…the kingdom of Heaven has been compared to a man, a king, who desired to take account with his slaves. And he having begun to reckon, one debtor of ten thousand talents was brought near to him. But he not having any to repay, the lord commanded him to be sold, also his wife and children, and all things, as much as he had, even to pay back. Then having fallen down, the slave bowed the knee to him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay all to you. And being filled with pity, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the loan. But having gone out, that slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he choked him, saying, Pay me whatever you owe. Then having fallen down at his feet, his fellow slave begged him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay all to you. But he would not, but having gone away he threw him into prison until he should pay back the amount owing. But his fellow slaves, seeing the things happening, they were greatly grieved. And having come they reported to their lord all the things happening. Then having called him near, his lord said to him, Wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt, since you begged me. Ought you not also to have mercy on your fellow slave, as I also had mercy? And being angry, his lord delivered him up to the tormentors until he pay back all that debt to him. So also My heavenly Father will do to you unless each of you from your hearts forgive his brother their deviations. (Matthew 18:23-35)
Until we begin to seek to live from the Word we won’t be aware of what it is within us, or rather in within our lower nature, that stands opposed to having the life of heaven more fully present. For it is only when we begin to make spiritual things a priority for our lives, that we become aware of those desires and attitudes, those fixed and habitual ways of thinking, and beliefs that we are so attached to – which seek to keep us from moving into higher things.
The parables of the kingdom of heaven are a wonderful guide for us in coming to understand what the experience of making an effort as if of ourselves in spiritual things, will be like, and is like. And so today we come to the question of debt, what is owed by whom to whom and of how this concept of indebtedness impacts on they way we live and regard others. So we read that the kingdom of heaven is like a man, a king in fact, who desired to take account with his slaves. This statement immediately places before us the idea that the kingdom of heaven is like the kind of relationship that a king has with his subjects. It’s a relationship of accountability, one that is filled with responsibilities. The subjects are accountable to the king for the benefits they receive from the him, and the king also has a responsibility which is that of calling his subjects to account for what they have received.
Again, like other parables, this seems, at least on the surface, to tell us that we a liable for some fairly harsh penalties if we can’t deliver what the kingdom requires of us. We could ask, What is it to risk all that we have if we are unable to settle our accounts? What is it we must settle? Will a loving God who cares for us really see to it that we lose everything if we don’t pay what we owe? How are we to understand this? Such difficulties in the literal sense of the Word can be something of a shock to our established view of things. And they are meant to shock us and so we have two choices in how we might respond. For there will be some states that find that the shock will be too much and will turn away from the Text, but for others these shocks serve to create questions in the mind which need reconciling. And so driven by this need for the Text to make sense to us, we look again to see how these difficulties can be connected with the spiritual concepts and realities that it offers. This requires that we put aside our own ideas, prejudices, and preconceptions in our contact with the Word. We always need to take care when engaging with it that we don’t reject something because it doesn’t fit with the ideas or beliefs that we are attached to. The Word contains the living truth, and if we are not careful, any preconceptions that we bring to the Text can so easily shut us off from the deep work that the Lord is looking to perform in our lives. It’s important that we understand that we are not in a position to judge the Word, but that it, in a real sense, judges what is in us. And in the seeing of what it offers and shows us about the nature self and the nature the Lord, we are called on to act – to respond to the truths that we understand…
For truths once heard, seen and understood make us responsible. Our past, our upbringing, our friends, our education or lack of it, our family, our government, the influences of society, our church, or religion, all these are factors in our lives, but none of them take away or diminish the personal responsibility we each have from the Lord to act in freedom from our understanding of truth.
But we don’t naturally warm to the idea of responsibility – in fact, the very word itself can elicit feelings of resistance, and this resistance is of a spiritual origin. In spiritual matters, the last thing the native sense of self desires is to take up responsibilities in regards to growth and development. It offers every excuse and impulse to put off and deny, or it suggest that this responsibly can be shifted onto others, or onto external factors or situations that we have no control over. But the fascinating thing about this tendency of the proprium to minimise or deny personal responsibility for our inner lives is that while it may look to diminish our own responsibilities, it is far less forgiving when it comes to what it claims is the responsibilities of others. And of course, this dynamic is clearly illustrated in the parable we are looking at today.
