The Lost Sheep (Matt 18:10–14)

Matthew 18

“The Unforgiving Servant” by Claude Vignon (1629)

A Link to Matthew 18 (ESV)

The Lost Sheep (18:10–14)

Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Lost Sheep has a different setting from Luke’s. In Luke 15, Jesus tells this parable in response to the Pharisees, who are offended by his dining with sinners. In that case, the lost sheep represents an outsider being brought in. In contrast, here in the fourth major discourse of Matthew, the parable is meant for the disciples, and the wandering sheep is not an outsider but a member of the community who has strayed.

The scene in Matthew is framed by references to the “little ones,” the humble and vulnerable members of the community Jesus first mentions in verse 6, and Jesus begins with a warning on their behalf:

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (18:10).

The parable follows immediately afterward. A shepherd leaves ninety-nine sheep to find the one that has gone astray, and the Matthean conclusion from Matthew is unique. Jesus does not mention the rejoicing in heaven over a repenting sinner, as in Luke 15:7, but instead speaks about the Father’s will.

“So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (18:14).

This concluding line points to Ezekiel 34, where Yahweh issues a covenantal indictment against Israel’s shepherds for abandoning the flock’s most vulnerable.

“The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought” (Ezek 34:4).

The verdict is followed by a divine promise: Yahweh himself will do what those shepherds refused to do. In 34:16, he reverses the indictment of verse 4 term by term: the lost (τὸ ἀπολωλός) he will seek, the strayed (τὸ πλανώμενον) he will bring back. The language of Matthew 18:12–14 maps onto this pairing precisely: the sheep that “strays” (πλανηθῇ, v. 12) shares its root with τὸ πλανώμενον, and the little one who must not “perish” (ἀπόληται, v. 14) shares its root with τὸ ἀπολωλός. The shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine is not acting recklessly; he is doing exactly what Yahweh said he would do.

The community that gathers around Jesus, then, is the place where the vulnerable are sought and not turned away. To despise a little one is to repeat the failure of Ezekiel’s corrupt shepherds. To go after the one who has strayed is to act as the Father acts, which is the only posture available to those who have themselves been sought and found.

---

Seventy Times Seven (18:21–35)

Peter thought he was being generous. The rabbis taught that you should forgive someone three times. Peter doubled that and added one for good measure.

“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matt. 18:21, ESV).

Jesus’s response must have stunned him:

“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22, my translation).

The Greek phrase here is often translated “seventy-seven times,” but the literal reading is “seventy times seven.” The construction uses an adverb (ἑβδομηκοντάκις, “seventy times”) followed by the number seven (ἑπτά) with no conjunction between them—a grammatical pattern that indicates multiplication rather than addition. This reading unlocks a profound connection to Israel’s story that Jesus’s first audience would have immediately recognized.

The prophet Jeremiah had promised that Israel’s exile in Babylon would last seventy years (Jer. 25:11-12; 29:10). The people waited. They counted. When those seventy years ended, Daniel prayed for restoration (Dan. 9:2-3). But instead of announcing the exile’s end, the angel Gabriel delivered shocking news. The exile would not last seventy years but seventy weeks of years—seventy times seven, or four hundred ninety years (Dan. 9:24). Israel’s punishment had been multiplied because their sin remained unforgiven.

This background is what Jesus’s audience would have heard when he said “seventy times seven.” He was not merely telling Peter to forgive an impossible number of times. He was announcing that the long exile was finally over. The four hundred ninety years of waiting had come to an end. The age of forgiveness had arrived.

The parable that follows illustrates this new reality. A servant is forgiven an impossible debt—ten thousand talents, roughly two hundred thousand years of wages. Yet he refuses to forgive a fellow servant who owes him a mere hundred days’ wages. The king’s verdict is severe: the unforgiving servant loses everything.

Jesus’s warning is equally severe:

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matt. 18:35, ESV).

Those who have experienced the forgiveness that ends the exile cannot refuse to extend that same forgiveness to others. The vertical relationship with God and the horizontal relationship with our neighbor are inseparable. You do not get one without the other.

Jesus came to set the world to rights. Through his cross, he has forgiven our impossible debt. Now he calls us to participate in that great work of restoration by forgiving others as we have been forgiven. That sounds an awful lot like the Lord’s Prayer, doesn’t it?