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A HIERARCHY OF INDEBTEDNESS Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt (Matt. 18:23-30).
The theocentric focus of this passage is God, the money-lender. He sets the model for forgiveness and for condemnation.
The Unforgiving Steward This parable is famous for its comparison of hell with debtors' prison. But the economic principle of this parable is not immediately apparent. This much is clear: the parable has to do with obligations owed, large and small. What is generally not understood is the hierarchy of debt.
A servant who owed a gigantic amount to his master was conditionally forgiven of this debt by his master. The judicial conditionality of salvation is clearly taught in this passage. The master has the right to revoke the debt release. He did revoke it. The steward was cast into prison until he should pay the debt in full. Then what kind of salvation is under discussion here? The salvation of common grace: the salvation granted to mankind apart from a complete and final repayment of the debt owed to God.
The servant then demanded the immediate repayment of a comparatively tiny amount from a poor debtor, and when the poor man could not pay, the steward had him thrown into debtors' prison. Then the master revoked his mercy and delivered the servant to debtors' prison. "Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses" (Matt. 18:32-35).
If we take this parable as a representation of God's judicial relationship with fallen man, we must conclude that God's forgiveness of a man's debts is conditional.(1) These conditions are two-fold. First, a man's acceptance of Christ's payment to God on his behalf. Second, his grant of the same debt-free status to those who owe him anything beyond their ability to repay. The neighbor, according to the parable of the Good Samaritan, is that person who walks the same road we do who has been harmed along the way through no fault of his own (Luke 10:30-37). When I help him, I should not insist on immediate repayment if it threatens his ability to perform his work and eventually to repay the debt.
Why should this be true? Because the debt-credit relationship is inescapably hierarchical. The borrower is servant to the lender (Prov. 22:7). When God grants me credit, and I in turn grant someone else credit, that person has become God's servant through me. This is why biblical law recommends that God's people become creditors to covenant-breakers, but not become debtors to them (Deut. 28:12).
What commentators rarely (if ever) mention is this: the poor debtor still owed the money to the rich master. The steward had merely served as an economic and legal middleman -- a representative of the master. The steward had advanced the person money that did not belong to the steward; it had been borrowed from the master. The steward had legal control over the money temporarily; he did not own it. This is the definition of all stewardship: temporary legal control over the use of another person's asset. This leads to an important conclusion: the master's legal annulment of the debt owed to him by the steward was therefore also a legal annulment of the debts of all debtors under the steward's economic authority. In other words, the obligation was hierarchical: from the poor man to the master through the steward.
Why was the steward unjust? His sin was more than ethical injustice to a poor person; it was judicial rebellion against the master. By trying to collect payment from the poor man, the steward was saying: "I am no longer a middleman, now that my debt has been forgiven. I am now the exclusive owner of assets. The credit that I extended with borrowed money is still owed to me irrespective of my previous obligations. I am therefore no longer a steward. I am no longer under a hierarchy. I can now collect what is lawfully mine from those who are under me." His refusal to cancel the debt that had been owed to the master through the steward's lending was a rebellious declaration of independence. He became a thief and a usurper, for he was trying to collect for his own account assets that, economically speaking, had belonged to the master. He was trying to profit from the master's mercy. He refused to acknowledge the economics of forgiveness: the master had implicitly released the poor man from his debt, which had been owed to the master by way of the servant, the day the master released his steward from his obligation. The unjust steward refused to acknowledge the legality of this indirect (representative) release. He held to the letter of the law -- the terms of the original debt contract -- rather than to the underlying economics of the transaction: hierarchical representation and lawful subordination. So, the master reimposed the original debt in order to remind the steward that he was still nothing but a steward, that he was still under the master's lawful authority.
However, by consigning the unjust steward to prison, the master was implicitly reimposing the debt on the poor man. The master in the parable did not order the release of the poor man. Why not? Because such a unilateral act of debt release would have been theft: stealing from the steward, i.e., taking away an asset that the steward could use to repay his debt. The master could forgive the poor debtor only by forgiving the steward's debt by the same amount. The steward's wife or heirs were legally empowered to collect everything owed to him in a vain attempt to pay off the master.
