Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 18:28

"But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, who owed him a hundred shillings: and he laid hold on him, and took [him] by the throat, saying, Pay what thou owest." — Matthew 18:28 (ASV)

Which owed him an hundred pence — Here the calculation is simpler than in Matthew 18:24. The “hundred pence” are a hundred Roman denarii, which was a hundred days’ wages for a laborer or soldier, and enough to provide a meal for 2,500 men (John 6:7).

There is a significant truthfulness in the choice of this sum that has perhaps been overlooked. If our Lord had been seeking a simple rhetorical contrast between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, it would have been easy to select some tiny coin—like the denarius, the as, or the quadrans—as the amount of the fellow servant’s debt. But to the fishermen of Galilee, the “hundred pence” would have seemed like a truly significant sum. When they came to interpret the parable, they would thus be led to feel that it recognized how the offenses people commit against their brothers can, in themselves, be many and grievous enough. It is only when compared with their sins against God that they sink into absolute insignificance.

He laid hands on him — We are shocked, and are meant to be shocked, by the brutal outrage with which the creditor enforces his claim, but it was no doubt a painfully accurate picture of what the disciples had often witnessed, or perhaps even practiced. We are tempted to ask whether this really represents any aspect of the spiritual life. Can a man who has truly been justified and pardoned become so merciless? The experience of every age, and almost of every household, shows that this inconsistency is tragically common. The man is not consciously a hypocrite, but he is as yet “double minded” (James 1:8), and his baser self is not conquered. In the language of the later teaching of the New Testament, the man’s faith is not one that “worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6). He is justified, but not yet sanctified.