Forgiveness Unlimited Part One - Forgiven by God

Life Unlimited

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Sept 28, 2025

Forgiveness Unlimited Part One: Forgiven by God

If you have your bible turn with me to Matt. 18. We’ve been in a series called Life Unlimited and this morning I want to talk to you about forgiveness unlimited. Jesus has just prescribed what we call the Matt 18 process – if your brother sins against you go them alone. If your brother listens you have gained your brother and nothing more needs to be done, but if they don’t listen to you Jesus said bring one or two witnesses to repeat how they have sinned against you and if they still don’t listen bring the matter before the church. If they won’t listen then, Jesus says treat them like an unbeliever because that’s how they’re acting. The hope throughout the process is that they repent and make things right with the person they’ve sinned against. That stirs up a question in Peter: at what point can I stop forgiving the brother who is sinning against me?

²¹ Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.Matt. 18:21-22

Some versions say seventy seven some say seventy times seven, but it really doesn’t matter because math isn’t the point. Unlimited forgiveness is the point. Jesus is actually reversing a curse that Lamech speaks over anyone who hurts him. The story is found in Gen. 4 and begins with Cain and Abel. After Cain kills his brother Abel God curses Cain and drives him out, but God also says that anyone who takes vengeance on Cain will be cursed seven times.

Six generations later Lamech is born and he tells his two wives that he killed a young man who hurt him and he declares this curse over anyone who might take vengeance on Lamech:

If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.” Gen 4:24

Lamech wants the sevenfold vengeance over Cain to increase to seventy seven time over anyone who hurts him. Jesus turns that statement around and makes it not about revenge but about forgiveness.

The Kingdom of God isn’t built on vengeance, it’s built on forgiveness. And not a limited offer of forgiveness but a virtually unlimited offer of forgiveness. That is what God offers us in Jesus Christ. Unlimited forgiveness of our sins. To help us understand the magnitude of God’s unlimited forgiveness and the importance of our giving that same forgiveness to those who hurt us, Jesus tells a parable.

²³ “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. ²⁵ And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. ²⁶ So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ ²⁷ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. Matt. 18:23-27

There is of course more to this parable and we’ll get to that next week but there is so much in these four verses that I felt we needed to talk about this parable in two parts: what it means to be forgiven by

God and how that leads us to forgive others.

This is a Kingdom parable: the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. The day is coming when God will settle all accounts. And one servant comes before him who owes the king a ridiculously high debt.

1. The crazy high debt we owe God

The servant owes the king ten thousand talents. Ten thousand doesn’t really sound like that much to us. A lot of us owe more than ten thousand dollars on an auto loan and way more than that on a home mortgage. Ten thousand is high but seems doable.

But we’re thinking dollars not talents. In the New Testament, a talent was the largest unit of currency they had and one talent was worth about 20 years salary for the average workman. That means it would take this man 200,000 years to pay back this loan – if he devoted his entire salary to repaying the loan. Banks offer 15 or 30 year mortgages, but I doubt they’d go for a 200,000 year mortgage. In modern day currency the king loaned this servant about 6 billion dollars – and amazingly he has nothing to show for it! It’s a crazy high debt and doesn’t make any sense how a servant could come to owe the king so much.

Until we see the spiritual point Jesus is making.

When WWI began, Germany suspended the gold standard to help pay for the ongoing costs of the war, but before long their currency experienced runaway hyperinflation. Before WWI a mark was valued at 4 marks per dollar, in December 1918 a mark was valued at 8 marks per dollar. In 1919 it was 47 marks per dollar and by July 1922 it took 493 marks to make a dollar. By Oct. 1922 it was 3000 marks per dollar and just two months later it took 7000 marks. 7000 marks to make one dollar! Can you imagine if the dollar menu at McDonalds became the 7000 dollar menu?

But hyperinflation was only just beginning. By April of 1923 when you drive up to the dollar menu that became the $7000 menu is now the $24000 menu. One lousy burger for $24,000! Then hyperinflation really began to spiral out of control. In July the mark fell from 24K to 353,000 marks per dollar. A month later it took 4 million marks to get a lousy cheeseburger, but a month later you’d be dreaming of the good old days when you could buy a small fry for only 4 million marks. Now those fries cost 98 million marks. Jumping ahead just a few months it took 2 trillion marks to equal one dollar.

