Matthew 18:23-34 "Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt.
No doubt in comparison to the servant’s debt forgiven him (10,000 talents), the 100 denarii debt he refuses to forgive is small. And the disparency between the two is of course at the heart of the parable. The comparison urges all people forgiven by God to forgive freely recognizing the debts they forgive will never come close to what they have been forgiven.
But I think one detail of this parable is often skipped over too quickly, the size of the smaller debt. Without divining an exact exchange rate into our currency, we can understand generally the size of this debt. A denarius was what a soldier made for a day’s work. So this debt was 100 days worth of labor. For brevity, consider the debt about 1/3 of your earnings each year. If someone owed you this, wouldn’t you be concerned about getting it back?
The sins in our lives that are hard to forgive are not small things. And if we act as if 100 denarius is just a tiny amount to start with, we can miss the point of the parable. We can think we are ultimately we are simply to forgive small sins.
The KJV mistranslates 100 denarii 100 pence (which is plural for pennies). If all we had to do was forgive dollar-sized sins in life we would not need a parable to persuade us. We could probably hunker up the will to do it. But when the size is big, like 1/3 of a year salary big, life-changing big, that is when it becomes very hard. It is in those times that we need the comparison offered us in the parable. It is then that we need to be reminded that even big debts, big sins, are forgivable when we realize the sheer mass of sin forgiven us in Christ.
A 100 Denarii debt is not a small debt. It is only made small enough to forgive when it is compared to what we have been forgiven in Christ Jesus.
