Unpayable debt
This week's verses are Matthew 18:23-35:
These verses don't make a lot of sense on a gut level, until you look at the amounts of time represented by the debts in question. We don't have an intuitive sense of what a "talent's worth" of metal is, or what the silver coin (the denarius) represented. Normally when we think of silver coins, if we think of them at all, we think of silver dollars which are about $16 apiece when this was written. Owing someone some vague amount of money that is more than one hundred silver coins doesn't really give us much to work with on an emotional level. We might as well be talking about Zimbabwe dollars or Monopoly money for how most people could relate.
A denarius was a day's wages, roughly, in Roman times. So if you owed someone one hundred denarii, you would owe them something like three months of wages. Picture three full pay checks in your head, and someone owing you that much. Amusingly, that's about how much those of us with US citizenship or green cards owe the US government every year. A quarter of your annual salary, roughly.
A talent was a much bigger amount of money. It was so big they couldn't even make a coin big enough to hold it. A talent was somewhere between 15-20 years of wages. If you're in your mid thirties, picture every single pay check you have ever earned, and that probably adds up to one talent. Ten thousand talents would be about three thousand lifetimes of labor. I read somewhere that the average American earns (and spends) about a million dollars over the course of their lifetime. In that case, you'd be talking about a debt of around three billion dollars. This is much less than the US's national debt, so next time the IRS comes around for their annual April shakedown, you can picture what it must have been like to be the evil slave's victim in this parable.
So, the slave who is in deep debt owes around three billion dollars to his master, or around three thousand lifetimes of labor. I have no idea what he might have done to owe that much money, but his master decides to cut his losses and get back what he can. He rounds up the guy's family and plans to sell all of them to pay down what he can. The slave begs for mercy and tells the master to be patient and he'll pay the whole thing back!
I don't know about you, but if someone owed me three billion dollars, with the earning potential of a slave, and told me to wait and they'd pay me back, I'd be furious with them! Either they're the dumbest person in the world, or they think that I am! If this guy lived around the time of Christ, and he started working from that day until now to pay off his debt, he'd still have around 9860 talents left to pay. And that's assuming the master didn't start charging interest at some point. The slave was either terrible at math or he was asking for the kind of patience that could wait about twice as long as there have been humans living outside of Africa.
Luckily this guy has a merciful master who feels sorry for him and forgives his debt. If someone forgave me a debt that size, I'd be overjoyed. Imagine having your mortgage payments or student debt cancelled, but times many thousands. The slave is forgiven more money than he or his family will ever be able to repay. If I ran into someone who owed me money after that much debt was forgiven me, I would probably forgive him just because it's my lucky day.
But the slave had other plans. He refuses to forgive the debt, even though this debt is easily repayable by comparison to the one he was just released from. His debt to his master was more than he understood, but his fellow slave's debt was small enough for him to notice it. He lunges to collect on this debt, even attacking him and taking him to court. It's terrible hypocrisy, and his fellow slaves are horrified. They turn him in, and the master is outraged. He revokes the debt forgiveness and turns him over to what might as well be eternal torment, as it was meant to last until the debt was repaid.
Jesus tells this parable to give us an understanding of sin and what it is in the eternal sense. When we sin, it creates a rift between us and God bigger than we can fix. God is so holy that any sin whatsoever creates a danger for us. You can't just do enough good things that they pay for the bad things. When we sin, we might as well owe God three billion dollars. We promise to do good things and be better people, and to get our act together, but we are just like the guy who asks the master to be patient until he pays it all off. We can never pay it off on our own. It's only God's forgiveness of our unpayable debt that allows us to avoid payment.
The part about the slave's family being sold off along with his possessions is symbolic too. Our sin doesn't just affect us. It affects the world around us. Other people's lives can be ruined because of our actions, even the people we care about the most. Our actions have consequences. We're lucky nowadays that we have enough social safety nets that debt slavery isn't really a thing anymore, but imagine your credit card company being able to send thugs over to your house and carry off your things and sell your kids to a sneaker factory and your spouse to the Russian mafia. Our sin can be a bit like that, even affecting the next generations.
So if our unimaginably large debt is forgiven, why is it so difficult for us to forgive others? It goes back to scale. We have a difficult time understanding our giant eternal debts, but our earthly debts are small enough that we can understand them. Eternity is so big that it seems almost imaginary, but three months is small enough to be understood while still big enough to hurt. We've never seen an eternal debt get collected, but we've seen plenty of "three month debts" get collected. Just watch court TV.
If we don't forgive others, it means we don't understand what we have been forgiven. It makes us hypocrites to press our case while asking for the one against us to be thrown out. If we ask God to be patient with us, it just shows how little we understand the problem. When someone sins against you, and asks you to be patient with them, remind yourself how tiny that debt is in comparison to the one you were forgiven.
