This sermon was preached on Sunday, 13th September 2026.

Bible Reading: Matthew 18.21-35

One of the biggest lessons any parent must teach their children is how to resolve conflicts and fallings out with others. You teach your children to recognise their mistakes, say sorry, and move forward from the incident. Alongside that, you also teach your child to accept apologies, offer forgiveness, and let go of past wrongs and hurt done to them. 

Any parent will recognise that this is a tricky lesson to teach their children. Zara is only five weeks old, so we are not at the stage of teaching this lesson yet, but it’s one we’ll need to teach her in the coming years. It’s a tricky task, but we don’t do it alone. Jesus also set out to teach this lesson to his disciples and the crowds.

In our gospel reading today, Peter comes to Jesus to ask about forgiveness. He says, “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?” Now it’s helpful to have a bit of background here. At the time, Jewish Rabbis and teachers taught that a person only needed to forgive someone three times for the same offence. This goes back to interpretations of passages in the book of Amos. If a person committed the same sin against you for the fourth time, then you did not need to forgive them. So, when Peter asks if he should forgive someone seven times, that was his way of being extremely spiritual or generous. It’s like he is the teacher’s pet/try-hard in your class who asks for double homework because once wasn’t enough.

I imagine Peter thought he was going to be commended for suggesting that forgiveness be extended seven times. ‘Well done, Peter! You are super holy and twice as forgiving.’ But to Peter’s and the other disciples’ surprise, this is not what Jesus said. 

Jesus said he should forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven. There is variation across English translations of the number Jesus gives. This translation says seventy times seven (which is 490), whereas other translations say seventy times. Either way, we hear Jesus essentially say, stop counting how much to forgive people. Forgive them as you would go on forgiving them forever. Seventy times, 490 times, a thousand times more.  

I imagine Peter felt a bit floored by this, and his smug look was wiped right off his face. He was saying, “Look how good I am going to be,” and then Jesus said, “It’s not enough.” He says this not to embarrass Peter, but to help him understand that being a disciple of Jesus isn’t about hitting certain goals or quotas. It’s not about whether I pray a certain number of times, forgive several times, give a certain percentage of my income, or bring this many people to faith. Rather, it is about becoming like Jesus, being Christlike. But the truth is that none of us will ever be fully like Jesus on our own. We are human. We are imperfect and make mistakes. None of us can be perfectly like the perfect Jesus. But this isn’t something to beat ourselves up about; instead, it is a call to see how great and generous God’s love and grace are.  

Jesus goes on to explain this using the parable of the unforgiving servant. There once was a servant of the king who had racked up a huge debt. In other translations, it says that the servant owed the king 10,000 talents, and a talent was about 15 years’ wages for a labourer. So, to convert that to pounds in 2026: the median UK salary is just shy of £33,000. If I multiply that by 15 years for the equivalent of one talent, and then multiply it by ten thousand to get to the ten thousand talents, you will have a staggering £4.95 trillion. So essentially, this servant has racked up an impossible amount of debt that even Elon Musk couldn’t pay off. It’s a ridiculous amount of money that could never be repaid, and Jesus chose such a ridiculous number deliberately to make his point.

So the king called the servant before him and told him that it was time to repay the debt. Obviously, the servant had no way to pay the king, given the impossible debt he owed. ‘So the king ordered him to be sold as a slave, with his wife and children and all that he had, in order to pay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before the king. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay you everything!’ The king felt sorry for him, so he forgave him the debt and let him go.’^[1]

It’s incredible. This servant had no way to repay his impossible debt, and it was going to cost him his life and his freedom, as he and his family would be sold into slavery. His life was over. But when he pleaded with the king for patience, the king showed mercy and forgave him the debt. The servant didn’t ask the king to forgive the debt; he had no right to ask that such a huge debt be forgiven, but the king chose to wipe it away of his own volition. Only the king’s forgiveness and mercy wiped away this impossible debt.

Cut to the next scene, and the servant, after seeing the king, bumps into another servant who owes him money. This servant owes 100 denarii, which is the usual day’s wage for a labourer, about £150 in today’s money. The first servant grabs the servant and starts choking him, demanding that the debt be repaid. As with the first servant, the second servant pleads, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ The first servant refuses and has the servant thrown in jail until he can repay the debt.

The other servants were upset by this and informed the king of what had happened. When the king heard, he was outraged.

