The Parables of Our Lord Part 9

I gratefully recognise tender, overflowing love, in the faithful testimony of Christ regarding the punishment of the wicked: it is meant to compel sinners now to take refuge in his righteousness.[29]

[29] Arndt closes his exposition of this parable with a hymn, which I subjoin, not only for the sake of the doctrinal statement regarding the ground of a sinner's hope contained in the first verse, but also, and still more, for the union of simplicity and solemnity in the conception of future punishment contained in the second:--

Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit, Das ist mein Schmuck und Ehrenkleid; Damit will ich vor Gott besteh'n Und zu der Himmelsfreud' eingeh'n.

Hilf, Gott, da.s.s yeder kommen mag, Wo tausend Yahr' ist wie ein Tag: Vor dem Ort uns, O Gott, bewahr', Wo ein Tag ist wie tausend Yahr'!

Christ's blood and righteousness Shall be the marriage-dress, In which I'll stand At G.o.d's right hand Forgiven, And enter rest Among the blest In heaven.

Help, Lord, that we may come To thy saints' happy home, Where a thousand years As one day appears, Nor go, Where one day appears As a thousand years For woe.

VIII.

THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT.

"Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down, and wors.h.i.+pped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with compa.s.sion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow-servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have had compa.s.sion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespa.s.ses."--MATT. xviii. 23-35.

This parable, and that of the Good Samaritan, as has been justly suggested by Fred. Arndt, although historically separate, are logically related, like two branches that spring from one stem: together they express a Christian's duty to his brother in respect of injuries. When a brother inflicts an injury on you, forgive him; when a brother suffers an injury from another, help him. Forgiving love is taught in this parable; helpful love in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The immediate occasion of this parable is obviously Peter's question, "How oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?" but how Peter's question springs from the preceding context does not so readily appear. The Natural History of the process in that apostle's mind was probably something of this sort: The Master had instructed his disciples how they should act in the event of a brother doing them an injury: three distinct steps are indicated, rising one above another like courts of appeal; first, a private remonstrance; if that prove unavailing, then a remonstrance in the presence of one or two witnesses; and lastly, an appeal to the Church. These rules are very specific, and together const.i.tute a complete code on the branch of the subject to which they refer. In the matter of dealing with an offending brother with the view of bringing him to a better mind, you can no further go: if all these efforts fail, you must separate yourself from the offender, lest by continued intimacy you should seem indifferent to his sin. After this the Lord proceeds to give instruction on other subjects, and especially on united prayer. Peter, I suppose, had allowed his mind to be so completely occupied with the question of forgiving injuries, that he failed to follow his Teacher when the lesson glided into another theme.

I could suppose him to have been so busy with the thought of injuries received, and the difficulty of forgiving them, all the time that the Lord was discoursing on united prayer, that he scarcely observed his Master's words. All the more readily might this happen, if the impetuous fisherman had a quarrel with some of his neighbours on hand at the very time, and was exercised in conscience about the duty of bringing it to a close. At the first pause, the current which had been for a time flowing under ground, burst out on the surface. Taking up and again abruptly introducing the subject which had been for some time dismissed, he asked, as if unconscious that the theme had been changed during his reverie, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?" He wanted to have a number specified, beyond which he should not be bound to forgive repeated offences. In suggesting seven he seems to have had in his mind some Pharisaical formula: probably he thought the allowance was liberal, and expected to be approved for his magnanimity.

The formula, seventy times seven, while it serves to intimate that there is in the law no limit to the exercise of a forgiving spirit, seizes upon Peter's narrow proposal and makes a show of it openly. It is possible that he may have fallen into a mistake here through the misapprehension of a lesson on the same subject given by the Lord. He may have heard the Master teach, as at Luke xvii. 4,--"If he trespa.s.s against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." But evidently the number seven in that discourse has substantially the same meaning with seventy times seven here: seven times a day, even when literally understood, includes as much as the absolute seventy times seven. The doctrine in both cases is that it is not lawful to set any limit to the principle and the practice of forgiving injuries.

To repeat, expand, and enforce this lesson, the parable is introduced.

The kingdom of heaven is like a man king--a????p? as??e?. Expressly the divine is in this respect a.n.a.logous to the human. This ruler proposed to take account of his servants. It was not the final reckoning, but a periodical balance. A king is in this respect like a merchant: he takes account from time to time of his own affairs, and the intromissions of his servants. "Short counts make long friends."

