal demand for vengeance into the hands of God, trusting Him to execute perfect justice in His time.
- Forgiveness is not stuffing your pain. It is not pretending you were not hurt. It is taking that genuine agony and bringing it honestly before the Lord.
- Forgiveness is not forgetting. Michelle has not forgotten what happened to her. Forgiveness is not amnesia; it is choosing not to hold the offense against the person as a weapon.
- Forgiveness is not immediate trust or reconciliation. Forgiveness is a gift of grace extended freely and unilaterally; trust is earned over time through consistent repentance and fruit. Reconciliation requires both parties and may not always be safe or possible.
When we harbor unforgiveness, we are not punishing the offender. We are locking ourselves inside a personal prison of bitterness.
The Freedom of the Cross
Sin is destructive, and its effects ripple through families and communities. All of us in this room have experienced being the victim of someone else’s sin, and all of us have been the victimizer whose sin has hurt others.
The incredible news of the gospel is that God’s grace covers both.
Some of you are sitting here carrying crushing guilt, thinking, “God cannot possibly forgive what I’ve done.” You are struggling to accept God’s forgiveness for yourself. You need to know that Jesus absorbed every ounce of that penalty on the cross. His blood is sufficient for your deepest shame.
Others of you are holding tightly to debts that people owe you, living with clenched fists and bitter hearts. Jesus does not give us the option to withhold mercy. Forgiven people forgive.
If you are walking through deep pain and need a safe place to process trauma, sin, and forgiveness, we have ministries like Re:generation that meet every Monday night. We want to walk alongside you because our church is simply a community of broken people learning to live under the extravagant grace of Jesus.
May we be a people who release the debts of others, marvel at the grace that rescued us, and reflect the heart of our compassionate King.
Prayer
Father, thank You for Your profound goodness and love. In a broken and painful world, You stepped into our mess. We stood condemned by a debt we could never repay, and in Your deep compassion, You sent Jesus to pay it in full on the cross.
Lord, would You write that reality deeply onto our hearts? Help us to extend the same limitless grace and mercy that we have so freely received. Where there is bitterness, bring healing. Where there is pain, bring Your peace. Shape us into a people who live under the reign of King Jesus, forgiving others because we have been completely forgiven. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.