“For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him. Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made. Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt. After he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him one hundred silver coins. So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ Then his fellow slave threw himself down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ But he refused. Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place. Then his lord called the first slave and said to him, ‘Evil slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?’ And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed. So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.”
These verses don't make a lot of sense on a gut level, until you look at the amounts of time represented by the debts in question. We don't have an intuitive sense of what a "talent's worth" of metal is, or what the silver coin (the denarius) represented. Normally when we think of silver coins, if we think of them at all, we think of silver dollars which are about $16 apiece when this was written. Owing someone some vague amount of money that is more than one hundred silver coins doesn't really give us much to work with on an emotional level. We might as well be talking about Zimbabwe dollars or Monopoly money for how most people could relate.
A denarius was a day's wages, roughly, in Roman times. So if you owed someone one hundred denarii, you would owe them something like three months of wages. Picture three full pay checks in your head, and someone owing you that much. Amusingly, that's about how much those of us with US citizenship or green cards owe the US government every year. A quarter of your annual salary, roughly.
A talent was a much bigger amount of money. It was so big they couldn't even make a coin big enough to hold it. A talent was somewhere between 15-20 years of wages. If you're in your mid thirties, picture every single pay check you have ever earned, and that probably adds up to one talent. Ten thousand talents would be about three thousand lifetimes of labor. I read somewhere that the average American earns (and spends) about a million dollars over the course of their lifetime. In that case, you'd be talking about a debt of around three billion dollars. This is much less than the US's national debt, so next time the IRS comes around for their annual April shakedown, you can picture what it must have been like to be the evil slave's victim in this parable.
So, the slave who is in deep debt owes around three billion dollars to his master, or around three thousand lifetimes of labor. I have no idea what he might have done to owe that much money, but his master decides to cut his losses and get back what he can. He rounds up the guy's family and plans to sell all of them to pay down what he can. The slave begs for mercy and tells the master to be patient and he'll pay the whole thing back!
I don't know about you, but if someone owed me three billion dollars, with the earning potential of a slave, and told me to wait and they'd pay me back, I'd be furious with them! Either they're the dumbest person in the world, or they think that I am! If this guy lived around the time of Christ, and he started working from that day until now to pay off his debt, he'd still have around 9860 talents left to pay. And that's assuming the master didn't start charging interest at some point. The slave was either terrible at math or he was asking for the kind of patience that could wait about twice as long as there have been humans living outside of Africa.
Luckily this guy has a merciful master who feels sorry for him and forgives his debt. If someone forgave me a debt that size, I'd be overjoyed. Imagine having your mortgage payments or student debt cancelled, but times many thousands. The slave is forgiven more money than he or his family will ever be able to repay. If I ran into someone who owed me money after that much debt was forgiven me, I would probably forgive him just because it's my lucky day.
But the slave had other plans. He refuses to forgive the debt, even though this debt is easily repayable by comparison to the one he was just released from. His debt to his master was more than he understood, but his fellow slave's debt was small enough for him to notice it. He lunges to collect on this debt, even attacking him and taking him to court. It's terrible hypocrisy, and his fellow slaves are horrified. They turn him in, and the master is outraged. He revokes the debt forgiveness and turns him over to what might as well be eternal torment, as it was meant to last until the debt was repaid.
Jesus tells this parable to give us an understanding of sin and what it is in the eternal sense. When we sin, it creates a rift between us and God bigger than we can fix. God is so holy that any sin whatsoever creates a danger for us. You can't just do enough good things that they pay for the bad things. When we sin, we might as well owe God three billion dollars. We promise to do good things and be better people, and to get our act together, but we are just like the guy who asks the master to be patient until he pays it all off. We can never pay it off on our own. It's only God's forgiveness of our unpayable debt that allows us to avoid payment.
The part about the slave's family being sold off along with his possessions is symbolic too. Our sin doesn't just affect us. It affects the world around us. Other people's lives can be ruined because of our actions, even the people we care about the most. Our actions have consequences. We're lucky nowadays that we have enough social safety nets that debt slavery isn't really a thing anymore, but imagine your credit card company being able to send thugs over to your house and carry off your things and sell your kids to a sneaker factory and your spouse to the Russian mafia. Our sin can be a bit like that, even affecting the next generations.
So if our unimaginably large debt is forgiven, why is it so difficult for us to forgive others? It goes back to scale. We have a difficult time understanding our giant eternal debts, but our earthly debts are small enough that we can understand them. Eternity is so big that it seems almost imaginary, but three months is small enough to be understood while still big enough to hurt. We've never seen an eternal debt get collected, but we've seen plenty of "three month debts" get collected. Just watch court TV.
If we don't forgive others, it means we don't understand what we have been forgiven. It makes us hypocrites to press our case while asking for the one against us to be thrown out. If we ask God to be patient with us, it just shows how little we understand the problem. When someone sins against you, and asks you to be patient with them, remind yourself how tiny that debt is in comparison to the one you were forgiven.
Comments
Post a Comment