What If Your Marriage Runs On Undeserved Kindness

Forgetfulness can freeze a home even when the heat is sitting five feet away. We start with a simple firewood story and then hold it up to a hard spiritual reality: many of us have received mercy and grace from God, yet we still treat our spouse like a debtor who must pay up now.

We walk through Matthew 18 and the parable of the unmerciful servant to define mercy and grace in plain terms and show how quickly “I’ve been forgiven” can turn into “I have rights.” From there, we connect Luke 18 to the pride and self-righteousness that block humility, making it nearly impossible to give what we refuse to remember we’ve been given. If you’ve ever thought, “This is unacceptable” or “They owe me,” this conversation puts language to what’s happening in your heart.

Then we get practical for Christian marriage: when your spouse’s sin affects you, Hebrews 4 points you to the throne of grace where God promises mercy and grace in your time of need. We tie forgiveness to relationship, revisit Jesus’ “seventy times seven,” and use Psalm 103 to challenge the habits that keep couples stuck in grudges and emotional distance. The hope is real: the warmth of gospel-centered love is re-obtainable when we stop keeping score and start re-gifting what God supplies.

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Transcript

Welcome And Firewood Picture

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Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now, here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

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Every year, our family spends hours and hours cutting down trees and chopping them into firewood to heat our home for the winter. Now we have really enjoyed doing this together as a family, but since my accident a few years ago, where I pretty much ruined my elbow, I've not been able to run a chainsaw. So my dad has graciously helped us in our time of need. He's come over many times to ensure that we've got enough wood for the winter. The kids have it all stacked up on the front porch, there's a big pile out back, and lately the temperatures have been getting pretty cold at night, if you haven't noticed. And you can bet we've got the stove going. It heats our whole house. Because of my dad's generosity and time and labor, my family's gonna be warm all winter long. Now imagine if my daughter came to me and said, Dad, I'm kind of cold. And I looked at the wood stove and I shrugged my shoulders. I said to her, You know what, there's no wood to burn, so I guess you're just gonna have to suffer. I forget to look outside and remember all that wood that's been provided for us for this heating season by my dad. Now imagine my forgetfulness went on all winter long. Whew, what a couple cold months that would be.

The Unmerciful Servant Parable

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You might be thinking, okay, come on, who's gonna forget that they have something that's gonna meet their family's needs? Well, let us tell you a story today that might surprise you. It's one that you're gonna find in Matthew chapter 18, and maybe you've heard it before. It's about a man who had an enormous need. That need got met, but he was so forgetful he immediately forgot he'd been provided for. So here we're gonna pick up in verse 23 of Matthew 18.

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It says, Therefore, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions. He couldn't pay, so his master ordered that he be sold along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned to pay the debt. The man falls down before his master and he begs him, Please be patient with me, I will pay it all. And then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him. He forgave his debt. But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and he demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and he begged him for a little more time. Be patient with me, he said. I will pay, he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn't wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full. When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened.

Mercy And Grace Explained

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If you look at the heading of this passage in your Bible, it probably says something like, The parable of the unmerciful servant. But truly, this is both a story of mercy and grace. We could call it the parable of mercy and grace unrecognized. Many people actually assume that mercy and grace are the same thing. And we're going to do some talking about those two things today here on Vows to Keep Radio. Mercy and grace do come from the same source, but what's the difference between the two? Here's a definition we want you to take note of today.

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Again, mercy is not getting what we do deserve, and grace is actually getting what we don't deserve. Here in this parable, we see that Jesus is teaching the mercy that the King showed by not collecting the payment that was due to him. But he actually went one step further because not only did he not collect his payment, he actually had the opportunity to sell the man and his family, along with everything in his life, just to collect what he could of that debt. That is the mercy we see in this story. We see grace displayed as the king actually has pity on him. He literally releases this man to complete freedom. Something that the man did not deserve. You see, grace is extended kindness to the unworthy, and mercy is that deliverance from judgment we might actually deserve. Here's a lifelong principle I'm pretty sure you can relate with. We can't give away what we don't have. I can't give my daughter heat if I don't have the wood to start the fire. But here's the lesson we're going to focus on today. A second principle of life, if you will. We can't give away what we don't understand or don't remember that we have. I can't give my daughter heat if I forget that there's wood not five feet away on the front porch. I can't give her what she needs if I don't take what's been given and put it to use.

