We should be like the Master Shepherd, eager to reclaim someone who has been led astray by whatever means. Jesus continues in that vein a little longer. Keep in mind that all His comments are under the Covenant of Moses. He is concerned in this context with the lost sheep of Israel.
If your covenant brother steps outside the covenant boundaries against you, try to work it out in private. The point is not that you are offended, but that he has offended God and risked harming shalom. You are the agent of redemption; you want him back in the flock. If you succeed in helping him recover, it's a good thing that you have rescued your brother.
If he resists your appeal, get a reliable covenant brother or two to go with you. He's on dangerous ground and you need support to witness against him if he refuses to come back inside the covenant boundaries. Should that be the case, bring the matter before your local synagogue. If he will not yield to that body, officially declare him outside the Covenant and a predator to the flock.
When you follow this procedure, the Lord will honor your decisions and remove him from the community shalom. He loses his divine covering. It is this approach, where two or three come together in the Lord's Presence seeking His covenant shalom, that explains how our prayers for anything work. It's all about the Covenant; our Father inhabits the Covenant.
This didn't sound like the stuff Peter had heard from the Pharisees, so He asked Jesus about one of their teachings. They had maintained for a long time that you should forgive your covenant brother up to three times, citing Amos 1 where God says He would forgive Israel's enemies three times. Actually, God said He would add an extra count of four just to make sure they knew He was patient. As usual, the Scribes and Pharisees were nit-picking without understanding the context. They reasoned that after three failures, you could ostracize the sinner, even take him to court over it.
Peter thought perhaps he should rise above that by suggesting seven times. How many times do we chase down the lost sheep who keeps wandering off? Jesus said that, if one is going to count, then seventy times seven is a better number. He then launched into a parable to indicate that this is asking the wrong question.
Consider a king who would audit those who managed his property. Most kings didn't have time to worry much about their personal property, what with politics and wars and such. So he would farm it out to various nobles, whomever he considered sufficiently capable, allowing them to keep a cut. But obviously this king was sensing the pinch of mismanagement and wanted to identify the sources of loss. Among his noble stewards was one who had mismanaged things so badly that he was on the hook for a catastrophic amount. Calculations vary but it's in the range of 10,000,000 days' wages.
It's quite doubtful the king in question could recover that massive amount, but there wasn't much he could do except order the man sold into slavery, with his family, and all his possessions liquidated. Well, the man begged for mercy and got it. Not only did he escape his just penalty, but he was forgiven the debt entirely. There's no doubt he lost his favored position, but at least he was free to get on with his life as just another noble in the king's domain.
This man promptly went out and hunted down another, but lower ranking noble, who owed him a mere 100 days' wages. This debtor was down on his luck and didn't have it on hand. But the recently forgiven noble was totally without mercy, and had his debtor arrested on the spot. The debtor was then forced to work at slave labor until he worked off that amount, plus a premium for room, board and management fees.
Having seen all of this, some of the other nobles went back and reported to the king how the forgiven man was unforgiving. The king called him back in and castigated him. Since the debt could not be reinstated, the king fined the man directly in the same amount for a criminal offense. The man was unable to pay the fine. Instead of a debtor's prison, scholars believe he was forced to serve as a whipping boy of sorts, a living punching bag for soldiers in training. (He would wear armor against blunted weapons, but it was extremely taxing physically.)
The point here is that we owe God more than we could ever repay in terms of sin. We all deserve a short miserable life and a lingering painful death. Everything you are and everything you have is already forfeited to the Father. He is merciful and established a covenant by which He forgives and grants us shalom. He welcomes us into His family and handles us like valuable sheep that are prone to wander off. Don't bother with keeping an account for those who disappoint you in life. With all that God has absorbed on your behalf, you can afford to go easy on your covenant brothers. As long as they seek your forgiveness, they should have it.
Edit: I left off some zeros in the estimate of what the steward owed the king.
If your covenant brother steps outside the covenant boundaries against you, try to work it out in private. The point is not that you are offended, but that he has offended God and risked harming shalom. You are the agent of redemption; you want him back in the flock. If you succeed in helping him recover, it's a good thing that you have rescued your brother.
If he resists your appeal, get a reliable covenant brother or two to go with you. He's on dangerous ground and you need support to witness against him if he refuses to come back inside the covenant boundaries. Should that be the case, bring the matter before your local synagogue. If he will not yield to that body, officially declare him outside the Covenant and a predator to the flock.
When you follow this procedure, the Lord will honor your decisions and remove him from the community shalom. He loses his divine covering. It is this approach, where two or three come together in the Lord's Presence seeking His covenant shalom, that explains how our prayers for anything work. It's all about the Covenant; our Father inhabits the Covenant.
This didn't sound like the stuff Peter had heard from the Pharisees, so He asked Jesus about one of their teachings. They had maintained for a long time that you should forgive your covenant brother up to three times, citing Amos 1 where God says He would forgive Israel's enemies three times. Actually, God said He would add an extra count of four just to make sure they knew He was patient. As usual, the Scribes and Pharisees were nit-picking without understanding the context. They reasoned that after three failures, you could ostracize the sinner, even take him to court over it.
Peter thought perhaps he should rise above that by suggesting seven times. How many times do we chase down the lost sheep who keeps wandering off? Jesus said that, if one is going to count, then seventy times seven is a better number. He then launched into a parable to indicate that this is asking the wrong question.
Consider a king who would audit those who managed his property. Most kings didn't have time to worry much about their personal property, what with politics and wars and such. So he would farm it out to various nobles, whomever he considered sufficiently capable, allowing them to keep a cut. But obviously this king was sensing the pinch of mismanagement and wanted to identify the sources of loss. Among his noble stewards was one who had mismanaged things so badly that he was on the hook for a catastrophic amount. Calculations vary but it's in the range of 10,000,000 days' wages.
It's quite doubtful the king in question could recover that massive amount, but there wasn't much he could do except order the man sold into slavery, with his family, and all his possessions liquidated. Well, the man begged for mercy and got it. Not only did he escape his just penalty, but he was forgiven the debt entirely. There's no doubt he lost his favored position, but at least he was free to get on with his life as just another noble in the king's domain.
This man promptly went out and hunted down another, but lower ranking noble, who owed him a mere 100 days' wages. This debtor was down on his luck and didn't have it on hand. But the recently forgiven noble was totally without mercy, and had his debtor arrested on the spot. The debtor was then forced to work at slave labor until he worked off that amount, plus a premium for room, board and management fees.
Having seen all of this, some of the other nobles went back and reported to the king how the forgiven man was unforgiving. The king called him back in and castigated him. Since the debt could not be reinstated, the king fined the man directly in the same amount for a criminal offense. The man was unable to pay the fine. Instead of a debtor's prison, scholars believe he was forced to serve as a whipping boy of sorts, a living punching bag for soldiers in training. (He would wear armor against blunted weapons, but it was extremely taxing physically.)
The point here is that we owe God more than we could ever repay in terms of sin. We all deserve a short miserable life and a lingering painful death. Everything you are and everything you have is already forfeited to the Father. He is merciful and established a covenant by which He forgives and grants us shalom. He welcomes us into His family and handles us like valuable sheep that are prone to wander off. Don't bother with keeping an account for those who disappoint you in life. With all that God has absorbed on your behalf, you can afford to go easy on your covenant brothers. As long as they seek your forgiveness, they should have it.
Edit: I left off some zeros in the estimate of what the steward owed the king.
