Matthew 18:23-35
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant's master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
This is a parable that Jesus tells to show what the Kingdom of Heaven is like and in particular how forgiveness operates in the new paradigm. Jesus seems to demonstrate the huge discrepancy between the debt we owe God compared to the debt others owe us and the imperative of forgiveness in the new Kingdom
Whilst the issue is not really the exact difference in the size of the two debts, I thought that it might be interesting to try to put some figures on it. So here are my workings:
Price per ounce, not the value in first century Israel, but I have taken current prices that can be found online
- Ounce of gold £954
- Ounce of silver £12.19
I have estimated that the bag contains 100 coins, bit of a guess but seems reasonable. I then checked the rough weight of coins and came up with the following:
- Gold coins weigh about 1.2 ounces
- Silver coins weigh about 0.9 of an ounce
Now for the clever bit, the maths, I am so glad I learned my times tables
- Gold - 10,000 bags x 100 coins x 1.2 ounce x £954 = debt of £1,145,000,000
- Silver - 100 coins x 0.9 ounce x £12.19 = debt of £1,097
- The gold debt is 1,044,000 times more than the silver debt
If you are still with me and haven't given up to watch paint dry. Our debt to God can be seen as over a billion pounds compared to the debts of others to us of a thousand pounds, I am indebted to God by a million times more, actually 1.044 million times, than others are indebted to us. How can I fail to forgive others when I recognise the enormous debt that God has forgiven me
The Gospel of Matthew sums it up:
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14,15