And being filled with pity, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the loan. But having gone out, that slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii. And seizing him, he choked him, saying, Pay me whatever you owe.
But let’s come back to this idea of truths making us responsible and look at the word responsible in slightly different way. Truths, once understood, carry with them a sense of needing to then apply them to our life, and it is in this way that we can think of truth as making us response-able, – they enable us to be able-to-respond. In other words, if the truths that we have are genuinely spiritual then they are able to empower us to respond in a way which promotes what is good, that is, which promotes the application of the Word as the Lord into our life. This can be so liberating once seen; as soon as truth strikes us in a way that impacts on our consciousness, it empowers us – we become response enabled. For in the moment that we really see a truth we are given options, we see what our native habitual sense of self might choose and what the Word would have us choose instead.
This is the basis for cultivating a deeper sense of spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom has nothing to do with being free to do whatever we want. It has to do with our ability to freely choose what is good. Often we think that exercising spiritual freedom is like having good on the one side and evil on the other, with us sort of in the middle with the freedom to choose one of them. But this is not quite how it is. What the doctrines for Spiritual Christianity actually say is that in and of ourselves we are totally self-centred and have no ability to choose what is good. That the inclination of our natural man or proprium is always towards the appearances of the senses which tells it that is the source of its life and so makes God secondary or subservient to it. Our natural mind is immersed in this love and therefore good it is not presented as something it might choose any more than a dog chooses to be a dog. Rather the choice or exercise of spiritual freedom is a choice to act on our understanding of truth to resist this native sense of self and what it loves. It is this resistance that is the doing of what is good, for it is the doing of what the Word offers us and the Word is the Lord, and the Lord is goodness Itself.
If we choose to exercise our spiritual freedom, then evils, that is, the loves of this native self, are progressively dealt with and held at bay. If we don’t exercise this freedom then we remain immersed in our natural state of life which carries us on the path to becoming more enslaved in the blindness of the native self and the suffering that ensues when it looks to external forces as the source for its happiness. So, the picture is not of good on one side and evil on the other; rather it’s a case of our sense of self being immersed in evil influences and false ideas but always having before us a ladder, which, if we were to look up to the truths we have available to us at any given time, we would be able to begin to ascend.
The exercise of spiritual freedom always, without exception, leads upwards to what is heavenly and whilst this power and freedom to act is from the Lord, we experience it very much as something that we do. The choice always feels as if it is our own. This is what spiritual freedom is. It is the freedom to act from truth as if of ourselves. So our ability to choose good is intricately tied to our understanding of the truths that we engage with from the Word and are response enabled by what their light shows us.
All truths, that are genuine, are how the Lord makes His presence as good with us. We are conjoined with Him when we exercise the freedom they provide to go against the natural mind’s habitual patterns of thinking and feeling. This conjunction is how we are given a new sense of self, a new heavenly proprium from the Lord. This is how we are set free, Jesus said;
“You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32)
Spiritual freedom is from the love of eternal life. Into this love and its delight no one comes but the man who thinks that evils are sins, and consequently does not will them, and at the same time looks to the Lord. As soon as a man does so, he is in this freedom; for no one has the power not to will evils because they are sins and so to refrain from doing them, unless from a more interior or higher freedom which is from a more interior or higher love. At first this freedom does not appear to be freedom, and yet it is; and later it does so appear, when the man acts from freedom itself according to reason itself, in thinking, willing, speaking and doing what is good and true. This freedom increases as natural freedom decreases and becomes subservient; and it conjoins itself with rational freedom which it purifies. Everyone may come into this freedom provided he is willing to think that there is an eternal life, and that the temporary delight and bliss of a life in time are but as a fleeting shadow compared with the never-ending delight and bliss of a life in eternity. This a man can think if he wishes, because he has rationality and liberty, and because the Lord, from whom these two faculties are derived, continually gives him the ability to do so. (Divine Providence 73{6&7})