Matthew 18:35 is one of our Lord’s most challenging teachings: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
This verse derives its force from the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:21–34), in which a servant of the king is forgiven an enormous debt—ten thousand talents, representing thousands of lifetimes of wages. The king cancels all of it. However, when that same servant refuses to forgive the comparatively trivial debt of another, the king reverses his original decision. The previously forgiven debt is reimposed, and the unforgiving servant is handed over to the jailers “until he should pay all his debt” (i.e., forever).
At first glance, this seems theologically problematic. We affirm that God’s forgiveness is rooted in the finished work of Christ and extended by grace to those united to him; divine forgiveness is not obtained by human effort. Yet here, Jesus unequivocally makes God’s forgiveness conditional on our forgiveness of others. And this is not the only time he does so. We find essentially the same warning in Matthew 6: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14–15).
How can we reconcile this?
1. Two Old Testament Echoes
Before proposing a solution, we need to understand the tradition that Jesus is drawing upon. Two key Old Testament allusions set the stage for this parable.
1.1 Lamech’s Boast
In Matthew 18, Peter asks, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus responds, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (or “seventy times seven,” depending on translation). This is a deliberate echo of Genesis 4, where the Lord pledges sevenfold vengeance against anyone who would kill Cain (4:15). But Lamech claims even more vengeance than God: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s seventy-sevenfold” (4:23–24).
In Genesis 4:15, God pledges sevenfold vengeance on anyone who kills Cain, and this was a protective measure intended to discourage further violence. Lamech, one of Cain’s descendants, perverts this protective measure into a principle of escalating violence and bloodshed. He establishes what Peter Leithart calls “the city of vengeance,” where blood begets blood and the only peace is the “peace” of mutually assured destruction.
Thus, in Matthew 18, Jesus is reversing Lamech’s boast. Whereas Lamech threatens seventy-sevenfold vengeance, Jesus calls for seventy-sevenfold forgiveness. Jesus is founding a very different kind of city, a city built not on blood and the settling of scores, but on mercy and the canceling of debts.
1.2 Daniel’s Seventy Weeks
In Daniel 9, the prophet is reading Jeremiah’s prophecy that Israel’s exile would last seventy years. Realizing that the appointed time is approaching, Daniel begins to pray and fast in sackcloth and ashes, confessing the sins of Israel. While he is praying, the angel Gabriel appears with a message: “Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place” (9:24).
“Seventy weeks” is seventy times seven, or 490 years. At the end of the seventy weeks, God will deal with Israel’s sin once and for all, bringing final atonement and everlasting righteousness. Thus, when Jesus instructs Peter to forgive “seventy times seven,” he is not just reversing Lamech’s boast, nor is he announcing that Daniel’s prophecy is nearing its fulfillment. The age of unending, unlimited forgiveness has arrived. And if God is extending unending, unlimited forgiveness to his people, they must do the same to one another.
2. The Peace Offering
The New Covenant call to forgive is more than a mere suggestion. Jesus unequivocally makes God’s forgiveness conditional on our forgiveness of others. So, again, how are we to reconcile the tension? I want to suggest that the Levitical peace offering provides a crucial typological lens through which to understand the parable of the unforgiving servant and the conditional nature of forgiveness.
The peace offering is described in Leviticus 3 and 7. Unlike the burnt offering,which was entirely consumed by fire on the altar and not eaten by humans, or the sin offering in which only certain portions went to the priest, the peace offering was a uniquely communal ritual. Part of the offering was burned on the altar for God, part was eaten by the priest, and part was returned to the worshiper and his household for a feast; the sacrifice was the foundation of a shared meal. The peace offering was thus a celebration of reconciliation with God, a meal meant to be enjoyed in the Lord’s presence. The worshiper who had been alienated from God now enjoyed table fellowship with him.
However, for the offering to be valid, there was a crucial requirement. The meat of the peace offering had to be eaten immediately—on the same day for a thanksgiving offering, or by the next day for a vow offering. The meat could not be hoarded. It could not be taken home and stored for later. It had to be shared, and it had to be shared immediately.
And notice what happens if the worshiper fails to consume the meat within the time allotted: “He who offers it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be credited to him. It is tainted, and he who eats of it shall bear his iniquity” (Lev 7:18). In other words, the sacrifice is retroactively invalidated, and the reconciliation is undone. In Matthew 18 terms, the debt is reimposed. And this is not because God is fickle; it’s because the very nature of the peace offering demands communal sharing.
3. Three Parallels
The parallels to Jesus’ parable are striking.
