It’s easy to confuse Jesus with a guru, philosopher or self-help speaker. Even Christians can sometimes read His teachings like a self-help book. We look for principles to follow or rules to obey. But when we reduce Jesus’ teachings to principles and rules, we empty them of their power. The heart of Jesus’ message was good news—God’s grace given to transform us. We see this in the way Jesus responded when Peter came to Him with a question about a difficult relationship.
How many times do I have to forgive?
One day Peter approached Jesus and asked how many times he needed to forgive someone who had sinned against him (Matthew 18:21–35). Obviously, he had someone in mind who was wearing down his patience.
Peter probably thought he was being generous when he suggested, “As many as seven times?” Seven sounded like a complete number, maybe even a biblical one. He probably figured that forgiving someone seven times was more than enough. To his great disappointment, Jesus told him that he had to forgive not seven times but seventy-seven times.
If Jesus were simply a religious teacher, Peter could have written down seventy-seven and had his rule. If Jesus were giving a TED Talk, He might have followed this up with an inspirational story about the incredible breakthrough that took place in a relationship after He forgave someone for the seventy-sixth time. Instead, Jesus tells a story that shows us how the gospel can redefine not only how we see our relationships but how we see all of life.
Remember how much you’ve been forgiven
Jesus tells the story of a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. One servant owed him 10,000 talents, which was a ridiculously large sum of money. For an average labourer in the first century, it would take twenty years to earn just one talent. So, the servant had somehow racked up a debt that would take 200,000 years to repay!
It was a debt of billions of dollars in today’s currency. And yet Jesus simply says, “Out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt” (Matthew 18:27). Imagine the relief. Imagine the gratitude he must have felt. But this is where Jesus’ story takes a surprising turn.
The servant who had been forgiven such an impossibly large debt encounters a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii, roughly 100 days’ wages. It’s a significant debt, but after receiving such extraordinary mercy, you would expect him to graciously forgive it.
Instead, he refuses. He has his fellow servant thrown into prison until he pays back the debt. When the king learns what happened, he is furious and hands the unforgiving servant over to judgment.
Jesus ends the story with a sobering warning: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35)
See your relationships through the gospel
If you examine what Jesus is doing in this story, it becomes clear how different His approach to relationships is. The point isn’t simply that we should forgive others. We could learn that from a self-help book. The message is about a lavishly forgiving God, represented in the story by the king.
It is only when we grasp the enormity of the debt of sin we have before God and the impossibility of ever paying Him back that we can begin to see our relationships with others from the right perspective. Having been forgiven so much, we find the grace to forgive the comparatively small offences and sins that others commit against us.
As our patience with people begins to wear thin, we remind ourselves again of all that God has forgiven us. The injustices and annoyances that once seemed unendurable begin to look different when we see them through the lens of God's mercy toward us.
This is what makes the Christian life so profoundly different from merely ethical or religious systems based on rules and principles. Jesus invites us to view what we should do in light of what God has already done. And what God has done for us is far more than most of us can imagine.
The warning in Jesus’ story is that receiving God’s forgiveness cannot leave us unchanged. Those who have truly experienced God's grace will increasingly become people who extend that same grace to others.
So if you want to know how Jesus can change your relationships, don’t start by trying harder to be more patient, forgiving or gracious. Start by thinking more deeply about the grace God has shown you. The more amazed we are by how much God has forgiven us, the more ready we will be to forgive those who have sinned against us.
In awe of Him,
Paul
