The Decapolis Tour

159:1.1One evening at Hip­pos, in an­swer to a dis­ci­ple’s ques­tion, Je­sus taught the les­son on for­give­ness. Said the Mas­ter:

159:1.2“If a kind­hearted man has a hun­dred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not im­me­di­ately leave the ninety and nine and go out in search of the one that has gone astray? And if he is a good shep­herd, will he not keep up his quest for the lost sheep un­til he finds it? And then, when the shep­herd has found his lost sheep, he lays it over his shoul­der and, go­ing home re­joic­ing, calls to his friends and neigh­bors, ‘Re­joice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ I de­clare that there is more joy in heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents than over ninety and nine righ­teous per­sons who need no re­pen­tance. Even so, it is not the will of my Fa­ther in heaven that one of these lit­tle ones should go astray, much less that they should per­ish. In your re­li­gion God may re­ceive re­pen­tant sin­ners; in the gospel of the king­dom the Fa­ther goes forth to find them even be­fore they have se­ri­ously thought of re­pen­tance.

159:1.3“The Fa­ther in heaven loves his chil­dren, and there­fore should you learn to love one an­other; the Fa­ther in heaven for­gives you your sins; there­fore should you learn to for­give one an­other. If your brother sins against you, go to him and with tact and pa­tience show him his fault. And do all this be­tween you and him alone. If he will lis­ten to you, then have you won your brother. But if your brother will not hear you, if he per­sists in the er­ror of his way, go again to him, tak­ing with you one or two mu­tual friends that you may thus have two or even three wit­nesses to con­firm your tes­ti­mony and es­tab­lish the fact that you have dealt justly and mer­ci­fully with your of­fend­ing brother. Now if he re­fuses to hear your breth­ren, you may tell the whole story to the con­gre­ga­tion, and then, if he re­fuses to hear the broth­er­hood, let them take such ac­tion as they deem wise; let such an un­ruly mem­ber be­come an out­cast from the king­dom. While you can­not pre­tend to sit in judg­ment on the souls of your fel­lows, and while you may not for­give sins or oth­er­wise pre­sume to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of the super­vi­sors of the heav­enly hosts, at the same time, it has been com­mit­ted to your hands that you should main­tain tem­po­ral or­der in the king­dom on earth. While you may not med­dle with the di­vine de­crees con­cern­ing eter­nal life, you shall de­ter­mine the is­sues of con­duct as they con­cern the tem­po­ral wel­fare of the broth­er­hood on earth. And so, in all these mat­ters con­nected with the dis­ci­pline of the broth­er­hood, what­so­ever you shall de­cree on earth, shall be rec­og­nized in heaven. Al­though you can­not de­ter­mine the eter­nal fate of the in­di­vid­ual, you may leg­is­late re­gard­ing the con­duct of the group, for, where two or three of you agree con­cern­ing any of these things and ask of me, it shall be done for you if your pe­ti­tion is not in­con­sis­tent with the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. And all this is ever true, for, where two or three be­liev­ers are gath­ered to­gether, there am I in the midst of them.”

159:1.4Si­mon Pe­ter was the apos­tle in charge of the work­ers at Hip­pos, and when he heard Je­sus thus speak, he asked: “Lord, how of­ten shall my brother sin against me, and I for­give him? Un­til seven times?” And Je­sus an­swered Pe­ter: “Not only seven times but even to sev­enty times and seven. There­fore may the king­dom of heaven be likened to a cer­tain king who or­dered a fi­nan­cial reck­on­ing with his stew­ards. And when they had be­gun to con­duct this ex­am­i­na­tion of ac­counts, one of his chief re­tain­ers was brought be­fore him con­fess­ing that he owed his king ten thou­sand tal­ents. Now this of­fi­cer of the king’s court pleaded that hard times had come upon him, and that he did not have where­with to pay this obli­ga­tion. And so the king com­manded that his prop­erty be con­fis­cated, and that his chil­dren be sold to pay his debt. When this chief stew­ard heard this stern de­cree, he fell down on his face be­fore the king and im­plored him to have mercy and grant him more time, say­ing, ‘Lord, have a lit­tle more pa­tience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And when the king looked upon this neg­li­gent ser­vant and his fam­ily, he was moved with com­pas­sion. He or­dered that he should be re­leased, and that the loan should be wholly for­given.

159:1.5“And this chief stew­ard, hav­ing thus re­ceived mercy and for­give­ness at the hands of the king, went about his busi­ness, and find­ing one of his sub­or­di­nate stew­ards who owed him a mere hun­dred denarii, he laid hold upon him and, tak­ing him by the throat, said, ‘Pay me all you owe.’ And then did this fel­low stew­ard fall down be­fore the chief stew­ard and, be­seech­ing him, said: ‘Only have pa­tience with me, and I will pres­ently be able to pay you.’ But the chief stew­ard would not show mercy to his fel­low stew­ard but rather had him cast in prison un­til he should pay his debt. When his fel­low ser­vants saw what had hap­pened, they were so dis­tressed that they went and told their lord and mas­ter, the king. When the king heard of the do­ings of his chief stew­ard, he called this un­grate­ful and un­for­giv­ing man be­fore him and said: ‘You are a wicked and un­wor­thy stew­ard. When you sought for com­pas­sion, I freely for­gave you your en­tire debt. Why did you not also show mercy to your fel­low stew­ard, even as I showed mercy to you?’ And the king was so very an­gry that he de­liv­ered his un­grate­ful chief stew­ard to the jail­ers that they might hold him un­til he had paid all that was due. And even so shall my heav­enly Fa­ther show the more abun­dant mercy to those who freely show mercy to their fel­lows. How can you come to God ask­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for your short­com­ings when you are wont to chas­tise your breth­ren for be­ing guilty of these same hu­man frail­ties? I say to all of you: Freely you have re­ceived the good things of the king­dom; there­fore freely give to your fel­lows on earth.”

159:1.6Thus did Je­sus teach the dan­gers and il­lus­trate the un­fair­ness of sit­ting in per­sonal judg­ment upon one’s fel­lows. Dis­ci­pline must be main­tained, jus­tice must be ad­min­is­tered, but in all these mat­ters the wis­dom of the broth­er­hood should pre­vail. Je­sus in­vested leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial au­thor­ity in the group, not in the in­di­vid­ual. Even this in­vest­ment of au­thor­ity in the group must not be ex­er­cised as per­sonal au­thor­ity. There is al­ways dan­ger that the ver­dict of an in­di­vid­ual may be warped by prej­u­dice or dis­torted by pas­sion. Group judg­ment is more likely to re­move the dan­gers and elim­i­nate the un­fair­ness of per­sonal bias. Je­sus sought al­ways to min­i­mize the el­e­ments of un­fair­ness, re­tal­i­a­tion, and vengeance.

159:1.7[The use of the term sev­enty-seven as an il­lus­tra­tion of mercy and for­bear­ance was de­rived from the Scrip­tures re­fer­ring to Lamech’s ex­ul­ta­tion be­cause of the metal weapons of his son Tubal-Cain, who, com­par­ing these su­pe­rior in­stru­ments with those of his en­e­mies, ex­claimed: “If Cain, with no weapon in his hand, was avenged seven times, I shall now be avenged sev­enty-seven.”]