Sermon for Trinity 22 2008 - Matthew 18:21-35
Immanuel Lutheran Church of Frankentrost
Saginaw, Michigan
Trinity 22 (October 19, 2008)
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Text: “So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
OF all the sins that beset us in this earthly life, stubborn pride may be the hardest to root out of our sinful hearts. If someone insults you or takes what’s rightfully yours, if someone puts down a good idea you had or suggests that someone else might be better at a given task than you are, if someone gets away with something for which you’ve been punished or just plain gets on your nerves-it can be nearly impossible to forgive and forget. Once that righteous anger builds up inside it just wants to keep going and going. It takes on a life of its own and you can’t let it go. You feel like you’d rather cut off your right arm than give up a grudge against a neighbor.
But giving up our grudges is just what God expects us to do. It’s what He requires of us. He will not tolerate those grudges we hold. That’s the thrust of today’s text: it’s a warning for us Christians that
IF WE REFUSE TO FORGIVE ONE ANOTHER, GOD WILL REFUSE TO FORGIVE US.
Why is this? Because
I. Our forgiveness flows from God’s forgiveness, and so
II. Whoever refuses to forgive his brother shows that he disbelieves God’s forgiveness.
I.
Our forgiveness flows from God’s forgiveness. Everything begins with God’s gracious actions toward us. Jesus shows that clearly in our text. The king in the parable first forgives his servant. Then he expects that servant to forgive his fellow servants. The king’s forgiveness isn’t based on whether or not the servant forgives other people. It comes from the king’s mercy and graciousness. He sees the plight of his servant, he sees his pathetic condition, and he’s moved to compassion. The king’s forgiveness is purely by grace, completely freely given.
Such is God’s forgiveness of us. God does not first consider whether we are kind, merciful people who are likely to forgive our neighbors. No, He sees that we are just the opposite, poor sinners bound in sin, unable to free ourselves, incapable of real mercy from the heart. Through the preaching of His Law God reveals to us the gravity of our condition, the enormity of our debt to Him, the impossibility of our ever paying Him for the guilt of our sin. This terrifies us. It brings us to our knees, as it did the servant in our parable, and it leads us to dread the consequences of our sins, to beg Him for mercy. And He does show mercy. He forgives our debt. In fact He takes the loss Himself. God paid our debt Himself when He poured out His own blood on the cross. To those who are terrified of their sins, who are humbled by God’s demand of perfect righteousness and their own failure to meet that demand, God bestows the forgiveness of sins, the remission of all debts, through the preaching of the Gospel, the good news that our sins have been paid for, that our debt has been canceled in Christ. This is God’s forgiveness, freely given, with no conditions attached, dependent on His mercy and grace alone.
From this forgiveness which God graciously bestows upon us flows our forgiveness which we heartily and readily give to our brethren. When we have been struck down by the Law, faced with the terrifying prospect of eternal death fully deserved by our sin, and then when we’ve been released from that death by the Gospel of God’s gracious forgiveness in Christ, God changes our hearts. We have a new lease on life, and we live as those who have barely escaped a terrible death. In fact we live as those who have died but have been restored to life. In light of all this, our Christian brethren’s sins against us come to seem insignificant. So what if my brother tells people he doesn’t like my baking? I’ve been rescued from eternal damnation! So what if my brother has publicly disagreed with me at a voters’ meeting? God has raised me from the dead! We who have been shown such unimaginable mercy cannot help but show mercy to others. When we’re aware of God’s great gift of forgiveness, when our hearts abound with thankfulness toward Him and with the joy of those who have been rescued from hell, grudges against our brethren become unthinkable.
Now there’s a point I’d like to make here that I think we often forget. Forgiveness is for the penitent. It’s for those who recognize their sin and who wish to do better. That’s true between God and us, and it’s true between us and our brethren. God does not forgive those who stubbornly persist in their sin. Yes, He’s won forgiveness for the impenitent, just as He has for the penitent, but He commands His called and ordained servants not to forgive the sins of the impenitent. That’s what we call the binding key. In the verses just before today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus gives His Church the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and there are two of them: the binding key and the loosing key. “Whatever you bind on earth,” He says, “shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” The loosing key is given so that pastors can forgive the sins of those who repent, “loosing” them from the guilt of their sin and opening the gates of heaven to them. The binding key is given so that pastors can retain the sins of the impenitent as long as they do not repent. It “binds” sinners to the guilt of their sin, and it closes the gates of heaven to them. The purpose of the binding key is first and foremost to show stubborn sinners the seriousness of their refusal to repent, the hope being that they will realize what they’re doing and turn from their sin and live. But the fact remains that forgiveness is to be withheld from those who refuse to repent.
