When the unforgiving servant in the Gospel of Matthew was brought back before his master, his master told him,

You evil bond-servant! All that debt I forgave you because you asked me. Should you not also have had mercy upon your fellow bond-servant, even as I had mercy upon you?
— Matthew 18:32-33

The master was angry because when the servant had begged him for mercy, he wiped away all his massive debt; yet, that same servant refused to forgive a fellow-servant who owed him a debt. And this was true even though what that other servant owed him was minuscule in comparison to the debt he had been forgiven.

And thus, he was punished by his master:

His master was angry and delivered him to the tormentors until he should repay all that was owed.
— Matthew 18:34

So, the question we need to ask here is, Just what did this unforgiving servant still owe his master? It is important to understand, it was not the original debt; that had been forgiven and could not be reclaimed.

Rather, the master’s word to the servant shows us very clearly what he now owed, namely, he needed to “have mercy” upon others, just as he had been shown mercy himself. It was this lack of mercy that made his master angry, and for which he was now punished.

And that is indeed the lesson the Lord draws for His disciples from this story:

So will My heavenly Father do to you also if you do not forgive your brother, each of you, from your hearts.
— Matthew 18:34

As the believers in Christ, our entire debt of sin has surely been forgiven, and forgiven forever; praise the Lord for that! Now, however, we “owe” it to the Lord, so to speak, to deal with others according to the same grace He has shown to us.

The Lord says this very thing, explicitly, earlier in this same Gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount:

For if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.
— Matthew 6:14-15

This does not mean that, if we refuse to forgive others, we will suffer eternal damnation. Rather, it shows the Lord will deal with us, like the master dealt with the unforgiving servant, until we “pay what is owed” by developing a heart of forgiveness towards our fellow believers.

And that dealing of the Lord with us in this regard is what we will consider in the next Note in this series.

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—  2 July 2025 —