Musing From The Motel The Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18: 23 – 35)

Let us muse again today from Matthew 18: 23 – 35 and the theme of Jesus the king. It is in today’s text for our study we find the account of the unforgiving servant. In verse 23 he speaks of a king and his kingdom taking account of his servants. This goes right along with the theme of Matthew for he sees Jesus as the King. Let this be a reminder to us that our king Jesus will one day call us to give an account.

The servant who is called to give an account owes the king 10,000 talents. A talent is equivalent of 200 hours of labor. This servant owed the king 2 million hours of Labor. It is very clear it was a debt that the servant could never pay back. In verse 25 the king commands them to take all that the servant has including his wife and kids. It is here the servant fell on his face and began to worship. Oh how we as his servants are often controlled by our fallen nature, for the servant in verse 26 ask for patience to repay instead of forgiveness because he could not repay. In verse 27 we see the bases of Calvary for the king had mercy on this servant and forgave him all the debt I wish the story would have ended here but like many of God’s people our self centeredness arises above all else.

This same forgiven servant goes out and finds one who owes him A100 pence which is equivalent to less than $15 and demands payment. In verse 29 the fellow servant did exactly verbatim what the other servant did before the king and instead of forgiving him he had him locked up. The king heard of that and was very angry and placed the debt back upon the unforgiving servant. Let us not develop any doctrine from a parable thinking we can lose our salvation. In verse 35 the lesson to learn is “greater wrath is incurred by refusing to forgive than by all the rest of our indebtedness”. Let us remember if we forgive not neither will our heavenly king forgive us. In the words of Spurgeon who said “Lord make me of a meek and forgiving spirit, may my heart be as ready to pardon offenses as it is to beat”!