マタイによる福音書18:21-35 Matthew 18:21-35,

Have you ever had someone do something wrong to you? When people do wrong things to you, it makes you angry. The Lord’s Prayer, which Jesus taught us, has a prayer that means “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” But it is very difficult to forgive someone who has done wrong to you. Jesus’ disciples felt the same way. One day, the disciple Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” The “brother” that Peter referred to was not a “brother” by blood, but a fellow believer in God. It is a noble thing to forgive a fellow believer who has done you wrong seven times, which is not easy to do. Therefore, Peter may have asked the question thinking that if he forgave seven times, Jesus would say, “That’s all right.”

Then Jesus told him, “I do not say seven times but seventy times seven” (REB). “Seventy times seven” is literally four hundred and ninety times. But that does not mean that you should literally count 490 times and forgive. It means to forgive as many times and as far as you can. And Jesus taught the reason for this in the following parable.

A king of a country was lending money to his servants. And a servant was brought before the king. The servant owed the king 10,000 talents – how much is 10,000 talents? In New Testament times, a person’s salary for a day’s work was one denarius. And one talent was 6,000 denarii, which is a lot of money – 10,000 talents is 10,000 times that, so it’s a huge amount of money. If we assume that one denarius is 10,000 yen, 10,000 talents is 600 billion yen. That is a tremendously huge debt! It is impossible for one person to pay back such a tremendously huge debt. Nevertheless, the king ordered his servant to sell himself and his family into slavery and sell all his property to pay off the debt. The servant then begged the king, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Was there any chance of paying it all back? I’m sure there wasn’t. But when the king heard this, he felt pity for his servant and cancelled his tremendously huge debt.

The servant must have been very happy to have his debt cancelled. By the way, the servant had lent one of his fellow servants 100 denarii, which, when calculated in the same way as before, amounts to one million yen. And then he found this fellow servant outside. The servant seized the fellow, began to choke him saying, “Pay what you owe.” The fellow fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” But the servant did not agree and put the fellow in prison. When the king heard this, he became very angry. He said, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” and he put him in prison.

You all know what this parable means. Each one of us has been forgiven a very big sin by God. If you only think about your relationship with your fellow, you may not be able to forgive them for the wrong he/she has done. However, when you consider the relationship between God and yourself, you realise that forgiving the wrongdoing of your fellow is what God is pleased with. And you can see that not forgiving the fellow for the wrong things he/she has done will offend God. Let’s be very careful!