Shrewd Stewardship

The Difficulty of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager

Please turn in your Bible to Luke 16. Continue our sermon series in Luke, looking at all the things Jesus says here about the kingdom of God. This particular passage is widely regarded as the most difficult parable of Jesus, and I would agree with that assessment.

This is a very difficult parable. But hopefully today as we read it we can understand it and have clarity about what Christ would have for us to know. He would have for us to trust and for us to do through this parable.

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. He also said to the disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, what is this that I hear about you?

Turn in the account of your management for you can no longer be manager. And the manager said to himself, what shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.

I have decided what to do so that when I am removed from management people may receive me into their houses. So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, how much do you owe my master?

He said a hundred measures of oil. He said to him, take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50. Then he said to another, and how much do you owe? He said a hundred measures of wheat. He said to him, take your bill and write 80.

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Understanding the Stewardship, the Debtors, and the Unrighteous Wealth

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your kindness to us in giving us the words of Christ. We thank you for this parable here. We acknowledge that we are those who need your guidance in how to live in this world, and we ask that you would open our eyes to understand it clearly.

And also that you would open our eyes to see your kindness to us, that we might praise you for it. For you are great and glorious. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, the question arises as one studies the life of Jesus, as someone becomes His follower, is how should they live?

How should we live? This is a parable that addresses that, and addresses it by way of telling this story, by telling the story of the rich man and his manager, manager being one who is trying to sort out what he should do in the limited time that he has been given.

We have been given limited time in this world, and so it is very appropriate for us to read this passage and understand it, to read this passage and implement it in our own lives. And yet, it is a very difficult passage, as I have already mentioned.

So what we will do today, we'll read this. I'll go over the details of the passage, look at what these things represent, what they mean, and then from that, derive what applications we should have from this.

Simply, what is this passage calling us to? What kind of behavior is it calling us to? So to begin with, let's look at simply what this passage is saying. He also said to the disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.

So you have a man who is rich, he has many things, so many things that he has someone who stewards those things for him, and this manager, this steward, has been wasteful with these resources, wasteful such that he has not done a good job, and now he needs to be removed from that position.

And he called him and said to him, what is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you will no longer be manager. Okay, so the manager will no longer have this position.

The manager said to himself, what shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. Now, here he says he doesn't have these options available to him.

He's not strong enough to dig, he's too ashamed to beg. The idea here is not that he is, that we should criticize him for his weakness, or that we should criticize him for his pride that he's not willing to ask for things.

Rather, these are simply constraints that make the store, that are, provide a setup so that we understand his actions. All right, these are not options for him, and so what is the option he has? The option he has is to try to find friends who will bring him into their houses.

I've decided what I will do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses. So summoning his master's debtors, one by one, he said to the first, how much do you owe my master?

He said a hundred measures of oil. This is a very large quantity of oil. This is, like, modern estimates are 875 gallons. You know, this is what a large field would bring in in a, you know, a hundred acres would bring in in a harvest.

He said to him, take your bill, sit down and quickly write 50. The reason why he's writing it with his own hand is because this is a new contractual agreement. This is not just, oh, well, they could have rewritten their own bills if they wanted to, like they were receipts.

No, this is more than that. He's making a new agreement with them, taking the authority that he has as a steward, right? He's the one who has the authority to make these agreements with others, and he is making a new agreement with them.

And he said to another, how much do you owe? And he said a hundred measures of wheat. And he said to him, take your bill and write 80. The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

So you have here at the end the master's commendation. The master has said that he has done well. And additionally, Jesus' own statement that the sons of this world are more shrewd than the sons of light, that is, they are more efficient and have taken advantage of the situation they have in some ways better than the sons of light have.

Those who are Jesus' disciples. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. And so this is the takeaway for us that interprets this parable, that we should make friends for ourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so when it fails, they may receive us into eternal dwellings.

Why This Parable Is Hard to Interpret

Now, what makes this parable, what makes this so difficult? I think there are several things that make this difficult. One is the fact that this is not a parable the way the others are. This is not an allegory in the same sense where there are direct parallels between everything.

Ah, yes, the master represents this, the man represents this, the wealth represents this, the dwellings represent this. Some of these have direct parables. Some of them, there are multiple things that they could point to.

Okay, and in addition, not only is this not making direct analogies in such ways every single time, but a lot of it is by way of contrast rather than by way of comparison. It's very similar to the parable of the unjust judge, right?