The day of reckoning -- an accounting concept -- had come for both the steward and the poor debtor. Time had run out for both of them. Their debt pyramid had toppled. The hierarchy of debt repayment would now be felt up and down the chain of obligations. Those foolish enough to have indebted themselves would now be reminded of the hierarchical nature of debt. The master had at last pressed his lawful claims. By indebting himself to an unjust steward, the poor man brought the master's judgment on his own head. Covenant-keepers should learn this lesson well: do not become indebted to covenant-breakers. "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail" (Deut. 28:43-44). When God periodically collects His debts from covenant-breakers in history, all those obligated to them or dependent on them feel the economic pain, including covenant-keepers.(2)
Representative Forgiveness There was only one reasonable hope for the unjust steward: his kinsman-redeemer. Legally, he was still the head of his household, but economically his kinsman-redeemer was in authority. Only if someone possessing legitimate authority would show mercy on his behalf could he escape. There were only two ways for the kinsman-redeemer to help: 1) pay off the debt; 2) offer to replace the steward in prison. This much is sure: the poor debtor's fate was not in his own hands. He required mercy to escape: from the master or from his kinsman-redeemer.
When God granted the grace of additional time to fallen mankind, He thereby also granted the grace of time to the creation, which was (and remains) under man's lawful authority. The covenant's hierarchical authority structure remained (and remains) in place. Fallen man still owes the restitution payment to God; nature is still under God's authority through man, and therefore is under God's curse on man (Rom. 8:19-22). Fallen man is told to treat those under his authority with mercy analogous to the mercy shown by God to fallen man. What is the evidence of God's mercy? A system of representative blood sacrifice.
Why did God require animal sacrifices? What had the animals done to deserve this? Biblically, the answer is simple: they fell with their commander, Adam. Their legal representative fell, and they came under a curse. This is why certain animals could serve as sacrificial offerings acceptable to God. The animal had to be slain before it was placed on the altar. This symbolized the death of a cursed being, fallen man. After death comes fire with salt.(3) The sacrifice announced symbolically: "Either the dead animal roasts in history or else the dead sinner roasts in eternity." In order to preserve man's relationship with God, man must offer sacrifice. Old Covenant man had to offer animal sacrifices. These sacrifices also preserved the animal world's relationship with God. The sacrificed animals represented both the animal world and fallen man's world.
The animals came under God's judgment when Adam did. When God annulled the debts of all those who will ever come representatively under the debt protection of His Son Jesus Christ, He also annulled the sacrificial system that had previously governed His set-apart covenant people. Animals today need no representative sacrifices by other animals, since their debts, like the debts of God's covenant people, have been paid representatively by Jesus Christ. When covenant-keeping men's debts were forgiven, so were the debts of the animal world, debts that had been paid representatively from Abel's day by the sacrifice of certain animals. This debt cancellation took place definitively with the crucifixion of Christ and finally with the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.
There can be no mercy without sacrifice. God's mercy to mankind as a whole is demonstrated in his willingness to sacrifice His Son, a perfect man.(4) Men's mercy to the animal kingdom as a whole under the Mosaic system was demonstrated by the Israelites' willingness to sacrifice their own blemish-free animals. The fact that God was willing to sacrifice His Son testifies to His protection of mankind. Similarly, covenant-keeping men's willingness to sacrifice their most valuable animals testified to their hierarchical obligation to protect the creation. God's required sacrifices are testimonies to His mercy. When men refuse to offer God's mandatory sacrifices, they become progressively merciless.(5) In the New Covenant, the blood sacrifices are no more. There is only one sacrifice: the death of Jesus Christ (Heb. 9:12). But all men are required by God to acknowledge this sacrifice: verbally, ritually, ethically, and financially, i.e., the tithe.
Man's debt to God was not forgiven under the Old Covenant economy; its repayment was only deferred. In a sense, the sacrifices could at most meet the required "interest payments" to God; they did not repay the principal. Analogously, whenever Israel quit paying because of her rebellion, these missed payments were added to the principal owed. Israel's debt to God grew ever-larger.(6) Finally, in A.D. 70, God called in the debt.(7) Israel went bankrupt publicly. "Forgive us our debts" (Matt. 6:12) is no idle phrase. The presence of the required sacrifices in the Mosaic economy testified to the continuing presence of the debt in God's account books, and also to each man's need to repay God in the future. The cosmic Creditor will eventually demand repayment of everything owed to Him. On that final day of reckoning, every person will have to produce one of two things: sufficient funds to repay his debt (impossible) or evidence that he had already accepted the generosity of the Kinsman-Redeemer who had repaid his debt. At the final judgment, the books are forever closed. So is the exit from the ultimate debtor's prison.
