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He taught them many things in parables

The Adverse Party (Mt 5:25.26)

Published since 06. Sep. 2025
Bible passages:
Mt 5:25.26
Categories:

"Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny."

Mt 5:25.26

After speaking of the necessity of reconciliation between brothers in the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord develops this fundamental idea and expands on it with the following little parable:

“Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny” (Matthew 5:25-26).

The incident

This parable is based on an incident from everyday life, as it was common in those days. The Lord alludes to a legal dispute between two parties, based on the Roman law in force in Israel at the time. If someone owed another person something, the creditor had the option of forcing his debtor to go to court with him, to "drag him before the court." If the court found him guilty, the debtor was imprisoned and kept there until he had paid the full debt. But conversely, there was also a way for the defendant to escape punishment after all: to arrange with his accuser, to reach an agreement with him while the latter was on his way to court with him. If the defendant failed to do so and only crossed the threshold of the court of law, this possibility was lost forever. The matter slipped out of his hands, yes, out of the hands of both parties, and became a matter for the court to decide. From that moment on, guilt was regarded as an offense against the state that could not be excused or settled. Once the debtor had received a summons, the only way he could settle the matter with his creditor was to appear in court within a short period.

Thus, the term “opposing party” refers to the plaintiff or creditor on the one hand and the defendant or debtor in a legal dispute on the other.

General Application

What is the Lord Jesus trying to say with this parable? Certainly, in a general sense, this: Man must use the time that the grace of God grants him on earth to come clean with God. If he does not, judgment will follow. That is the simple but serious fact that concerns every human being. In His parable, the Lord assumes that the accused is guilty and that reconciliation is necessary on the part of the debtor. Indeed, the sinful man must be reconciled with God, not God with man (cf. Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:22). For God is not the enemy of man; He is not against him. But man lives in enmity and rebellion against God. Therefore, he needs to be reconciled to God: “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

The parable does not specify how reconciliation can be achieved; it simply emphasizes its necessity if man does not want to face God's judgment one day. However, it is interesting that an Old Testament passage provides the answer to the question of how reconciliation can take place. There, too, people are seen "on the way," in danger of falling under the wrath. They are told: "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him” (Psalm 2:12). Yes, that is God's answer, which is valid at all times: submission to the “Son” and trust in Him. This is how this psalm introduces the Lord Jesus. He alone can save man from the “creditor” and the “judge,” because He has taken upon Himself the guilt of those who trust in Him.

Perhaps someone who has not yet taken refuge in the protective blood of Jesus by faith is reading this. Do you want to continue on this path and one day meet with God as Judge without being reconciled? Then there is no longer any possibility for “settlement”; the just punishment will overtake you, and your portion will be the lake that burns with fire and brimstone (Revelation 20:15; 21:8). Today, the Lord Jesus still offers Himself to you as your Savior. If you accept Him in repentance and faith, you may know that He has paid your debt and that you are now reconciled to God. But remember that the road to the judgment hall is short. There is not much time left for you...

Let no one deceive themselves with the deceptive hope that one day the debt will be “paid off,” the last penny will be paid! From the natural process on which our parable is based, it is clear that this is not the meaning of the Lord's words. In ancient times, the guilty remained imprisoned until the debts were paid: that was the final judgment, and so little possibility then remained for a settlement between creditor and debtor. This is not what the Lord is trying to teach us, that once someone has served their punishment for their sins before God, they can then leave prison, or hell. Such a notion is completely foreign to Scripture. It knows neither purgatory nor a general restoration or salvation of all people.

The Jewish side

Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus did not choose His words at random. A comparison with Luke 12:58-59, where the same parable is found, suggests that the actual interpretation of the parable refers to the Jewish people and deals with national forgiveness – we could also say dispensational forgiveness. We will see what that means in a bit.

The Lord had spoken to the Jews and said that they knew how to interpret the signs of heaven, but were not able to judge this blessed time when He, their Messiah, was in their midst (verses 54-56). Instead of recognizing and accepting Him in faith, they treated Him as their enemy, as “adversary.” They did not use the time of His suffering in Israel to accept His ministry of reconciliation. Did He not come to save His people from their sins? (Matthew 1:21). But they did not want Him. Even as a young child, their murderous hatred was evident in Herod. This hatred reached its climax in His crucifixion.

Thus God had to become their “adversary” and “judge.” “But they rebelled and grieved His Holy Spirit; so He turned Himself against them as an enemy, and He fought against them” (Isaiah 63:10). He locked them up in prison as a nation. They became a “robbed and plundered people,” “bound in holes and hidden in dungeons” (Isaiah 42:22). But not only that. God also excluded them from all the promises He had made to their fathers for a time. In fact, they had thoroughly forfeited them, at the latest through the rejection of the Messiah, and God brought a temporal judgment upon them instead. In this "prison" they are to this day, and in this prison they will remain until God in His mercy has mercy on them again.

