Matthew 18:34–35

This man is unforgiving and cruel; he throttled his fellow servant. Merciless and cruel, he had no sense of forgiveness. If there is anything like a proper sense of grace in our souls, it will make us patient and watchful over our spirits, for the same nature is in all of us. Notice that the king did not call him a wicked servant because he owed the debt. The debt was not what made him angry. But when the servant was merciless and unforgiving, then he was angry with him.

The close of the parable gives us its moral: mercy fails for the man with whom mercy fails. "And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt." That could never happen. So it pictures a punishment that lasts forever.

This parable does not speak of the salvation of the soul. It speaks of the principles by which the King governs His kingdom. Those principles apply as much to the person who really possesses salvation as to the one who only claims it. One fact never changes: on the cross Christ took the eternal consequences of every believer's sins. But our conduct in this world falls under another unchanging principle of God's government: "whatever one sows, that will he also reap."

The Jews were guilty of ten thousand talents by crucifying the Son of God. God then acts in grace. On the strength of the intercession of Jesus, He has the gospel preached to the nation, and Peter's preaching is the answer. But they refuse grace to the Gentiles, who were far less guilty toward them than they were toward God. So the wrath came upon them to the full.

The Jew is therefore cast into prison, and he will not leave it until he has paid all that was due. The day is coming when the Lord will say that Jerusalem has received from His hand double for all her sins. In His grace He will count that Jerusalem has suffered more than enough. He will apply to them the blood of Christ, which can wipe out the ten thousand talents and more. But the unbelieving generation of Israel are cast into prison, and they will never come out. The remnant will come out, by the grace of God, and the Lord will make the remnant a strong nation.

It is a terrible thing for someone who professes Christ to hold on to an unforgiving spirit. We do not see how such a person can have any real sense of grace or any communion with God. And we should not be surprised to find them given over to the most tormenting feelings. Those feelings express God's judgment on a wrong state of heart.

The Christian who goes to law claims to have been forgiven ten thousand talents, yet he takes his fellow by the throat for a mere hundred pence. Is this right? Is it pleasing to God?… God is not counting trespasses against people. He is a pardoning God, delighting in mercy. If we go to law, we are not like Him; we are misrepresenting Him.

What an exposure of the awful possibilities that lurk in the human heart! A man may have sinned against God and then received from Him a full pardon for all his offences, through the atoning sacrifice of Calvary. And then he refuses to show mercy to a fellow human being who has wronged him! A beggar with God, and a tyrant with men! Oh, the appalling inconsistency.

We who profess to be Christians have an important lesson to learn from this scripture. We urgently need to cultivate a forgiving spirit. If we fail to act in grace, we are in danger of losing the sense of grace in our own souls. How dreadful when a man whose sins are all forgiven drags a fellow sinner into court over a little money! Note the closing words of our Lord... This marks the application of the entire passage to our Father's governmental dealings with us from day to day.

This parable does not speak of the salvation of the soul. It speaks of the principles by which the King governs His kingdom. Those principles apply to the one who truly has life just as much as to the one who only professes it. On the cross Christ took the eternal consequences of every believer's sins, and that fact never changes. But as to our conduct in this world, God governs by a principle that never changes either: "whatever one sows, that will he also reap."

We are to act out of our own hearts in grace, just as God acted in our salvation. We look for no motive outside ourselves, except in the God who saved us. Our delight is to express the same indescribable grace that we ourselves have received. This does not mean we must always speak our forgiveness to those who have sinned against us. But in our own feelings we are always to be in a state of forgiveness. We are never to hold on to a brother's sin inside.

Eternal forgiveness rests on a completely different basis. But God's governmental forgiveness very often hinges on the believer showing a forgiving spirit. If we treat our brothers and sisters badly, sooner or later we shall find ourselves in the hands of the "tormentors," and we shall have a sorrowful time. And suppose one of us sees a brother ill-treating another. We would be wise not to take the law into our own hands and attack the wrongdoer. Better to copy the servants in the parable: tell our Lord all that happened, and leave Him to deal with the offender in His holy government.

Huge numbers profess to have received His pardon... But conduct alone proves whether the grace of God has really reached the soul. Where it has, the forgiven one walks thankfully in the spirit of grace towards all, and patiently bears wrong... "For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy" (James 2:13). Our God will be satisfied with nothing less than reality in those who have to do with Him.

Matthew 18:23-35 does not refer to the question of "eternal life." Its primary application is to the Jew and his way of dealing with the Gentile. Despite the abounding mercy which God had shown to the Jew, he would not listen to the idea of mercy to the Gentile.