These servants were not slaves, the property of their master; for afterwards it is a.s.sumed that he may sell them, not as an ordinary right, but as the special penalty incurred by an insolvent debtor. A king, in ancient times and oriental regions, entered into pecuniary transactions with his servants on a great scale. One man, who owes all to the personal favour of the sovereign, is the governor of a wealthy province. Bound by no written law, and living at a distance from the seat of government, that servant possesses always the power, and too frequently seizes the opportunity of oppressing the people on the one hand, and defrauding the royal treasury on the other. In many cases fortunate or powerful dependants farmed the taxes of a district, paying, or at least promising to pay, a certain sum yearly to the supreme government, and obtaining authority in return to levy contributions on the inhabitants for their own behoof, sometimes almost according to their own pleasure. Vast sums pa.s.sed through the hands of these great officers, and vast sums also remained in their hands that should have pa.s.sed through them.

The amount specified in the parable--ten thousand talents--is very great, of whatever species you may suppose the talent to be. The inquiry which has been prosecuted with a view to determine precisely the value of the talent in this case is difficult, and does not lead to any certain or important result. The question is interesting to Biblical scholars and antiquarians, but the solution of it is by no means necessary to the perception or the application of our Lord's meaning in the parable. The sense is completely obtained by taking the ten thousand talents as a vast but indefinite sum. A hundred talents of silver const.i.tuted the hire of a great army, 2 Chron. xxv. 6; and notwithstanding the lavish use of gold in the construction of the Tent-Temple in the wilderness, only twenty-nine talents were employed in all (Ex. x.x.xviii. 24). Besides the distinction between gold and silver, other variations occur in the value of a talent, depending upon time, place, and other circ.u.mstances. In any view of its worth, however, the disparity between the sum which this servant owed to the master, and the trifling amount which a fellow-servant owed to him, is as great as the imagination can effectually grasp; larger numbers would not sensibly intensify the impression.

"One was brought to him:" this servant would not have come to the king of his own accord; but he could not escape the interview and the reckoning. Aware of his enormous debt, he would fain have kept out of his master's way, but could not. G.o.d looks on the heart, and grasps the conscience, whether the man will or be unwilling.

The punishment is very severe, but in accordance with law and custom. No complaint is made against the sentence as if it were unjust in principle, or excessive in degree: the culprit appeals only to the mercy of the judge, and thus the righteousness of the verdict is tacitly acknowledged.

His promise to pay means nothing more than his desire to escape. He made the promise, not in the expectation of being able to perform it, but as the most likely means of escaping from punishment. His wors.h.i.+p was prompted by selfish fear, not by filial love. He did not know his master's heart: he thought he would gain his object most readily by leading the king to expect payment in full.

The king did not grant his servant's request: he did more; he forgave that servant all. The absolved debtor, as soon as he obtained his liberty, went out, and met a fellow-servant, who owed him an hundred pence. I suppose, if that fellow-servant had come to him while yet he was in his master's presence, he would not have dared to act the tyrant; but "out of sight, out of mind." He forgot his own prayer, and his lord's compa.s.sion. He grasped the fellow-servant by the throat and threw him into prison, until he should pay.[30] The amount is comparatively small, as is fit between servant and servant: the smallness of the debt brings the cruelty of the creditor out in high relief. His neighbour's pleading is expressed in the same terms as his own: the sound should have reminded him of his duty.

[30] Die am meisten geschont sind erweisen sich als die Schonungslosesten. Unter den Flugeln der Zartlichkeit wird die Grausamkeit ausgebrutet. (Those who get most mercy give least; and cruelty is hatched under the wings of tenderness).--_Draseke vom Reich Gottes_, ii. 141.

Fellow-servants observing the outrage were at once indignant and compa.s.sionate. They informed their master. The master displeased, p.r.o.nounced his condemnation in full. He who showed no mercy to his brother, received judgment without mercy for himself.

Before proceeding to the exposition of the parable in its spiritual meaning and application, I shall submit a remark of a general character, bearing on the parables at large, as well as on this in particular, which can be made more conveniently now than at the close.