The idea of punishment for the Jewish people as a nation is found in many parables. We already had it in the parable of the “lamp of the body.” There, darkness was the result of them rejecting the light. Here we see them in prison until they have paid their debt. In connection with the “cornerstone,” we learn that it will fall on them and crush them (Matthew 21:42-46). In the parable of the "wedding feast," their city is set on fire, and the murderers of the king's messengers are killed (Matthew 22:1-14). In Luke 13, it is said that the “fig tree” will be cut down if it does not bear fruit. And John the Baptist had already warned that the ax was already at the root of the trees; every tree that did not bear good fruit would be cut down and burned with fire (Matthew 3:10). There will be a baptism of fire for this people, which is very different from the baptism of the Holy Spirit that characterizes the Christian era.

Thus, God's judgment of the Jewish people encompasses multiple aspects, stages, or levels. It began with the destruction of Jerusalem and will culminate in the incomparably terrible time of trouble, the time of Jacob's trouble, shortly before the appearance of the Lord. All this time, they are in "prison." They had ignored the warning of Psalm 2, which was prophetically addressed to them: “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way.” How serious this is!

But the time will come when God “has performed His whole work on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 10:12). Then, in His wonderful mercy, He will say: “Comfort, comfort My people! says your God. Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; For she has received from the Lord’s hand Double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1-2).

The Lord Jesus, dying on the cross of Calvary, had prayed for this people: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). He had thus accorded them the status of manslayers and not placed them in the same category as murderers. Only for manslayers there was a "city of refuge," where they were allowed to remain until the death of the high priest, but not for murderers (cf. Leviticus 35:22ff). Today, Jews are still in prison, shut up in unbelief by God (Romans 11:32). But there is a “city of refuge” for them; that is, they have not been and will not be wiped out as a people over the centuries and millennia. And when the high priest “dies,” that is to say, when the heavenly priesthood that the Lord Jesus exercises today has come to an end, they will return to the land of their fathers - not in unbelief, as they are today, but in faith. They will recognize in Him whom they once pierced their Messiah and will lament over Him and bitterly mourn over Him, as one bitterly mourns over the firstborn (Zechariah 12:10-14). “And in that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (Zechariah 13:1). God will forgive them and shower them with blessings of a magnitude never before known. Thus, the prayer of the dying Savior will be heard.

Temporal and Eternal Judgment

It seems necessary to make one more comment in connection with the expression “to pay off guilt” in Isaiah 40. For someone might say, “So it is possible after all to pay off guilt before God until the last penny is paid! That was just denied.”

We must bear in mind that this is about Israel and a temporal, national judgment of God upon this guilty people. When we come to the parable of the “wedding feast” in Matthew 22, we will clearly see the difference between this kind of judgment and eternal judgment. The temporal judgment concerns the people as a whole and pertains to God's ways of governing Israel on earth. In relation to His ways of governing man, God can limit the extent of the punishment; He can even be “repentant of the evil” that He wanted to do and does not do, as in the case of the Ninevites (Jonah 3:10). This is the extent of His grace. But – and this is noteworthy – if God forgives the people of Israel as a nation, then the people who experience this forgiveness are quite different from those who once received His judgment. It will be a national and also dispensational forgiveness, that is, one tied to a dispensation.

This makes the crucial difference between such a temporal judgment, which extends to God's ways with the earth, and the eternal judgment of God. The eternal judgment is a personal judgment; it strikes individuals for their personal guilt, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). In Revelation 20, we see the dead standing before the great white throne, “And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books” (verse 12). With regard to the personal guilt of the individual before God, there is never a debt-clearing, but only the possibility of making up with the "adversary" while one is "on the way" with him, while it is called "today." And just as in the eyes of God the sin of the individual requires an eternal measure of punishment, so too does salvation by virtue of the "precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19) have eternal consequences.

The situation is different when it comes to the guilt of an entire people. Of course, every individual remains fully responsible before God for his actions. But beyond that, the people of Israel as a nation has incurred guilt before God by rejecting the Messiah. And if God sets the people of Israel aside in response, He can limit this judgment in time and forgive the people as such in His time. This is precisely what we have seen He will do; He will re-graft the natural branches back into their own olive tree (Romans 11:23-24). This is what was meant by national or dispensational forgiveness. It extends only to earth, not to eternity.

From these considerations, however, it also becomes clear how important the dispensational or prophetic aspect can be when interpreting parables. Our parable in particular is an example of this. We would not be able to understand it without considering the prophetic side.

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