First, in both cases, there is reconciliation. In the peace offering, a sacrifice is made that brings reconciliation with God, and the worshiper enjoys fellowship in God’s presence. In Matthew 18, the king forgives an unpayable debt, and the servant is reconciled to his king.
Second, in both cases, the blessing must be shared. In the peace offering, the meat must be shared with others, or it spoils. Likewise, the forgiven servant is expected to share his forgiveness, to extend to others the same forgiveness he had received.
Third, and most significantly, in both cases, the failure to share retroactively invalidates what the king had previously granted. In Leviticus, “He who offers it shall not be accepted, neither shall it be credited to him.” And in Matthew, the king reimposes the debt.
Thus, the peace offering teaches that reconciliation with God, table fellowship with God, is never a private possession to be hoarded. Reconciliation with God is inherently communal and must be immediately shared. The fellowship and forgiveness we enjoy in the presence of God cannot be kept to ourselves, lest it spoils, becomes tainted, and undoes the reconciliation.
4. The Table of the Lord
The peace offering is the only Levitical sacrifice whose essential action is a shared meal, and this clarifies the modern relevance of the rite. The telos of the peace offering was a feast of fellowship with God and neighbor. It was always fundamentally eucharistic.
In other words, the warning in Leviticus 7 (to hoard the meal is to invalidate the peace) speaks directly to the liturgical life of the Church. When we partake of the Table of the Lord, we are feasting upon the “meat” of Christ’s peace offering, and the logic of Leviticus 7 applies: this meal must be shared. Either the blessing flows outward to others, or the offering spoils.
The Passing of the Peace is thus the liturgical embodiment of the parable of the unforgiving servant. The Passing of the Peace is Leviticus 7 applied to the New Covenant. As priests and worshipers in the Temple of the Lord, we acknowledge that reconciliation with God and reconciliation with one another are indivisible. When we come to the Eucharist, we can either feast upon the meat of peace offering as the reconciled people of God, or we can hoard the sacrifice by keeping our fellow servants in our debt.
5. The Air We Breathe
The peace offering may help us to understand what Jesus is teaching, but it doesn’t make the teaching less challenging. Unforgiving servants risk becoming unforgiven servants, but the problem is not that God is fickle, or erratic, or capricious. The warning speaks to the type of city Jesus is building.
N. T. Wright suggests a helpful metaphor: “Forgiveness is more like the air in your lungs. There’s only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you’ve just breathed out the previous one. If you insist on withholding it, refusing to give someone else the kiss of life they may desperately need, you won’t be able to take any more in yourself, and you will suffocate very quickly.”
The worshiper in Leviticus 7 and the servant in Matthew 18 both enjoy real reconciliation, genuine fellowship. The grace inhaled truly does give life, but the real reconciliation and genuine fellowship become “tainted” if we fail to exhale. That’s not arbitrary punishment; it’s the natural consequence of attempting to privatize what is communal by its very nature. In the city of God, forgiveness is the air we breathe. We cannot live in the city of God while breathing the air of some other city.
In the city of Cain and his descendants, scores are settled, debts are equalized, and every wrong is met with an answer. In the city of God, debts are canceled, wrongs are borne, and mercy is distributed freely.
So the servant in the parable is not merely violating a religious obligation; he is revealing that he doesn’t actually belong to the king’s city. He wants debt-cancellation as a private transaction while continuing to live in an economy of score-settling. He wants to breathe in mercy and breathe out vengeance. And it doesn’t work that way. The King will not allow a bunch of little Lamechs to run around wreaking havoc on his city.
We speak the language of the city of God as we confess our sins, sing songs about grace, and feast upon the Lamb. But if we are nursing grudges, keeping score, and refusing to forgive our fellow servants, we reveal that our true citizenship lies elsewhere. We are attempting to have Christianity as a religious system while avoiding life in the city of God.
Feast of Forgiveness
The age of unlimited forgiveness has come. God has acted through Christ to “finish the transgression, to put an end to sin.” The final peace offering has been sacrificed, and the Table is set. At this Table, there are no parties of one, and there are no to-go boxes. This is the Lord’s Feast of Forgiveness, and it must be eaten as a community.
God’s forgiveness is not a one-time transaction. It’s an offer of citizenship and an invitation to actually inhabit the city King Jesus is building, to sit at his Table, and to breathe the air of forgiveness. So grab a seat, pass the peace, and join the feast of seventy-sevenfold forgiveness.
Fr. Drew Knowles is the founding Rector of Oak Forest Anglican Church in Houston, Texas, where he lives with his wife Amber and their four children. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (2009), a Theopolis Fellow (2020), and co-author with Fr. Mark Brians of Hospitality: The Convivial Mission of God.