The more I examine the structure and use of the parable in the teaching of the Lord, the more I am convinced that men make a great mistake when they betake themselves to a single feature of the natural scene as a defence of some specific and controverted dogma. The rule may be made absolute, or if there are exceptions they are few, that the parables are intended to expand, ill.u.s.trate, and enforce what is elsewhere clearly taught in the Scriptures, and not themselves to const.i.tute the grounds or evidences of the doctrines. But to whatever extent such a general rule may be applicable, it is most certain that those who run to a corner of a parable and take their stand on it, as impregnable evidence of some doctrine which they hold, are in all cases egregiously mistaken.

The controversies, for example, on the question of Church discipline, which were made to turn on the tares among the wheat, and the net that caught all kinds of fishes, are a mere waste of words. Those parables do not afford material for the decision of the question; they do not speak to the point.

In like manner, when theologians gravely refer to this parable in order to prove that after a man's sins have been all freely forgiven by G.o.d, he may yet fall from grace, and the guilt of all his sins be laid upon him at the last, they waste their own time, and trifle with the scripture. True, in this picture you see one whose great debt was all freely forgiven by the master brought back into judgment, and made answerable for the whole amount; but this incidental feature of a human procedure will not bear the weight which men would fain lay on it. This king, whose conduct is represented in the parable, is expressly called a _man_ king. No doubt his procedure in that case is employed to ill.u.s.trate some laws of the kingdom of heaven; but this is done by a.n.a.logy. a.n.a.logy is not ident.i.ty; the very essence of it lies in coincidence in some points, with diversity in others; if the two were identical, there were no longer an a.n.a.logy. Take two pictures of a person printed from the same negative photograph; you do not say they are like each other, they are the same. It is most dangerous to fasten on any point of the depicted human procedure, and found on it the affirmation that the divine must be precisely the same.

But besides this general consideration demanding caution, there is enough in the parable itself absolutely to refute the notion, that G.o.d may forgive a man all his sins, and thereafter lay these very sins all to his charge. It is indeed said in the earlier portion of the parable that the lord of that servant forgave him the debt; but it is as clearly indicated in the close that the debt was not forgiven. The man was cast into prison until he should pay it all; he was held bound for all the original debt, and was punished accordingly. If he was forgiven all that debt, not one penny of it can afterwards be placed to his account; and if it is afterwards placed to his account, the fact proves that it had not been forgiven.

The meaning of the phraseology must be determined by the necessary conditions of the fact. That word of the king, "I forgive thee," was not a discharge; if it had been, mere justice demanded that the debt discharged should not be charged again. The fact that it was all charged again, proves irrefragably that it was not discharged. The meaning in the light of the facts must be that these terms were offered by the king. His terms are free forgiveness, bestowed in sovereign love by the giver, and accepted in grateful love by the receiver. The servant, as is shown by his conduct, did not accept these terms, and so there was no transaction.

The key-notes of the parable are found at the beginning and the end. It was spoken in order to show that a man should set no limit to the forgiveness of injuries; and in order to show this, the parable goes into the deep things of G.o.d. It shows that the motive power which can produce in man an unlimited forgiveness of his brother, is G.o.d's mercy forgiving himself. At the close it lays down the law, that the act or habit of extending forgiveness to a brother, is a necessary effect of receiving forgiveness from G.o.d. If you get pardon from G.o.d, you will give it to your brother; if you withhold it from your brother, you thereby make it manifest that you have not gotten it from G.o.d.

As the king determined to take account of his servants during the currency of their work, and before the final winding up of their engagement, so the King Eternal in various ways and at various periods takes account of men, especially of those who know his word, and belong externally to his Church. One by one the servants are brought into their Lord's presence. The messenger that brings them may be a commercial crisis, a personal affliction, or a revival in the neighbourhood. The King has many messengers at his command, and he employs now one and now another to bring a professing Christian forward to his presence. When one who has contrived to keep out of the way, both of his own conscience and of G.o.d, is at length compelled to open his heart to the Omniscient, and fairly look into it himself, he discovers that his debt is unspeakably, inconceivably great. The sum of ten thousand talents in the picture is not an exaggeration; it does not indicate all the guilt which G.o.d detects in the conscience, and which the awakened conscience detects in itself. It is a dreadful moment when a sinner is brought face to face with G.o.d, and charged with his guilt; it is then that the law performs its terrible yet merciful work of conviction.