By forgiving a sin against us, we symbolically and legally forgive a debt owed to God through us. This is why one version of the Lord's prayer says "forgive us our sins" (Luke 11:4), while the parallel in Matthew (the former tax collector) says "forgive us our debts" (Matt. 6:12).(8) By extending forgiveness as God's representative agents, we show God's mercy to God's debtors in God's name: "as we forgive our debtors." Offering up a scarce economic resource to God as a sacrificial offering is economically the same as forgiving a debt legally owed to us.
Consider the words of Jesus, the long-awaited representative who offered up Himself to God as a holy sacrifice: the ultimate Kinsman-Redeemer. He prayed to God from the cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots" (Luke 23:34). He legally annulled this horrendous sin for those who had truly acted out of ignorance -- most obviously, the Roman guards who gambled for His clothing. His death and His words annulled these specific debts to God the Father. These men had sinned against God the Father by sinning against Jesus. When He forgave them, He did so as the judicial victim. The principle of victim's rights allows such forgiveness.(9) He thereby also forgave them on His Father's account, as God's legal heir and representative agent.
The forfeited value of a sacrifice made to God symbolizes two things: 1) God's payment of His own Son, the Messiah, and 2) the patience that we have shown to those who had sinned against us. We are stewards, not owners. When we forgive others, we offer up a sacrifice to God: extending grace to sinners by forfeiting whatever they legally owed to us.(10) Of course, we are gaining heavenly resources by doing this. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" (Matt. 6:19-20).(11)
Seek Nothing in Return God has forgiven us. We are to forgive others. This has to do with sin. But does it include debt? Are we literally to forgive all debts owed to us? In another passage, Jesus indicated that this is the case. "For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:32-35).
This is a hard saying: hard to understand and hard to obey. When we deposit money in a bank, we lend to the bank. The bank lends to others. Are we never to get our money back? The parable of the talents indicates otherwise. The steward who buried his coin was rebuked by the master. "Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury" (Matt. 25:27). The steward was not told to lend the master's money to the bankers and then forgive the debt. He was told that he should have collected interest on the master's behalf. Then what did Jesus mean, "lend, hoping for nothing again"?
He meant that we are to make charity loans to desperate people for God's sake, not our own. In the Mosaic Covenant, interest payments on such charitable loans to brothers in the covenant was prohibited (Ex. 22:25). The New Covenant has broadened this classification. Those outside the confessional brotherhood are entitled to interest-free loans and the forgiveness of debt in a crisis.
Then who has enough money to give money to all of those in need? Only God. A human lender will run out of money very fast: more demand at zero price than supply. If every person with money must loan to every poor man without money, the debt market will disappear fast. If poverty constitutes a moral claim on capital, there will soon be no capital. Without capital, poverty will become universal. Did Jesus call for universal poverty? No. God gives us capital; we are supposed to increase it.
If capital is to be preserved and increased, the lender will have to allocate his money based on considerations other than the mere poverty of the borrower. But he will also have to allocate it based on considerations other than an interest return. He will have to make judgments about people's reasons for needing a loan and their ability to put the assets to productive use. In short, he must substitute moral evaluation for interest rate considerations. The righteous poor man is more deserving than the unrighteous poor man. He is also more likely to repay the principal. But interest is still prohibited. The Mosaic law on this point has not been annulled. On the contrary, it has been broadened to include those outside the covenant.
We are to increase the capital that God has given us. That which we use as our investment capital is to be expanded, and expanded greatly. But we must do this only on one assumption: we are acting on God's behalf. If we act autonomously, we sin. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" (Matt. 6:19-20). In our business dealings, we are to be wise investors who seek a high return: ten talents from five, four from two. But we are not to abandon mercy. When someone in our debt falls into arrears through no fault of his own and asks for more time, we are to honor this request. Our success as producers is to increase our success as givers.
