The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
Matthew 18:21-35 (NIV ’84)
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talentsb was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Hello, my name is Doug and I have been a Christian doormat. Yes, I have allowed myself, willingly allowed myself to be a Christian doormat. I have not loved others as God has commanded me to love. I have not loved my neighbor as myself. In fact, by being a doormat in the name of Christ, I have not trusted nor loved God with all my heart. In doing so, I have hurt myself and others. And as a Christian, I know I should forgive the sins of others.
I have yet again learned a valued lesson of being a doormat, under the cloak of being a Christian. Sounds a bit like an Alcohol Anonymous introduction doesn’t it? This is, in no way to make light of AA but I think maybe there could be an Christian Doormat Anonymous group to help all of us Christians that are continually trying to do for others and forgive the sins committed against us.
We are familiar with the Lord ’s Prayer where it says, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. In Psalm 41 it speaks of what God does for us, what we ask of God and the forgiveness of sins and compassion on our fellow human being. We can identify with this still being true for us today. The Psalm says,
Psalm 41:1-9 (NIV ’84)
Blessed is he who has regard for the weak;
the Lord delivers him in times of trouble.
2 The Lord will protect him and preserve his life;
he will bless him in the land
and not surrender him to the desire of his foes.
3 The Lord will sustain him on his sickbed
and restore him from his bed of illness.
4 I said, “O Lord, have mercy on me;
“When will he die and his name
perish?”
6 Whenever one comes to see me,
he speaks falsely, while his heart gathers slander;
then he goes out and spreads it abroad.
7 All my enemies whisper together against me;
they imagine the worst for me, saying,
8 “A vile disease has beset him;
he will never get up from the place where he lies.”
9 Even my close friend, whom I trusted,
he who shared my bread,
has lifted up his heel against me.
In this Psalm we hear about forgiveness and compassion. Where does the idea of becoming a doormat, come in, you may ask? It is not from forgiving……….. or is it? It may come in the form of forgiving but that would be dependent upon how forgiveness is given …………and received.
In numbers 14: 18-23 (NIV ’84), God and Moses are speaking, when Moses and says;
18 ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’ 19 In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20 The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked. 21 Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, 22 not one of the men who saw my glory and the miraculous signs I performed in Egypt and in the desert but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— 23 not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their forefathers. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.
As we can hear, God forgives the people but still, there are consequences for the actions that were taken. What are the consequences when we forgive as a Christian? Forgiveness allows the person forgiving to do as God wants and gives what sinner needs. This seems to all make sense when we look at the response of Jesus to Peter’s question. Where Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered saying; “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
How do we reconcile forgiveness with not loving the one we forgive? Is forgiveness and love one in the same? I think this is certainly not the case, when forgiving enables, not allows but enables the one that has sinned to continue to sin, then there is no love in the forgiveness. The key is not allowing the sinner to still sin but enabling them to sin. God does not enable us to sin, God allows us to turn away from God and in doing so we sin.
I want to tell you a true story. I decided to do the Christian thing and help someone in need, not asking or expecting anything in return. I knew of a person who was handicapped, needed transportation and housing assistance. I drove this person back and forth to grocery stores and later on I made a commitment to assist this person to get back and forth to work on a daily basis. Even the job they got was because I knew people that could assist in making the job happen. Oh, they still had to interview to get the job but the interview happened because of me. When they needed housing, I made arrangements for their housing, I took care of that too. Doing, helping is what Christians do, isn’t it? This kept on progressing into more doing for and for them, less doing by. There also became an expectation that I would provide more and more services and then there became an expectation of financial responsibility on my part.
Then one day it hit me……….I had become a doormat and had not even realized it. I did all I did because, I was in my mind, loving my neighbor as myself, even forgiving the sins against me……….I was being taken advantage of. A doormat in the name of Christ.
What is the line between helping someone and being a doormat? This is a very difficult thing to discern. Love is a benefit to someone. Love is not giving a person what they want, but what they need. If you are enabling a person when they can do something on their own, then you aren’t being a benefit to them or to yourself.
A sin can be when someone fails to do something, something they are capable of doing on their own and allow others to do for them. In my case, the sinner is abusing the person that is helping the sinner. The great commandment in Matthew says, “love your neighbor AS yourself”
It does not say; MORE THAN yourself, not INSTEAD OF yourself. To me, that means that you should make sure your own needs are met, even as you do what you can to help others. Failure in this, can and often does lead to being a “Christian Doormat”. This is harmful to you and to others. Sometimes that means that we have to say, “Sorry, but I can’t do “XY or Z at this time.”
Discernment is the key. Knowing the difference between being a Godly servant and being a doormat is important. It’s not always easy to blend the two. Caring for yourself is as important as caring for others. If you are missing one of the two, your life is out of whack. You may recall Pastor Ben preaching about balance last week. It’s a like the old fashioned “scales” you must have balance between the two.
Next time we want to help someone, we need to ask ourselves:
Are we being taken care of?
And
Are we taking care of someone out of Christian Love without enabling them to do what they are capable of or capable of learning to do.
That is an interestng insight, Douglas. To be an enabler of sin is to be a sinner. To do something, or not do something, that has the effect of keeping another from being the best version of themselves, is to harm that person. The great insight is that in “being a doormat” we not only harm the other but we actually sin against ourself; denying ourselves the dignity we are due because we too are in His image. And yet, as you point out, we don’t want to err in the direction of being prideful either.
It occurs to me that your insight also illustrates another point. No sin is “private” – it never affects only one person. Sometimes it’s someone in some way we don’t immediately recognize.