The first purpose that springs in the heart of the alarmed transgressor is to satisfy the demand: Give me time, and I will pay all. Whether he deliberately expects to be able to pay it may be doubted; but one thing is clear, he thinks that nothing else will appease the Master, and he makes the promise accordingly. This is, in point of fact, the first proposal of an alarmed conscience, "I will pay thee all." The natural history of the process is here.

G.o.d does not hold the convicted transgressor to his own rash promise.

Treating the criminal, not according to his desert, but according to his need, the Judge announces the terms of his own covenant--a pardon immediate, complete, and free.

"The same servant went out:" the moment of close dealing between G.o.d and the soul has pa.s.sed: the man who has trembled at the sight of his sin, and the prospect of judgment, has heard the Gospel, and gotten a respite. He goes out from that solemn and searching communion: he is released for the moment from the presence of the Judge, and from the sense of his sin. He glides again into the world. He has not been converted; he has only been frightened. He has not been forgiven; he has only been respited. He has not accepted G.o.d's grace, and therefore is not under law to G.o.d. The fright is past, and faith has not taken its place. The heart, after terror had driven the evil spirits out, does not open to the Lord, and therefore the evil spirits come back, and possess the empty room in sevenfold power. As soon as he comes in the way of temptation, the unsubdued carnality of his soul a.s.serts its life and power. A fellow-servant who has in small matters offended him, begs for pardon, as he had done from G.o.d, and begs in vain. He shows no mercy; the fact proves that he has not himself accepted the mercy that was offered by G.o.d. If the channel of his heart had really been inserted into the fountain-head of mercy for receiving, mercy would infallibly have flowed in the way of giving, wherever the need of a brother made an opening; if the vessel had been charged, it would certainly have discharged. No compa.s.sion flowed from that heart to refresh a fellow-creature in distress, because that heart had never truly opened to accept mercy from G.o.d; the reservoir was empty, and therefore the outbranching channels remained dry.[31]

[31] Draseke expresses the same conception in his own peculiarly terse and ant.i.thetic way:--So gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die Schulderla.s.sung die wir empfangen; so gewiss kein Gottesreich ohne die Schulderla.s.sung die wir leisten. (As certainly as there is no kingdom of G.o.d without the forgiveness which we receive, so certainly there is no kingdom of G.o.d without the forgiveness which we bestow.)--ii. 147.

Beyond all question, the design of the Lord in this parable is to enforce the duty of forgiving one another. In teaching this lesson, he touches matters greater than itself; but these occupy here only a secondary place. The drift of the parable is to take off the artificial limit laid by Peter, and by the Pharisees before him, on the disposition to forgive an offending brother, and to leave it limitless,--infinite, as far as the faculties and the time of men can reach.

I think the substance of the lesson may be expressed in these two words, the _practice_ and the _principle_ of forgiving injuries. These two are in effect the _ultimate act_ and the _secret power_ that produced it.

They are at once distinguished and united in that new commandment which Jesus gave to his disciples,--"That ye love one another, as I have loved you" (John xiii. 34). The first part of that commandment tells what they ought to do, and the second part tells what will make them do it.

It is when they place themselves under the power of Christ's forgiving love to themselves, that they are impelled in turn to forgive each his brother. The duty corresponds to the moving machinery, and the motive to the stream of living water which makes the machinery go.

1. The PRACTICE of forgiving injuries. The terms employed indicate clearly enough that the injuries which man suffers from his fellow are trifling in amount, especially in comparison of each man's guilt in the sight of G.o.d. There is a meaning in the vast and startling difference between ten thousand talents and a hundred pence. Even when the injury is the greatest that human beings are capable of inflicting on the one side, and enduring on the other; even when an enemy has killed the body and ceased then, because he has no more that he can do, it is still a measurable thing. Love in a finite being's heart may swell high over it, and exult in bestowing forgiveness on the murderer with the victim's dying breath. In the beginning of the Gospel a vivid example of that very thing stands recorded: "Lord," said Stephen with fainting heart and failing breath, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Great as the injury was, according to earthly measurements, the imperfect love that lived in a man's heart was more than a match for it, and the martyr with his dying breath forgave his murderers. But how rare are those injuries that rise to this extreme height! Most of the injuries with which we are called to deal are small, even in relation to human capacity: they are very often precisely of the size that our own temper makes them. Some people possess the art of esteeming great injuries small, and some the art of esteeming small injuries great. The first is like a traveller who throws a great many stones out of the burden which he carries, and so walks with ease along the road; the other is like a traveller who gathers a great many stones on the way-side, and adds them to his burden, and is therefore soon crushed by the load.

