“‘But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, “Pay back what you owe.”‘” (Matthew 18:28)
There’s a lot of talk about social justice in our day.
The best way to describe social justice is it recognizes an injustice in the social fabric and seeks to make it right.
Now it’s not that I’m against dealing with injustice or righting wrongs. The problem arises when men and women with a fallen nature (we are all sinners according to the Scriptures) begin to make determinations as to what is just and unjust. (Jeremiah 17:9) We don’t often get it right.
Allow me to just cut to the chase. God’s way is NOT social justice. It’s forgiveness.
Social justice requires everyone of us to go to hell. Forgiveness says, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe.” (John 19:30)
Social justice requires another to pay for his or her sins against me. (See verse at the beginning of this article.) Forgiveness says, “I forgive you as Christ has forgiven me.” (Matthew 18:21-22)
In our Lord’s story (parable) of the unmerciful slave (Matthew 18:23-35), a king wishes to settle accounts with his slaves. One slave owes the king ten thousand talents.
To understand the depth of payment required to settle accounts, you need to know the worth of a “talent.” A single “talent” was equal to 20 years worth of wages. Do the math. 10,000 talents times 20 years equals 200,000 years worth of wages.
Let’s say you make $20,000 a year. That means one talent equals ($20,000 times 20 years) $400,000. Then ten thousand talents equals 4 billion dollars! Bottom line: The slave can’t repay such an enormous debt. But the king forgives the debt of the slave any way. (It’s a picture of God’s forgiveness of us.)
The problem is the slave goes out afterwards and demands payment of a (in comparison) $7,000 debt he’s owed from a fellow slave. When the fellow slave begs for mercy, he has him arrested and thrown into prison until he pays back what he owes.
This reaches the king’s ears who calls the unmerciful slave before him and says, “‘”You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?”‘” (Matthew 18:32-33)
Such is the heart of social justice. It forgets the debt it owes God (or doesn’t even know it?!). It’s a selfish, bitter and wicked heart. (John 10:10)
“‘He who is forgiven little, loves little.'” (Luke 7:47c)
(The unmerciful slave choking his fellow slave picture above in the public domain: click here.)
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