The same is true when it comes to you and your neighbor. You are not called to forgive those who sin against you and refuse to repent. Whew! So we’re off the hook. All those grudges we hold are okay, because those people that we just can’t stand are obviously impenitent. Well, not exactly. Jesus doesn’t call us to leave our brethren in their sin. He calls us to confront them with their sin. If you don’t really believe that your brother has sinned against you, then let it go. There’s no room for a grudge if there’s nothing to forgive. Sometimes our personalities just don’t match up too well, and that’s no reason for us to be enemies. But if you really believe that your brother has sinned against you and that he’s stubbornly persisting in that sin, then it’s your duty out of Christian love to confront him with that sin. Jesus says in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.” If you’re bearing a grudge against someone and you really believe it’s because of sin on the part of the other person, go and talk to him about it! Intentional, persistent sin is a serious matter. It leads to damnation. If you leave your brother in his sin without warning him about it, his blood is on your head. But your confrontation with your erring brother should be in a spirit of love and hope that he’ll repent and be restored to life.
That’s not the spirit in which the servant in our parable approaches his fellow servant. He’s obviously not bringing up the debt between them in hopes that he can then forgive the debt. No, he grabs his fellow servant and starts choking him! And then when his fellow servant begs for mercy, he throws him into jail. It’s as if we should refuse to forgive the sin of a penitent sinner. It’s using the binding key when we should be using the loosing key.
This cruel act on the part of the forgiven servant shows how he really thinks about the forgiveness that the king has mercifully granted him. He really doesn’t care. It hasn’t impressed him at all. He may have been relieved at the moment when he realized that he and his family wouldn’t be sold into slavery, when he realized that he was no longer responsible for that unimaginably huge debt, but the relief is short lived. It turns quickly into contempt and disregard. It may even be that he doesn’t really believe that he’s forgiven after all. Otherwise, why would he be so intent on getting the money owed him by his fellow servant? He must still be trying to pay back the king. By refusing to forgive the very manageable debt owed to him, the wicked servant shows that he doesn’t trust in the king’s forgiveness of his own impossible debt.
II.
Like the unforgiving servant in our parable, whoever refuses to forgive his brother shows that he does not believe in God’s forgiveness. There are two ways that we can refuse to forgive our brethren. The most obvious way is to be unmerciful when our brethren come to us to beg our forgiveness. The other way, and by far the most common way, is never to talk to our brethren at all, to let them go on in their sin, giving them no opportunity to repent and ask our forgiveness. Both of these behaviors reveal a heart that disbelieves the mercy of God.
And it’s the heart that really matters here. It’s no accident that Jesus says in our text, “if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” What Jesus requires in our text isn’t a superhuman effort of the will. He doesn’t ask that we “grin and bear it,” reluctantly forgiving our brethren while knowing that we’d be much happier if we could see them go to perdition. No, Jesus expects forgiveness and mercy from the heart. He expects our forgiveness to happen automatically, without our even thinking about it, the fruit of a heart that joyfully and confidently believes in the forgiveness of sins from a gracious God. Such a forgiveness as Jesus demands can never come from a heart lost in sin and unbelief. It can only flow out of a heart that has been created anew by the Holy Spirit, a heart converted by the Gospel of Christ.
I said before that our forgiveness flows from God’s forgiveness. It stands to reason, then, that if our forgiveness is lacking, the problem must be with the source, with God’s forgiveness. Not as if God’s forgiveness is ever deficient or incomplete or ineffective-it’s certainly none of those things-but someone who disbelieves the forgiveness given him by God has stopped up the flow of God’s grace, has denied the Gospel and removed himself from the body of Christ.
So a refusal to forgive is a fruit of unbelief, just as a readiness to forgive is a fruit of belief, a fruit of the Spirit. When we start talking about fruits, though, we have to be careful. Your assurance of salvation isn’t in your fruits, in your ability to forgive, it’s in Christ and Him crucified. Only by belief in Him and in His blood, poured out in payment of your debt of sin, can it become possible for you to forgive your brethren from the heart. So if you find yourself holding a grudge, or being stuck in any other sin for that matter, don’t despair over your salvation. Don’t focus on the bad fruit. Focus on the cross. Focus on the myriad ways that God has given you the salvation won on the cross. Focus on your baptism, when God washed you in the waters of rebirth for the forgiveness of your sins. Focus on your pastor’s absolution, where God openly and clearly forgives you all of your sins. Focus on the Sacrament of the Altar, where God places into your very mouth the body and blood that were offered to Him as the payment to purchase and win you from the powers of sin, death, and the devil. Then let the fruits come. Only by God’s means of grace, by the things He’s appointed as the instruments by which He gives you the forgiveness of your sins, can it become possible for you to do any good from the heart-including heartily forgiving, and readily doing good to, your neighbor.
So yes, it is hard to forgive our brethren when they sin against us. In fact with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Thanks be to God for making it possible for us to do good to our neighbors. Thanks be to God for visiting us when we were lost and condemned sinners, for graciously forgiving us all of our sins. Thanks be to Jesus for paying our debt to His heavenly Father. To God alone be all glory. Amen.