But more than this: the foolish man who made his burden heavier, retains the redoubled weight upon his back; while the wise man who made his burden lighter, contrives to throw off even the smaller weight that remained. The same spirit that induced the suffering Christian to diminish his estimate of the injury, induces him to forgive even that which remains, and thus he gets quit of it altogether; for to forgive it, is equivalent to throwing it away, in as far as it had power to burden or irritate you. On the other hand, the same spirit which in an irritable man magnified and multiplied the actual injury which he received, prevents him from forgiving the great and exaggerated ma.s.s; thus in effect he is crushed under the acc.u.mulated weight of all the real injury he has sustained, and all the imaginary injury he has added.

The compa.s.sionate, loving man, who counted the great injury small, was relieved even of that small remnant by forgiving it: the selfish, unloving man, who counted a small injury great, could not forgive his neighbour, and so was compelled to bear the heavy burden on his heart.

In this case that sublime rule of the Scripture takes effect: "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." [32]

[32] Fred. Arndt puts the lesson warmly and well; his appeal is in substance this:--"A man without compa.s.sion has all against him, G.o.d and the world; and meets as many adversaries in judgment as he had a.s.sociates in life. Woe to him who is arraigned in secret by the tears of the feeble and oppressed! The sighs which he has pressed out, the plaints which he has generated, cry up to heaven against him, and their echo clangs horrid from heaven down again upon the life of the loveless and revengeful.... And can we sleep in peace another hour, as long as there are men upon the earth with whom we live in unpeace and enmity? Cannot be written the happiness, the inward bliss of the peaceful and peace-making. Revenge, indeed, seems often sweet to men; but, oh, it is only sugared poison, only sweetened gall, and its after taste is bitter as h.e.l.l. Forgiving, enduring love alone is sweet and blissful; it enjoys peace and the consciousness of G.o.d's favour. By forgiving, it gives away and annihilates the injury. It treats the injurer as if he had not injured, and therefore feels no more the smart and sting that he had inflicted. Forgiveness is a s.h.i.+eld from which all the fiery darts of the wicked one harmless rebound. Forgiveness brings heaven to earth, and heaven's peace into the sinful heart. Forgiveness is the image of G.o.d, the forgiving Father, and an advancement of Christ's kingdom in the world. Your unalterable duty is clear: as surely as we are Christians, men who have experienced great compa.s.sion, who see in every man a brother in Christ, and are going forward to G.o.d's righteous judgment, so surely we must forgive. Of no commandment will the fulfilment be demanded of us with such stringency, no divine rule so strictly enforced as this, without the slightest exception to leave a loop-hole of hope to the transgressor. If we forgive not those who injure us, neither will our heavenly Father forgive us; and this would be the greatest calamity that could befall us in time and in eternity."--_Die vergebende Liebe; oder Gleichniss vom Schalksknecht_.

But we must carefully discriminate here, and ascertain what the Lord means by forgiving a brother. There should not be a little, narrow, grudging forgiveness; it should be large, loving, and free. But parallel with forgiveness there must be faithfulness. Faithfulness to the evil-doer himself, and to the community, comes in here to modify, not the nature, but the outward form of forgiving.

For example, there is no virtue in simply permitting a man to wrong you as often as he chooses,--forgiving him and doing nothing more. In the immediately preceding context the Lord has taught that the injured should tell the injurer his fault. Tell him faithfully in secret his sin: if he repent, thou hast gained thy brother: if he do not listen, tell it in the presence of two or three witnesses: if he is still obdurate, tell it to the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church withdraw from his company; let him and all the world know that you do not make light of his sin.

Again, in some kinds of injury, it becomes your duty for the sake of the community to aid in bringing the criminal to justice. To bring the discipline of the righteous law upon the criminal, is not revenge: to s.h.i.+eld him from its stroke is not love. So far from being necessarily inconsistent with forgiveness, such faithfulness in action may be a.s.sociated with a Christ-like love to the sinner, and a thorough forgiveness of his sin, as an injury inflicted upon you.

Here is a side on which there is much room for advancement: let us forget the things that lie behind us on this path, and reach forward to higher attainments. In as far as Christians unite faithfulness and tenderness in their treatment of evil-doers, they become "imitators of G.o.d, as dear children."