Does the parable of the Unforgiving Servant have implications re: "once saved, always saved"? My question is coming from a Protestant / Evangelical perspective.

I've always been taught that once one is saved, nothing and no one can snatch him from the Father's hand. That is to say, one cannot lose one's salvation. Now, we know from the parable of the seeds that there are those who come enthusiastically to Christ and then gradually lose interest as the cares of the world 'choke out' their initial interest. That case is pretty clear cut; These people were never saved to begin with.

But the parable of the Unforgiving Servant is different. In this story, the master (God) grants the servant (us) full forgiveness. But the servant's hardness of heart towards those in his debt leads the master to revoke the forgiveness He previously provided, and hand that servant over to be tortured (hell) until the servant's debt is paid in full (for eternity presumably, since our debt to God can never be paid via our own work).

This parable is a bit bewildering to me, to be completely honest. This doesn't appear to be a case of a man who was offered salvation and then demonstrated his rejection of that offer through his lack of good works (i.e. a forgiving attitude toward his peers). Instead, this appears to be a man who had earnestly repented, received salvation, stumbled immediately out of the gate in the sanctification department, and then had the offer of salvation completely revoked as a result.

GotQuestions, which I typically turn to for information on parables, doesn't seem to address the issue at all. So I'll ask the question here: Does the parable of the Unforgiving Servant have implications re: "once saved, always saved" ?

I'm looking for an answer from those who hold the view of "Once Saved, Always Saved" or are familiar with it.
What the parable teaches

Jesus's parables are not comprehensive systematic theology lectures. They teach particular things through analogies but without telling the whole story. What this parable teaches us is:


That our sin is like a zillion dollar debt that we owe to God. It is so immense we can hardly put a number to it, and there is no possible payment plan we could make to repay it.
That God forgives our debt in its entirety because he is supremely compassionate.
That we are not immediately freed from the power of sin, and acquiescing to the temptation of not forgiving our brothers and sisters is so serious that it should make us seriously question whether we have been saved and are living in a way that accords with what God has done for us.


But this parable does not teach us everything about God's forgiveness. In fact, if all you knew of God's forgiveness was this parable, it could lead you to a fundamentally broken understanding of that forgiveness. Because God does not actually just waive our debt with a wave of the hand.

The foundation of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints

The only reason why our debt to God can be forgiven is because his son took on our debt himself. And to pay our zillion dollar debt it cost him the only thing infinitely valuable in the universe, himself. Whenever we come across something which seems odd theologically, one of the first questions to ask is "where is the cross?" This parable has no cross, so that shows us that it cannot be a comprehensive explanation of God's forgiveness.

To understand how Christ's death on the cross enables our forgiveness we have to understand that in the centre of Reformed Theology is the doctrine of Union with Christ. In faith we are united to Jesus Christ by the holy spirit. This union is what applies all of Christ's works to us. In being united to Christ he takes our debt on himself, and not just the debts of all our past sins, but all the debts of our future sins as well. To stretch the financial analogy, being united to Christ is like us having a single joint bank account with him; once he has paid our debt God can only look in our account and see the positive balance of Christ's faithful obedience to God and his law.

Union with Christ also solves the tension of the warning over falling away. It is our being united to Christ that effects our transformation and conformity to Christ; we do not become more like Christ through our own effort, but through God making us be like him. And we know that in this life sin still remains, there will always be temptations, and we will never stop giving into some of them. But with the indwelling Holy Spirit as the guarantee of our eternal salvation and glorification (2 Cor 5:4-5) we can be confident that we won't be lost even if we do sin by not forgiving others. But sin is still extremely serious; it not only grieves God, but eventually it will have to be purged as we go through the furnace of death before being resurrected as sinless new creations (1 Cor 3:11-15).

I think this passage from Colossians 2 shows how all these threads are tied together. Reading this and the parable together will give us a much more well rounded understanding of the forgiveness of God.


  For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority. You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, when you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive with him and forgave us all our trespasses. He erased the certificate of debt, with its obligations, that was against us and opposed to us, and has taken it away by nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:9-14, CSB)