A huge sum of money can be given away systematically only through the establishment of a bureaucracy. This usually leads to the capture of the capital by salaried, formally educated bureaucrats who are hostile to the free market that led to its creation.(12) Rare is the donor who practices charity throughout his years as an accumulator of capital.(13) It takes practice to give money away. This is why rich men rarely succeed as donors. They know how to amass capital; they have no practice in giving it away.
The Debt Pyramid The charitable loan is a top-down loan. It is extended from the richer to the less rich. Those with greater knowledge of money and how to accumulate it make loans to those with less knowledge. The owners of capital make risk calculations, knowing that they may not be repaid. They do not depend on income derived from these extensions of charitable debt. In fact, the Bible tells them not to become dependent on income from charitable debt: no interest rate. Those with greater economic authority are in control of the debt structure. They extend credit in the full knowledge that they are dealing with subordinates who possess less knowledge about wealth and its accumulation.
The debt pyramid of the parable is a top-down structure. The rich man had lent a great deal of money to the steward. He was rich enough to forgive the steward. He thereby granted a large gift to the steward. But the steward refused to extend the same mercy to the poor man whose money was not enough to make a difference to the steward.
Had the steward extended credit to other poor people? Had he become a money-lender to the poor? Was he seeking an interest return from charitable loans? This is what seems to be the case. He had not made a business loan to one of his peers. He had not become an investor in some profit-seeking venture. He had lent money to a poor man. Not only was he not to expect an interest return, he was to lend, hoping nothing in return, Jesus warned elsewhere. He had no money of his own. He was too deeply in debt to his master. He was technically bankrupt. After the master revoked the gift and called in the loan, he was legally bankrupt. This parable warns that this is the condition of every man in relation to God: technical bankruptcy leading to legal bankruptcy apart from the intervention of the kinsman-redeemer.
Business Loans
The charitable loan is a top-down loan. A business loan in the modern economy is different. First, the huge accumulation of capital in the modern world has been made possible by the loans and investments of millions of people, especially through their pension funds. Middle class people make loans to big organizations that in turn make loans to large companies, consumers, and anyone else who promises to repay and whose credit worthiness is acceptable. They also make investments. Capitalists are only rarely rich people. They are either dependent on income from these loans or will be upon retirement.
Capitalism's loans are therefore bottom-up loans. They are commercial endeavors. Millions of people enter the credit markets in seek of a positive return. The web of debt envelops the whole economy, which in turn becomes dependent on contractual repayment. This web is complex beyond calculation. The survival of a high-division-of-labor society is dependent on the permanent maintenance of this credit-debt structure. If the web fails through widespread default, the society fails. The division of labor contracts. Men's income disappears.(14)
Second, the modern debt pyramid is based on fractional reserve banking. The banking system makes a promise to lenders: they may withdraw their funds at any time. But if even a small percentage of depositors do this in the absence of deposits made by others, the banking system faces a crisis. It has to call in loans. Businesses cannot pay off these loans. The banks stop making new loans. A wave of bankruptcies spreads through the economy. This produces a recession. It can produce a depression. Then the central bank steps in any buys assets in order to reinflate the money supply. A new wave of inflation and debt begins.
In a debt-based society, the failure of repayment at the bottom -- the banks -- threatens the entire capital structure. From bottom to top, the inverted pyramid of debt collapses. Contracts written in terms of the older economic conditions become unenforceable. The enforcement of debt contracts leads only to universal bankruptcy. This, of course, reflects fallen man's legal condition before God.
The more extensive the economy's reliance on debt, the more devastating the collapse. The more widespread the use of money substitutes, the more deflationary the collapse. The more deflationary the collapse, the greater the shrinking of the division of labor. Society's wealth disappears because the economic output provided by the division of labor disappears. When contracts become unenforceable in the courts, the rule of law disappears if men are not self-governed and merciful.
