Peter once asked his Master how often he could be expected to forgive his brother: “Till seven times?” To Peter this must have seemed the limit of what was reasonable, but Jesus made clear that he must be prepared to forgive much oftener. He told a parable about a King who examined the accounts of his servants and found one who was in debt to the tune of 10 000 talents, a vast amount of money. Out of compassion, the King cancelled the debt. Yet that servant later demanded repayment from a fellow servant who owed him a mere 100 pence and refused to show the least compassion when the other man was unable to pay. The parable was intended to illustrate the reasonableness of forgiven sinners forgiving their fellows and indeed, before God, their obligation to do so. Peter, having been forgiven by God, must be willing to forgive his brother, no matter how often his brother wronged him.
Clearly the parable implies also the vast extent to which sinners are in debt to the great King whose subjects we all are. When a sinner is brought to feel his guilt before God, he must realise that he cannot repay that debt; the debt is far too great, for each individual sin deserves eternal punishment. The sinner may try to bargain with God and offer some degree of payment – some reduction in his level of sinning, or some good works: prayer, for example, or Bible reading or acts of kindness. The first difficulty is that his good works are themselves imperfect; there is sin in everything he does, for he cannot meet God’s standard of perfect holiness – which requires us to do everything to God’s glory. So, instead of reducing his guilt to God by his good works, the sinner is in fact adding to his debt. The further difficulty is that, if he is to pay off his debt to God, he must pay it in full, he must pay Him “the uttermost farthing” (Mt 5:26).
This is what the Bible teaches, and what many a sinner has discovered by experience. He is in debt, but he cannot begin to pay off the debt. There is only one other possibility: to find someone who can pay the debt for him. Clearly that cannot be a fellow human being, with a debt of his own which is beyond his power to pay. If we were left to our own devices, we could never discover anyone both willing and able to pay off our debt. But we are
not left to our own devices; we have a revelation which is utterly dependable and tells us of One who came into this world to redeem sinners from all iniquity. The Bible tells us of the Son of God entering this world and coming “under the law” and therefore making Himself responsible for paying the debt of every sinner who will ever be saved.
Think then of the little Child who has been laid in the manger in Bethlehem. He is perfectly pure and holy, and yet, as divine justice beholds Him, it says, “Pay me that Thou owest”, even to the uttermost farthing. He has no sins of His own, and yet God the Father has laid on Him the guilt of a multitude that no man can number. What unmeasurable guilt that is! What a price He must pay to deliver sinners from the debt which they owe to God because of their transgressions! Even as a little child, He must experience the ordinary troubles of a sinful world, and even some extraordinary hardships, such as the threat of murder from Herod and the consequent flight to Egypt. His was a life of suffering from the beginning, for He must pay the debt of those whose substitute He is.
Consider Jesus when He has just begun His public ministry and begins to teach in His home village of Nazareth. He must suffer rejection, as the prophet Isaiah was inspired to say of Him: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him” (53:3). What sorrow of heart is His when those He has known so well reject Him and His teaching and attempt to throw Him headlong over the brow of a hill!
Follow Him to Sychar, where in weariness He sits on a well. He enters into conversation with a woman whose lifestyle is evidently immoral. But He did not come “to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mk 2:17). As He has come to call this woman to repentance, He reveals Himself to her as the Messiah, and she believes. He forgives all her sin, and no longer does divine justice say to the woman: “Pay me that thou owest”. But the Saviour no doubt hears divine justice saying to Himself instead: “Pay me that Thou owest”. And He will pay the full amount when His hour comes.
Or consider the woman who, in Simon’s house in Bethany, anoints Christ with the ointment from her alabaster box, washes His feet with tears and wipes them with her hair. He assures her: “Thy sins are forgiven” (Lk 7:48), and encourages her to “go in peace”. He speaks thus positively because of how certain it is that He can and will pay, to the uttermost farthing, all her debt to divine justice. “He will not fail nor be discouraged” till He has done so, but His words of encouragement to the woman must be a fresh reminder to Himself of the greatness of the debt that He must pay.
Follow Jesus now to Gethsemane, where He says to His disciples: “My
soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” (Mk 14:34). His hour has come, the time when He must pay the price He owes, when He must endure the full force of God’s avenging justice coming out against Him, to the extent that He will cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mk 15:34). And so He asks “that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him” – the hour of taking the cup of divine wrath, of paying to the uttermost farthing the price that He had undertaken to pay. David Brown comments, “Thus have we here no struggle between a reluctant and a compliant will, nor between a human and a divine will; but simply between two views of one event: between [on the one hand] penal sufferings and death considered in themselves – in other words, being bruised, put to grief, made an offering for sin – and [on the other] all this considered as the Father’s will”.
And so Christ goes on to submit to arrest. He must fulfil the eternal, divine purpose; He must obey the voice of divine justice. He must endure the injustice of what purported to be a trial before the chief priests and the council. He must be brought before Pilate and Herod and experience further injustice. He must endure smiting and scourging and mockery. He must experience the unspeakable sufferings of crucifixion. But especially He must undergo the most terrible of all His sufferings – what is particularly implied by the command given in heaven: “Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow” (Zec 13:7) – the sufferings of the Good Shepherd’s holy human soul as He bore the punishment of those whose substitute He was.
He suffers until He can say, “It is finished”, and He breathes His spirit into the hand of the Father. The full price has now indeed been paid and, in testimony of this, He arises from the grave on the third day, for the Father is well pleased with His Son’s whole work – in particular, His sufferings unto death. He has satisfied divine justice; He has perfectly obeyed the call: “Pay me that Thou owest”; He has paid the uttermost farthing.
Before His Ascension, Christ commissioned His disciples to go and preach the gospel to all nations. Likewise preachers today are to declare to sinners, wherever they live, the glorious message of a full and free salvation for all who believe in Him. They are to assure everyone who will believe that they will be forgiven all their sins, for Christ has paid the full price for the redemption of sinners. Preachers are to insist that no one should try to pay any part of the price themselves, through good works or in any other way. They cannot even pay the first farthing, and to make the attempt is to insult the One who paid the whole debt Himself. And with the same absolute certainty as He used in speaking in Simon’s house in Bethany, He says to everyone who trusts in Him today: “Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Go in peace.”