NOTES for Mat 18:23-35

After reading the first two verses, the temptation arises to make a quick calculation: seven times seventy is four hundred ninety; this brother of mine has been sinning against me every day for two years, so the credit has long been exhausted and everything is in order; I no longer have to forgive.

It is clear that the Lord uses seven times seventy as a symbol: not simply of fullness, which the number seven signifies, but of a kind of infinite fullness. To forgive up to seven times seventy means here continually, always. Jesus unfolds this thought in the parable that follows this episode: if we do not show mercy to others, we thereby refuse God's mercy toward us as well. The words "So also My heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart" remind us that every attempt of ours to reshape the Bible in our own way, so that it becomes convenient and undemanding, can end in nothing good. Do you want the number of forgivable sins to be limited? Then you want that limitation not only for your neighbor, but also for yourself.

At the heart of the Gospel is the message of love. At the heart of love is forgiveness. The parable told by the Lord places forgiveness at the very center of human relationships. It is impossible to want to be forgiven while being unwilling to forgive. Forgiveness is a two-way bond between people, in which both sides are responsible for maintaining the relationship. To forgive not when a person has atoned for the wrong, and not even when that person has asked for forgiveness, but earlier, in advance, leaving no unforgiveness in one’s heart—this is the essence of Jesus’ words in verse 22.

In a dispute with a brother, or indeed with any “neighbor,” a person is called to take the most difficult course: not to condescendingly forgive the one who is mistaken, not to overlook his foolishness, but quite the opposite—to admit the possibility that you yourself may be wrong! If you have failed to find common ground with this brother, ask yourself, “What if I am the one at fault?” and invite a third person who can reason objectively. But even then, even if the third person's objective judgment proves to be on your side, make a further effort: doubt your own victory and appeal for judgment to the final authority, the assembly of those who gather in Christ's name, where He Himself can judge between you and reveal His will to those willing to hear it. For it is so easy to believe that we are right, and so difficult to believe in the real possibility of God's judgment on earth...

The parable emphasizes the immeasurability of our mutual debts and God's forgiveness: ten thousand talents is a million times more than a hundred denarii, and there is simply no such numeral in the Greek language. It is as if, having received an apartment as a gift, we were to take a ruble away from some beggar, though even more grand comparisons could be invented. On the other hand, a debt of a hundred denarii is also a sum: the offense inflicted by those close to us can be very bitter.

We all owe one another something; all of us, in one way or another, hurt others and are hurt. But when God enters the tangled, complicated ball of our mutual grievances and old debts, He disrupts the whole moral and material balance of our human relationships. This happens when, in the face of misfortune, our disagreements and quarrels grow pale, or when on a deathbed life acquires such seriousness that grievances and the wounds we have inflicted on one another come to seem absurd.

Today's reading is devoted to one of the most important Gospel themes: the forgiveness of sins. Both the meaning of the parable and the meaning of the teaching come down to one thing: God forgives us our sins only if we ourselves are ready to forgive the sins of those who sin against us.

Sometimes this demand is taken as a call to forgive everything without distinction. But on closer reading of the text, it turns out that this is far from the case. After all, forgiving everything without distinction often means that the offended person simply does not notice the sin committed against him or pays no attention to it. Sometimes in Christian circles there are even calls to learn to ignore the sins of one's neighbor, including those directed against us. In practice, however, such ignoring usually sooner or later leads to an emotional explosion, in which all the accumulated grievances spill out so completely that no trace remains of the appearance of peace.

Jesus does not call us to ignore sin at all; on the contrary, He considers it necessary to call things by their names, openly and, if needed, in the presence of witnesses, and sometimes publicly, in the church assembly (vv. 15-17). Of course, such an explanation can lead not only to reconciliation but also to a break; yet in any case the relationship between people will be clarified, and only then will forgiveness and restoration of relationships become possible.

It is no accident that the teaching also mentions the assembly of the faithful (vv. 19-20), because it is impossible as long as relationships have not been restored. But they cannot be restored by failing to notice or by ignoring sin; this is possible only through repentance on one side and forgiveness of the sin on the other.

And this is not surprising, because what is at stake here is spiritual life, where relationships come to the fore, both between people and between individual people and God. To fail to notice sin, to pretend that nothing has happened between brothers, would mean building these relationships on a lie from the very start, and that would be a serious spiritual error.

But no less an error would be to absolutize sin, to treat it as something that from now on has made normal relationships between brothers forever impossible. Of course, in our still untransformed world the consequences of sin committed consciously and deliberately were indeed considered irreversible; but we no longer live in former times, we live in the age of the approaching and unfolding Kingdom, and now sin, even when committed consciously, cannot have irreversible consequences if the one who committed it sincerely repents of what he has done. And if we live in the Kingdom, we will be able to see the person behind his sin, and therefore we will be able to forgive him; if not, then a sin committed against us once will destroy our relationship with him forever.

But we can count on the forgiveness of our own sins only in the Kingdom. God does not require us to forgive our neighbors' sins because without this we will not be good enough for Him and for the Kingdom; rather, by failing to show readiness to forgive our neighbor everything and begin the relationship with him anew, we refuse the Kingdom, where everything begins with a clean slate, including for us ourselves.