This is the sixth of seven core characteristics of Jesus we’ve been called to imitate and thus disciple our kids toward using the ACT Bible Study Method. Learn more about this family discipleship method here.
TLDR: Jesus’ primary reason for coming to earth was to provide forgiveness. In him, we are totally forgiven, nothing being beyond the scope of God’s mercy and grace. We want to disciple our kids to forgive just as generously.
John 3:16 is perhaps the most well-known and well-loved verse of the Bible, and for good reason. It focuses on God’s love, proven by his provision of Jesus. The verse that follows it may not be nearly as well-known, but it amplifies this glorious idea even further.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
John 3:17 (NET)
Jesus didn’t come into a neutral world; he came into a rebellious world overrun by sin, condemned ever since the Fall. Jesus couldn’t condemn what had already been condemned. But he surely could bring what was lacking: salvation.
Love v. Wrath or Love + Wrath?
These verses fuse together two aspects of God that we often struggle to connect even loosely: love and wrath. Often, we want to deny or at least ignore the wrath part. If we do accept it, we would rather place it in some back room’s, dark, dusty closet and leave it alone. We love God’s love. But God’s wrath—well, that’s another thing all together.
However, John 3:16–17 reminds us that both matter and they aren’t disconnected, but rather joined by necessity. God is just—he cannot ignore our sin or simply forget about it. But God is also love—he cannot ignore our despair or forget about his affections for us either. The punishment of sin was death, and death had to be paid. But in the brilliance of God’s plan, that death was paid by Jesus. Christ’s sacrifice preserved both God’s justice (his wrath was satisfied) and God’s love (his redemptive heart was satisfied). John 3:16 reminds us of the intensity and greatness of that love. John 3:17 reminds us of the result of that love: forgiveness that replaces condemnation for all who trust in Christ.
The Primacy of Forgiveness
These two verses remind us that at its core, Jesus’ mission was one of forgiveness. Yes, his healings mattered. Yes, his teachings mattered. But everything that he did and taught, and everything he experienced on the cross, drove toward this singular purpose of providing forgiveness of sin. Jesus didn’t heal people to delay their arrival in hell. He healed people to prove his love for them, a love that was most clearly seen in his provision of forgiveness. In a similar way, forgiveness should be just as important to us. Yes, we primarily want to introduce people to the forgiveness of their sins that only God can give. But we also need to forgive others when they wrong us. Forgiveness is a balm to a wounded soul. While we cannot forgive a person’s sins, we can forgive them when they do us wrong, and in doing so, point them to the one who can forgive their sins.
C. S. Lewis said that “every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.”1 In other words, we love to be on the receiving end of forgiveness but not so much the giving end. But Christ has called on us to do the latter precisely because we have experienced the former. This is what he had in mind in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt. 18:21–35).
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
This parable is intentionally absurd. In it, a servant owes his master ten thousand talents. Each talent was about six thousand days of wages, so that’s 60,000,000 days of wages. Let’s imagine a person makes a modest $10 an hour. That would be $80 a day. So, this would be almost half a billion dollars of debt. Can you hear the chuckles in the crowd as Jesus shares this? What master would loan his servant such a lavish sum? It’s preposterous.
Jesus continues the story. When the time comes to settle debts, the master understandably demands full payment from this servant, but the servant doesn’t have the money, so he falls down and begs for more time. Upon seeing this, the master has compassion on the servant and forgives the entire debt. He went from being owed a fortune to giving it away basically in the blink of an eye. All because a lowly servant groveled. Again, can you imagine the chuckles turning into heartier laughs at this point? What master would forgive such a debt?
Jesus then continues the parable by having that same servant leave and immediately come across another servant who owes him one-hundred silver coins, or about one-hundred days of wages. So, by our math, that would be about $8,000. No small sum, but nothing compared to half a billion dollars. If I’m doing my math right, that was 0.0017% of what he had just been forgiven. Not one percent. No even a tenth of a percent. Not even one one-hundredth of a percent. That’s like someone owing you $1.70 when you have $100,000 in your bank account.
At this point, the scene repeats itself, this time with the first servant threatening the second and the second pleading for patience. But then the parable takes a shocking twist. The first servant refuses to forgive the second’s modest debt and fails even to give him more time to repay it. Here, laughs in the crowd likely become gasps. The idea is ludicrous. What servant who had been forgiven so much would refuse to forgive so little? It’s unthinkable.
Those Who Are Forgiven Forgive
And this is the exact reaction that Jesus crafted the parable to deliver. Those who have been forgiven an infinite sin debt by God cannot not forgive the meager debts owed by others. The way people wrong us matters. It can be painful. Even harmful. But in light of how we have wronged God, there is no comparison. He has forgiven us. It’s absurd that we’d refuse to forgive others.
Our culture isn’t the best at forgiveness, and when they do step into its realm, it is often conditional and limited. We want to disciple our kids to pursue a different forgiveness, a better forgiveness, a Christlike forgiveness. We pray they are spared from serious pain and heartache in life, but if they do experience it, may we prepare them to respond to it with otherworldly forgiveness.
NEXT: The Obedience of Jesus
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Revised and Amplified Kindle (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2009), 115. ↩︎
brian dembowczyk 