Jesus’ parable reveals the hyperinflation of our debt to God. Like the pre-war German mark value of 4 marks per dollar, we might see ourselves as a “4 sins per week” kind of person. If we’re really humble we might admit to being a 4 sins per day person. Just to do a little math if we averaged 4 sins per day and lived to 70 years old, we’d be answering to God for 102,200 sins. But Jesus’ parable tells us we aren’t 4 sins per week or per day people. Think about the servant in this parable. He’s not an old man, he has a wife and children. If we put his age at 35 years old,

If we estimate him to be 35 years old, he has accumulated 171 million dollars of debt per year, or over 3

million dollars a week or, to really be nerdy, 470K per day. Jesus is telling us we owe far, far more to God than we know. We aren’t “4 sins per day” people, we’re more like 470K sins per day people. Sins of commission, sins of omission. Sins we’re aware of and sins we’re not aware of but are sins no less.

We can never repay this debt. When we stand and give account to God, there will be no loan restructuring or repayment plan. We owe more to God than we can possibly imagine or repay. The servant begged for more time but he was just buying time because he could never repay the loan. But the king has mercy on him and offers him the one thing that can completely clear his debt. Forgiveness.

2. Forgiveness unlimited is only available through Jesus

Forgiveness is what Jesus came to offer this broken world. Forgiveness doesn’t deny the debt it absorbs the debt. Jesus came to pay the debt we owe by absorbing on the cross all the guilt and shame, all the pain and rebellion and injustice, all the disobedience and God-dishonoring acts that we have committed.

Forgiveness is the only thing that can set us free from guilt and shame and clean the slate so that we owe nothing to God – and at the same time we owe everything to God! The kingdom of heaven is like that king who had such extravagant mercy on his servant and forgave him the debt. Jesus is that king! Jesus had such mercy on us when he forgave us.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. Eph. 1:7-8

So Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. Heb 9:28

He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Col. 2:14

Jesus took our debt statement and “took it away by nailing it to the cross.” It is finished means paid in full. Only through the gospel of Jesus Christ can we find forgiveness of our sins and freedom from all guilt and shame.

Time can’t remove our sin. Someone once told me that in his family people rarely if ever asked for forgiveness of one another. I asked what they did when they said or did hurtful things and their answer was they just moved on and hoped time would make things better. Time may make the debt seem smaller and make us feel better but time has no power to remove our sin.

Recategorizing sin as “not sin” doesn’t work either. Sin is sin because God says it is – doesn’t matter whether we agree or not. I think we’re seeing a lot of depression and mental health issues because young people aren’t being given moral clarity about right and wrong. The only thing that covering our sin over a long period of time does is sear our conscience. The sin doesn’t become right; we become ok with wrong. Our conscience is a gift from God – we should worry when it stops talking to us!

Counterfeit gospels try to downplay our sin, maybe deny that there is such a thing as sin, or that God will one day call us to give account. The Bible calls this walking in darkness. Jesus is the light who came into the world but the Bible says people hated the light because their deeds were evil. The day of judgment is a day of pure light with no place to run or hide.

Jesus says walk in the light now. Begin by being honest about who we are and what we’ve done. Begin by confessing that we are sinners.

⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. ⁸ If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:7-10

This calls us to bring our sin into the light, not try to hide it with darkness. The light is painful at first. The Pharisees hated Jesus’ words because he exposed them as whitewashed tombs. When the light exposes our own sin it’s painful. Learn to love the light! Learn to love honesty!

Biblical truth can be painful and hurt, but it brings freedom and joy. Walk in the light! Forgiveness unlimited isn’t given to everyone – only to those who walk in the light and confess their sins to God honestly. But to all those who do that, God forgives us our sins and washes us clean of all our guilt.

Next week we’ll talk about the second half of this powerful parable: forgiven people are to forgive people. But as we stand and sing a closing song, if there’s a sin that you’re hiding in the darkness of excuses or justifications or it’s not really sin, I encourage you to bring it into the light of God’s love and forgiveness. Be honest with God.

God’s solution to our sin isn’t to cover it up with secrecy, it’s to cover it with mercy. With Jesus’ blood. Bring it to him silently now.

⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin... ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 

Closing song: How Marvelous, How Wonderful