Forgetfulness Turns Into Entitlement

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This parable from Matthew chapter 18 really could easily be adapted to each and every one of our lives. Put in our name where it talks about the servant, and put in the name of God where it talks about the king. Here's my paraphrase with my name in it. God brought his creation before him. Tracy stood there at his throne, and she was reminded in her heart that she was in great debt. Her sin racked up until it bowed her down. She knew according to God's word that the wages of sin was death, a debt she begged to not have to pay. God was a just God, and he told her that sin had a heavy price that required justice. She begged him again to have mercy on her, to be patient with her, to cancel the payment required because she could never pay it, not in a million years. Then the master had pity on Tracy and released her to live in freedom, forgiving all of her debt. Tracy rejoiced in her heart, then remembered that David had offended her earlier in the week. She rushed to him and commanded that he pay the penalty immediately. I saw myself in this parable, and now I challenge you to see yourself in this parable. Because this is a story about you. This is a story about me. This is a story about your marriage. This is a story about our God and what he's done for us and what we should do in response. Really, it's a story about the gospel good news that explains our spiritual inheritance. It's a story about the enormous debt of our sin and the gracious and merciful King above all kings who has paid our debt for us with his own blood. It's a story about how our forgetfulness of what's been done for us causes us to feel that we have certain rights. I see that in the unmerciful servant. His actions show what's in his heart.

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And that's many of us. We feel like we own the right to things. So immediately after leaving the king in a complete life-changing freedom, he goes to someone who owes him a small amount of money and he demands instant payment. Picture this. I don't like this. This is too much. This is hurting me. This is irritating me. This is unacceptable. It's unsafe for me to be here. They forget they have been forgiven a huge debt. Instead, they begin to demand their right to get before they give. Their right to be the judge in the situation and to demand retribution. They demand payment, forgetting that they've been given mercy.

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This is an attitude that we've all taken against our spouse. It's an attitude called self-righteousness, and Jesus addresses this in the New Testament repeatedly, and it's usually in reference to the Pharisees. Turn with me to the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector in Luke 18. A few short verses that can teach us a lot. It says, Then Jesus told this story to some who had great confidence in their own righteousness and scorned everyone else, and yes, that is you and I on any given day. He says, Two men went to the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed this prayer. I fast twice a week, and I give you a tenth of my income. But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, Oh God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner. Jesus says this: I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

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Do you see the mercy in this story? God gives the tax collector justification. He can now stand right before God. Do you see the grace in this story? God gives the tax collector full access to his glory. All that that entails, his presence, his indwelling Holy Spirit, and all that his presence will work in this man's life for the rest of his life. He gives this man grace. He gives him undeserved kindness. We receive grace and humility knowing we don't deserve any of his blessings. Then in humility, we give that same grace away. Don't miss this connection here, because pride is the opposite of humility, and none of us like to think of ourselves as prideful, but it's that pride that blinds us to the grace we've been given. Pride spiritually handcuffs you and me, making it impossible to either give or receive.

Run To The Throne For Help

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Humility, on the other hand, keeps us pliable to know the gift that is before us. Humility enables us to unwrap it and then re-gift it to our spouse, expecting nothing in return. Again, we can't give away what we don't remember or understand that we've been given. We also can't give away something we believe that we have the right to. Are you a conduit of grace and mercy to your spouse? Have you opened the gift and are you ready to give it away? Today might be the day to remember all that wood you've got sitting on the front porch, just waiting to be carried in and put in the stove. Today might be the day you remember your position in front of the king, begging that you be released from the payment of your debt. Today might be the day you recognize the provisions of the free gift of grace you have as a child of God. And that includes all the promises in God's word. They belong to you. Here's the amazing thing that we want you to grasp today. Mercy and grace are there for the taking right here, right now. Right in the middle of that same fight you've been having with your spouse, they are both available. Mercy and grace there for you when she cuts you down with her words or when he breaks his promise again. Mercy and grace there for the taking when you decide whether to forgive again or not. So where do we find these resources that sometimes seem so elusive? Mercy and grace are both located in the same place and they never take a vacation, they never change addresses. Here they are for you to get any time you need. Hebrews 4, 14 through 16.

