Gadsden County Times

International Sunday School Lesson for April 20

JESUS TEACHING FORGIVENESS
Matthew 18:21-35 and
EASTER LESSON
John 20:1-16

Rev. Samuel D. Price, D. D.

Only about eight months intervene between the time when Jesus taught the lesson about forgiveness in Capernaum and the glorious Easter morning that marked the resurrection of the body of our Lord from the grave. The disciples are still at school with the Master. Jesus held a quiz class at the base of Mt. Hermon when He asked Peter "Who do men say that I am?" Now Peter turns the question on the Teacher. The man himself may have been in trouble. Possibly he had been injured by some one and had forgiven that person three times, which was the legal requirement. But Peter knew that as a follower of the new Teacher he must go further and may have made it double the number with one more for good measure. "Master isn't seven times enough to forgive anyone?" The answer suggested that with seven times the habit was only well started. Let the act be done 490 times, was the reply by way of instruction.

One thing accomplished by forgiving another is to get the cancer of hatred out of our own heart, otherwise there is internal trouble for us by day and night. One test that we have truly forgiven another is when we sincerely pray that they may experience God's richest blessings. Jesus set the fine example when on the cross, in the midst of His agonies, He prayed "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Great truths are remembered better when clinched with an apt illustration, so Jesus added a parable. Here is a man who owes millions of dollars and when payment is called for begs for more time. The situation is already impossible and nothing remains to be done but sell man, wife and children that even a little equity may come to the prince. Instead the one who is a prince indeed cancels the entire indebtedness. This is just the way God forgives the sinner. It is not a question of the size of the sin but of the abounding love of the Father. Then this forgiven man, in the story, looks over his records and finds a fellow servant who owes him the small sum of $17. With uncouth words this paltry debtor is cast into prison until full restitution be made.

Humanity is usually eager for fair play and the fellow citizens take the case to the prince. Then justice speaks. The ungracious tyrant is recalled and the impossible debt reestablished with no hope of ever discharging it.

God is ready to forgive all when we are penitent. We, in turn, are to exercise the grace of forgiveness when wronged by others. To what extent shall we forgive, even though this is not sought by the one who has wronged us? The answer is in a petition that Jesus used in teaching the disciples how to pray. "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors" is the well-known condition that we name in approaching the Father for His forgiveness. In the Revised Version the words call for our actual act of forgiveness: "As we also have forgiven our debtors."

Great truths in the Easter Lesson are the fact of the resurrection of the body of Jesus, which is a pledge of the resurrection of our own body at His Second Coming. Death refers to the body only: "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." There is no sleep of the soul after death. Do not worry about things in advance. The women found that the stone was rolled away before they arrived.