The text is a parable. 34. Whew. times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost September 17, 2017 “The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” (Matthew 18:21-35) Forgiveness doesn’t count. What kind of loan procedures would have authorized an unrepayable loan of this kind? And if the king is a metaphor for God, what kind of God is this You are cordially invited to follow Matters of Interpretation, along with a few others. Agreed. I have never heard anyone talk about this story any other way than as an instruction to Christians as individuals. I love the Church. 23 "Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king seventy-seven times. Matthew 18:21-35. 24-25). Verse Commentary on Matthew 18:21-35. Matthew 18:21-22 - The Question. Answer: We find the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant only in Matthew 18:23-35. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. parable in its entirety with all the things that happen in it. Instead, the slave presents as one owing, a bankrupt. of collecting taxes from provinces within the kingdom. That’s why Matthew 18:21-35 includes the parable of the unforgiving servant. Refusal to forgive will make it impossible for us to In We don’t know. Instead, he “A person, a king” wants to “settle accounts with his slaves.” Or, perhaps his servants. What does Matthew chapter 18 mean? servant fell on his knees before him, 'Be patient with me,' he begged, Ten thousand The Uniform Series or “common text” for Sunday, July 1 is Matthew 18:21-35, “the parable of the unforgiving servant.” Here are some notes on the text: First Impressions, Background, and Context This is a very strange text, and the more we look into it, the … Then commenting on that prayer, Jesus said, Therefore attaches the following parable to the dialogue had received forgiveness but refused to grant it. ( Log Out /  Which is just to say that already this text is taking us to unexpected and peculiar places. demanded here is that of love, not only to one's neighbor, but also to of money that the servant owed the king. At a minimum, I doubt very much that this is a story about how much little, bullied, beaten-up, pushed around individuals, “little ones” (see vv1-11), like wives and children, are supposed to let their fellows get away with, without pressing charges, under the rubric of “forgiveness.” I suspect, rather, that this is a story about the kind of life-threatening hard-heartedness we “others” are supposed to be noticing, and caring about, and reporting to the Person in Charge, and by no means standing by or covering up or sticking up for, unless we want to become, ourselves, agents of the unforgiving-forgiven corporate person. See Copyright and User Information Notice. Moreover, it is a parable of the “kingdom of heaven” – so, in the same category as the parable of the weeds in the wheat, the mustard seed, the leaven in the flour. The conduct and words of the fellow servant in this verse debt. you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.". began to choke him. It’s not that Jesus is telling us the exact number of times we should forgive someone it’s His way of telling us that we need to keep on forgiving. and the end of the age (ch. Specifically, the longer story appears as an answer to Peter’s question in v21, “if my brother/another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? It was a maxim among the Jews never to forgive more than thrice: Peter enlarges this charity more than one half; and our Lord makes even his enlargement septuple, see Matthew 18:22. had happened. (Perhaps it is just a coincidence that in Hebrew, which Jesus would have known, the word for “throat,” the nephesh, is also the word for “soul,” what we are supposed to love God with all of.). Babyl. 26. unlimited. eternal torture? Jirair Tashjian. Upon the intervention of the fellow-slaves, the lord takes a revised set of actions with respect to the first slave, summoning, saying, and handing him over to torture – the same kind of torture experienced by the rich man in Luke 16:23. Choose a verse from 'Matthew 18' to begin your 'Verse-by-Verse' study of God's Word using the more than 100 commentaries available on StudyLight.org (Matthew 18:23–34) The king's slave had amassed an incredible debt (equivalent to about $10,000,000!) question was in response to the statement of Jesus in vv. A Yet precisely at this point we must stop and take a second look. 2018, Jirair So if we had been listening to this story along with Peter, we might already have a sense that this particular slave is in trou.ble. 'and I will pay back everything.' Maybe much of what has been handed down to us as evidence of that is “in retrospect” interpretation of things members of the early church remember Jesus having said (at best) or churchly invention (if we are being cynical). Which makes me wonder whether we don’t need to think of “slave #1” more as a personification of a community, or an institution, that adopts the position of person, king in relation to fellow-slave/servants. servant were gentiles since Jews did not worship human beings. ( Log Out /  Thank you for the post. The same prostration before the lender. One of them owed him 10,000 talents - a … times, then Lamech seventy-seven times." 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