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So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy. We will find grace to help us when we need it most. When you need God's mercy and grace the most, is it in your darkest sin or your spouse's? It's no secret you will be affected by your spouse's sin, and you're going to have to respond to it. What will you do? Will you demand in rage that they never do it again? Will you shun them with some shame? Will you plead them to change their ways? Even in ignoring their sin, you're choosing to do something. You're choosing to leave them in that pit that you, as a tool in God's hands, can actually help them to get out of? Or will you choose to run to the throne of your gracious God and get what you need from him so that you can give it to your spouse? When we read to you a few minutes ago the parable of the unmerciful servant from Matthew chapter 18, we actually left out the first couple of verses so we could get right into the story, but now that you've had some time to process what these characters in the story did, and maybe even the why behind their choices, let's pick back up at the very beginning of the parable. This story starts out by saying, Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answers, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven. So don't miss the relationship here. Mercy and grace are about forgiveness and relationship. They're about love being put on display in beautiful unity between us and God, between us and others.

Remember Benefits And Forgive Again

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And Jesus' answer to Peter's question here in Matthew chapter 18 about how many times we should forgive, he's actually teaching us about himself. He helps us to grasp that he is a gracious and merciful King whose love for us compels us to forgive those who are indebted to us. Mercy and grace are extended to you and I today because of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. Without his sacrifice, we wouldn't have either. Just like it says in the Lord's Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. So here's what I've been wrestling with lately. Go along with me on this one for a minute. Why is it that I can go to church year after year, even decade after decade, read my Bible regularly, and yet sometimes still not understand my position in Christ, what he's accomplished for me, and then how to live it out. Why? This is my question. I see this as a baby Christian problem. I've been with the Lord long enough to have grown and changed, and now I should be on mission, yet I sometimes stomp my own growth with false beliefs. Have I stopped thinking that I need God's mercy? Do I not see my sin as sin anymore? Do I downplay it and say, well, it's not as bad as my spouse's, so therefore it's okay? Do I truly forget the payment that was made? Am I so spiritually blind? Do I believe I'm good in my filthy self-righteousness and that's a firm foundation to stand on? Am I really believing those things? I would say yes, sometimes all of these are true and more. And I think you might say the same thing. That's why we need scriptures like Psalm 103. Let me read part of it to you. It says, Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your sin and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. Yes, Lord, we choose to thank you for those things today. When I am forgetful of God's blessings, here's my question: Can we, with our beliefs and actions, distance ourselves from God's grace and mercy? You bet we can. I don't step out from under the umbrella of these provisions. They're always there. I simply don't remember to look up, to see their benefits, and then give thanks.

Rebuilding Marriage With Gospel Love

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When we forget that that umbrella is there, we become blinded to our own sin and the cost of it, that we appoint ourselves as the judge and the juror of our spouse's sin. We hold grudges, we withhold forgiveness. We try to punish them by withholding unity all the while, thinking that these things are gonna force them to change, or at least we'll let them suffer a little bit for the suffering that I've had to endure. Guess what, friends? That is not God's economy. That's not what's best for your marriage. That's not God's reaction to us and our sin. Here's how God works. We're the prodigal son who's wandered away to self-indulgence. We revel in our sin. We often don't even consider the cost of it. God the Father gets our attention by opening our eyes to the depravity of our sinful condition, and we come crawling back home, only to be met on the road by an open-armed, smiling, crying daddy who draws us into relationship as true sons, heirs to the full benefits of the family, the fattened calf and all. Max Lakato says, Mercy gave the prodigal son a second chance. Grace gave him a feast. So are you ready to give your spouse a second chance? Maybe a third, maybe a four hundred and ninetyeth chance. That's what seventy times seven is. Will you look at your savior in the face today and see the love that he has for you? So that you're equipped to provide that same mercy to your husband. And when you've extended an olive branch to them, are you ready to prepare a feast of grace for your spouse? Will they be able to pull up a chair to sit down and dine on the grace you've given? Most couples fondly remember their honeymoon phase. Do you remember it? Some remember this time of abundance and for some it even dates back to their dating days. For others, the feast of love lasted one year, maybe two, or even five years after they got married. Just as all of the marriage naysayers had warned, the season passed. All the plates are empty, all the good it seems, has been eaten up. And now we're dining alone. The time of celebration is over. The salvation we have is what introduces mercy and grace into our lives, and we need it because every day we continue to sin. It's that equation that teaches us that his love for us is daily, it's never ending, and it is all-encompassing. That honeymoon phase was a period in time in which in our marriage we were we were providing that same kind of grace and mercy to our spouse, where they could just sit back and enjoy unconditional love and actually reflect it back to us as well. But here's where the story deviates for most Christian couples. They want to receive God's mercy and grace years and years after giving their heart to Christ, but they're no longer willing to provide that same unconditional love to their sinning spouse. The honeymoon phase officially dies at that point. Unknowingly, we don't even realize we've become the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18. So why do we need to extend mercy to our spouse? What happens when we do? What happens when we don't? Why does God give us grace? What would happen if God's grace disappeared from our lives? Why should you give grace to your spouse? What happens when you do that? What happens when you don't? Think about this in terms of your kids, your world, the culture in your home. When we don't use Christ's mercy and grace that He's given to us, it's like we throw it away. It's like we treat it as though there's no wood on the front porch.

