The Unworthy Servant!

 Luke 17:1-10

Jesus is talking to his disciples and he brings up the things that entice others to sin or cause people to stumble in their faith. These enticing things Jesus says are inevitable, they are bound to come. It’s even impossible for them not to come in one form or another in this fallen world. However, Jesus warns his disciple that it would actually be better to drown in the sea tied to a large millstone than to be the source or cause of the stumbling of a ‘little one’.  Jesus warns his disciple to watch themselves so that they do not become the means through which a temptation or enticement comes in the lives of others. Jesus says watch out that you don’t become someone else’s excuse not to worship and serve the Lord. (17:1-3)

Now Jesus after warning his disciple against negatively influencing others, he then gives some teaching on sin and forgiveness. First Jesus says that when your ‘brother or sister’ sins against you, then you have an obligation to confront them by rebuking them. This is not heavy handed or harsh, but it gives the offender the opportunity to take responsibility for their sinful actions. We can’t simply avoid them and hold resentment in our hearts, but we must confront for the sake of the relationship and for the good of the offender. Then when they do acknowledge their sin and repent it becomes our responsibility to extend the grace and forgiveness that we have experienced from God himself through Jesus Christ. So we are to rebuke and when they repent we are to forgive. However, we are to continually and repeatedly forgive even when our brother or sister offends us over and over again. The Rabbis of Jesus day said you should forgive up to three times. However, here Jesus says seven times. Also in Matthew 18, when Peter asked if he should forgive seven times Jesus said that it should be seventy seven times. Seven, being a complete number, is however as many times as it takes and this not above or beyond what God extends to us. After all we struggle and fall in the same areas again and again and God forgive us over and over again.

⁵ The apostles found the confronting, rebuking and forgiving of others to be a rather difficult command to accept and so they asked Jesus for more faith. They felt they needed great faith to forgive so many times, but Jesus said that they only needy faith as small as a mustard seed. If they had faith in the right object, faith in the person and work of Messiah Jesus, then they could say to a mulberry tree be uprooted and be planted into the sea. In others words, if someone continually repeats the same sin against us again and again we only need a ‘little gospel faith’ to extend the forgiveness we ourselves have received. This is because God extends his forgiveness to us ‘in Christ’ again and again for we all struggle and sin in the same ways repeatedly. God does not keep a record of wrongs, but he removes our sins as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:11-12). The apostles need persevering and empowering faith to be bold to rebuke and to be patient enough to repeatedly extend the forgiveness of sins to our offenders. We forgive because that is what God has done for us in sending Jesus to live the life we that we should have lived and die the death that we deserve to die.  

Note that this is not about doing impressive miracles such as clearing a piece of property of trees for timbers or in order to construct a building without the need of earth moving equipment. As far as we know, no one has ever literally done that. However, no impediment remains for the extending of the forgiveness of sins for those who have received that abundant grace and forgiveness that is ours through Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. In the light of the abundant provision of grace and forgiveness that God has poured out freely upon us ‘in Christ’ who are we to withhold what we have freely received (See Matthew 18:32-33)?

Now Jesus goes on to say that this takes only a little faith placed in the right place, and he also implies that this is not above the call of duty for his followers. He says that a master doesn’t say to his servant who comes in from the field or from watching sheep to sit down and enjoy their dinner. No, the master rightly says, ‘Get things ready, prepare my dinner and wait on me while I eat and drink; then after that you may eat and drink’? In summary Jesus says that the servant ought not to expect to hear their master say thank you for doing what the servant was commanded to do. In other words, we are commanded to rebuke our offenders and to extend forgiveness whenever and wherever it is needed. We are commanded to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven God (Luke 11:4) and when we do this we are like the ‘unworthy servant’. We are commanded to watch least we cause others to stumble, to rebuke those who sin against us and to extend the forgiveness of sins we have received from God ‘in Christ’. When we do this we have only done our duty! Praise God for enabling us by his grace to obey, but let us not think that we have gone above and beyond what God requires of believers. God forbid, that we think that we have put God in our debt. No, we have only done what God requires of us and we ought to thank him for his super abounding grace!  (17:7-10)