‘So he called the servant in. ‘You worthless slave!’ he said. ‘I forgave you the whole amount you owed me, just because you asked me to. You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you.’ The king was very angry, and he sent the servant to jail to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount.’^[2]

It’s crazy. The second servant owed only £150, which, compared to £4.95 trillion, is absolutely nothing. Even compared to our mortgages or car payments, £150 isn’t a huge amount. If the servant forgave the debt, it was nothing compared with the debt the king had forgiven him. Yet the servant had no mercy or patience for the second servant, for a debt that could very realistically have been repaid at some point.

The king couldn’t believe that after he had not counted the cost of forgiving the first servant’s debt, the servant then tried to count the cost of such a small debt owed to him. How could he have his impossible debt forgiven yet refuse to extend the same mercy or forgiveness to the second servant? It’s as if the grace and mercy of the king’s forgiveness meant nothing to him. Given the relief he must have felt from having his debt forgiven and his freedom granted, why could he not see the relief he could offer the second servant? He knew better than anyone the power of forgiveness, yet he did not let that power take hold in him to share it with others.

This is what Jesus was trying to convey to Peter and the disciples. How can we try to count the cost of forgiving others when we have been forgiven the debt of our sins, a debt none of us can ever repay? Peter asks whether we should forgive seven times, as if that were a generous act of forgiveness. But in reality, it is nothing compared with the forgiveness we have received for our sins.

Romans 6.23 famously says that the wages of sin are death. We have sinned and are indebted to God. Like the first servant, we owe our lives to God as the cost of our sin. If we were sinless, we would be perfect, but we know that none of us are perfect. It’s as if the debt we owe God were £4.95 trillion. It’s an impossible debt that we could never repay, that no one could pay. Yet even with this impossible debt to God, God forgave our debt by Jesus dying in our place on the cross. Jesus has paid the price for our sin; he has counted the cost. He has forgiven our impossible debt. So if we have this new life and freedom from our debt, a new freedom that has transformed our lives in the best possible way, why would we not want to extend that to others? 

As I said at the start, our call as disciples of Jesus is to be like him, to be Christlike. How can we forgive in a Christlike way if we place limits on forgiveness? Jesus didn’t place limits on our forgiveness when he gave his life, his everything, for us on the cross. If we place limits on forgiveness, it would not be Christlike forgiveness, because Jesus’ forgiveness has no limits. His love is perfect and unlimited, and his perfect love forgives all sins.  

You can’t put a limit on the love of God. It’s like trying to contain God in a box, but God can’t be compartmentalised like this. He is the unlimited God, the beginning and the end. He cannot be contained. In the same way, God’s forgiveness cannot be contained, and it has no limits. Perfect forgiveness forgives in every situation and keeps on forgiving. Our call as Jesus’ disciples is to forgive in this way. Freely we receive God’s forgiveness, and freely we give forgiveness to others.

If you have been blessed in such a rich way, wouldn’t you want to share it with others? If you were given £4.95 trillion, wouldn’t you want to share it with others? Surely the same applies to God’s love and forgiveness. If we have been forgiven the impossible debt by God’s love, wouldn’t you want to share this impossibly abundant love with others? When we are given a birthday cake, we share it with others because it is too much to eat on our own. So why wouldn’t we do the same with the abundant love and forgiveness that is more than we are worth, and share it with others? Then we are being Christlike disciples of Jesus.  

In a moment of quiet now, or perhaps later this week, I want you to examine your life and ask yourself whether there are people you are not forgiving. I want to gently ask, why are you not forgiving them? 

I’m not going to pretend that forgiving those who have wronged us is easy. As we have mentioned, forgiveness is costly. But when we consider the cost of the forgiveness we have received from Jesus, why would we not want to share it with others? In fact, Jesus says at the end of this passage that if we don’t forgive others, God will treat us as the king treated the first slave. For we are forgiven by the grace of God, and if we are to truly live in the grace we have received from God, we will share this grace with others as an overflow of the countless grace – the £4.95 trillion-like grace – we have received from God. You wouldn’t keep £4.95 trillion to yourself, so why would we do the same with God’s love and grace towards us? 

We have freely received so much through God’s loving grace and forgiveness; so let us freely give love and forgiveness from the abundance of what we have received.

Amen.

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^[1] Matthew 18:25-27 [GNB]

^[2] Matthew 18.32-34 [GNB].