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The marriage that you desire is actually re-obtainable. I want to tell you that today. It's not some season which is forever gone somewhere in your past, but rather it's a time in which we put on display an unconditional love which cannot be sourced out of our own wallet. We don't have the funds for that kind of love, but God gives us a never-ending bank account of mercy and grace from which to draw. This is how your marriage, 10 years from today, can still be shining brightly and even brighter. And your marriage is going to benefit from that bright light that's now shining because you're using the mercy and grace that God has extended to you for your spouse. But really, it's not even for your benefit in the end. If we look back at the Old Testament, God says to the Israelites over and over, I am forgiving your sins, I'm extending this mercy and grace to you for the sake of my name. We as a couple have the opportunity to shine the light of Christ to the world that is around us. We have the opportunity to shine the light of Christ between us. We become a representation of God, not only to a world that doesn't know him, but to a spouse who may have forgotten that God is a God of mercy and grace and no sin will ever separate them from him because they're under the blood of his covenant. And they may have gone to church for years and years and not truly grasped that concept, or maybe they've just forgotten that nothing can ever separate them from the love of God that's in Christ Jesus our Lord. They might be a forgetful sinner today, just like you are sometimes. And that thought that they're accepted in God may feel far off and actually unobtainable.

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In closing, there's one other person in the parable we read in Matthew 18 that we really haven't talked a lot about. But maybe you know this person. This is in verse 31. It says, When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. So they went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Now your spouse might be one of those observing servants, seeing your lack of Grace and mercy, and you know what, in their prayers each night, they're crying to the Lord with what you're doing. It might be the complete opposite, though. Maybe you're the one who's seeing a lack of mercy and grace in your spouse, and in your prayers at each night you're crying about what they're doing. Do you need that threat of your own grace being revoked in order to be a distributor of God's grace and mercy in your marriage? Man, let that not be you. God has put you in her life to remind her once again that she stands before her king every day with a giant debt she can never pay, and yet she stands in freedom in front of her king. You are the reminder that God has put love in her life. When she screams at you for one thing or the other, when she's harsh with you or unrepentant, you are the reminder of God's grace and mercy that she can't see because her sin is in the way. You're not the judge that points out the sin and delivers the punishment. Friends, you're the messenger whispering in your spouse's ear that he or she is forgiven and loved.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

We hope today on Vows to Keep Radio that we've given you many, many tools in your pocket to pull out for future use as we understand mercy and grace more and more. Let me quote in conclusion here Dr. David Jeremiah. In the story of Abraham, mercy withholds the knife from the heart of Isaac. Grace provides the lamb in the thicket. Mercy bandages the wounds of the Samaritan man beaten by the robbers. Grace covers the cost of his full recovery. Mercy hears the cry of the thief on the cross. Grace promises paradise that very day. Mercy converts Paul on the road to Damascus. Grace calls him to be the great apostle. Mercy keeps us out of hell. Grace takes us to heaven. Mercy withholds from us what we deserve. Grace gives us what we do not deserve. And you know what? When we're thankful for both, we can open that gift again and again and re-gift these precious resources every day in our marriage.

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We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to those who are already giving to this ministry each month. Did you know that Vows to Keep does more than a weekly radio program? We offer biblical marriage counseling for couples as well, regardless of a couple's financial ability. Consider times where you have received help with no ability to repay. This is the case for many couples who come to Vows2Keep. If you've derived benefit from this ministry, we would like to ask for your help to sustain and further extend the blessing for godly marriages. In order to continue to do what we're doing, we would like to ask for your support of$25 a month. To donate securely today, click the donate button at vows2keep.com. This program is sponsored by Vows to Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.