Conclusion The parable of the unjust steward reveals the reason why we are required by God to forgive others: we are forgiven by God. Their sins against us are ultimately sins against God. We are representatives of God, made in His image and adopted by His grace. This is point two of the biblical covenant model: representation. Point two also includes hierarchy. When we forgive the sinner in history for the sin, God forgives him in history for the sin. (We do not have the authority to forgive him in eternity.) If we receive forgiveness from God and then refuse to forgive, we are insisting that the unforgiven sinner owes his debt to us rather than to God. We thereby act on our own behalf, as if we had not been representatives of God. We insist on our autonomy.
Mercy is a positive sanction, but it implies a negative sanction. God's common grace in history implies a negative future sanction for continued disobedience. That is the message of this parable. The debtor's obligation accumulates. The threat of a demand for repayment hangs over him. Paul cited Proverbs 25:21-22: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head" (Rom. 12:20). That is why we are to pray, "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).
The top priority in this parable is to obtain and retain our judicial status as forgiven sinners. This requires our acceptance of others who need forgiveness of debts of all kinds, including money. God has extended His kingdom in history through us. We have made loans, placing others in our debt. But this places them in God's debt. He forgives us; therefore, as His agents, we are to forgive those who owe God through us.
Does God's spiritual forgiveness mandate our economic forgiveness? If so, this would destroy all commercial lending. It would make impossible the allocation of risk to those entrepreneurs who want varying degrees of it, which is what commercial loans do. The text indicates that the forgiveness is like for like: God forgives us spiritually; we forgive others spiritually. If God forgives us an economic debt, such as an unpaid vow, then we are to do the same.
When we lend to those in need, our priority should not be economic profit. Someone has fallen on hard times. We help him now, so that others, by God's grace, will help us if this ever happens to us. Lending to the poor is like an insurance policy. But the context of this passage is desperate need, not consumer lending or commercial lending. It is the kind of relationship we have with God. He is not our partner; He is our master. In our relations with subordinates, we are to show mercy because God has shown mercy to us.
Footnotes:
1. Ray R. Sutton, "Whose Conditions for Charity?" Theonomy: An Informed Response, edited by Gary North (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), ch. 9.
2. Anyone who doubts this should consider carefully what happens to debtors and everyone who sells goods and services to debtors during a deflationary economic depression. Of course, if the deflation is so severe that no one can pay, then the debtor escapes in a universal moratorium on repayment.
3. "And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt" (Lev. 2:13). "All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the LORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the LORD unto thee and to thy seed with thee" (Num. 18:19). "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (Mark 9:47-49).
4. Jesus did not die to save all men from hell, but His death provided the legal basis of the gift of life in history: common grace. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 1.
5. The animism and the pantheism of the modern ecology movement are denials of the God of the Bible and His required system of sacrifice. If this movement's stipulations are enforced by international civil law, we can expect tyranny on an international scale. Men will seek to overturn the Bible's hierarchical system: God> man> nature. Mankind will be sacrificed to nature. For a defense of just this sort of sacrifice, see Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
6. In real estate contracts, this is called a backward-walking mortgage: the missed monthly mortgage payment is added to the principal owed, so the subsequent payments must be larger. The national debt of the United States by 1999 is well advanced into a backward-walking phase.
7. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Tyler, Texas: Dominion Press, [1987] 1997); Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
8. Protestant churches that place heavy emphasis on liturgy (i.e., sacrifice-oriented) often pray "forgive us our trespasses." This is closest to the covenantal focus of Leviticus: boundaries and their violation.
9. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
10. We can still lawfully ask for economic restitution, but we can also forgive this payment or any penalty payment.
11. Chapter 13, above.
12. The richest men in early twentieth-century America -- John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Andrew Carnegie, and to a lesser extent, Henry Ford -- set up charitable foundations that were immediately captured by humanists who had an anti-free market agenda. Many were lawyers, and they wanted economic control through the State, not free market competition.
13. The best example I know of is William Volker, who created the Volker charities. He tithed from the age of twelve. See Herbert Cornuelle, Mr. Anonymous: The Story of William Volker (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1951). Volker's money led to the creation of many libertarian organizations, including the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). I was employed by the Volker Fund in the summer of 1963 and by FEE in 1971-73.
14. This is why the world is threatened so greatly by the imminent breakdown of computers. Lenders will default. When this become obvious, there will be a rush to cash -- the recalling of loans by the masses. This cash is not available. The loans will not be repaid.
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