The unjust judge is a comparison. Now, who is the unjust judge? It's God in that parable, right? He told the woman, he was not willing to hear out the woman, but when the woman came to him persistently, he was willing to hear out the woman.

Now, you look at that and you say, well, God is not an unjust judge. Yes, but in the parable, the point of this is that if an unjust judge would even be willing to listen to someone persistently, how much more is God?

And so you have there a comparison by way of contrast, and you see some of this here as well. And so this is more of a moral story that we're supposed to take away details from than it is an allegory.

Moreover, there is substantial context that makes this harder to understand. This doesn't sit by itself as a parable, but rather sits in a large context of discourse that is important to be able to understand what this is talking about.

If you go back and you try to figure out, well, where did all this begin? Where did Jesus' discourse begin? It began at the beginning of chapter 14, one Sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, etc.

And so these concerns, Jesus has been giving parables, and his discourse has been going on for two chapters. So there's a large amount of context that you have to be aware of if you want to be able to understand this passage well.

In addition, there is language here that English virgins tend to mask in order to make this more readable. Now it does make it more readable, but it also makes, it also gets rid of some details that might be of help to you to interpret.

For example, you may be familiar that in older translations, it uses the word mammon to refer to money. Now I think there's significance to that. There's significance to the fact that Jesus is using the word mammon to speak of money.

Additionally, the word for wastefulness here, when it speaks of him being wasteful, is the same word that was used as squander in the previous parable. You have this one man who has squandered his father's wealth, and now what will he do?

Now you have another man who has squandered, same word, even though in this English translation it's using two different words, his manager's wealth, now what will he do? And so these parables are not independent.

They actually play off of each other, showing different sides to the same truth. And even the word unrighteous, you see this word unrighteous used throughout here, even into the part of the passage that we won't cover today, that speaks of unrighteous wealth being faithful and unrighteous wealth.

This is the same word that's used, both the adjective and the noun are used throughout this passage, that's used to describe the man when it describes him as dishonest. He is unrighteous, he's an unrighteous servant, and there's unrighteous wealth.

And so the fact that the same word is being used seems important as well. There's a lot of details that make this passage very difficult to understand, but I'm hoping that as we look at this, and we look at some of these details, they'll become more clear.

And even if the parable itself, you know, resists those one-to-one comparisons, that the point that Christ is making will be clear regardless. We should make friends for ourselves by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails, we may be received into eternal dwellings.

God, the Rich Man, and Our Temporary Stewardship

So who is this rich man? There's a rich man who had a manager. The rich man might be considered the world, because the world will reject the disciples. Now another way of considering this, though, is that the rich man would be most compared to God himself.

We have wasted God's provisions. We are like the one in the previous passage, remember, same word, squander. We are the ones who have squandered away wealth, and so no longer are fit for that household as ones who are squanderers.

And so this rich man representing God, one who will no longer have us in this world because of our sin, one who has determined that death is the penalty for sin, we see two sides of this. You see this loving God who is spoken of in this previous parable, because God is loving, God is forgiving.

And as Jesus speaks to the Pharisees, explaining to them how loving God is, he speaks of God as this father who loves his son. But then as he turns in the same discourse and speaks to the disciples, he makes a comparison by way of contrast.

And so the comparison by way of contrast is, imagine you have a very just and severe manager. Now, just, you know, he removes this man because this man deserves to be removed, and it's not emphasizing the nature of his forgiveness.

So before you have this man who is the recipient of his master's mercy, or his father's mercy, and now we have a parable about this man who squanders wealth, and he's a recipient of justice. Now, this is the situation we find ourselves in.

We find ourselves as one who have not stewarded creation as we ought. Adam was put in the garden. He had one rule that he was supposed to follow, one extra rule other than the commandments written on his heart, which was that he was not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

He did not steward creation. Rather, he squandered it. And so he is removed from it. And since that time, it is the case that all of us have a very brief span of time as stewards over this life that God has given us.

And Genesis 9 says, whoever sheds blood by man, his blood shall be shed, because in the image of God, he made man, and that God will require the life of every man. Why is it wrong to kill man? It's wrong to kill man because that life does not belong to you.

Why is it wrong to even kill yourself? Because even your own life does not belong to you. It belongs to God. And so we are stewarding this life that we have in this world. And our stewardship is a temporary one, as it is for this man.

Why?

Because of sin, because of our wastefulness. And this is the reality that we are pressed up against. And so what are, what is this unrighteous wealth? Well, as I said, this is a, this is a moral story.

And so it is not, is not made to be an allegory in such a direct sense. But Jesus, in interpreting this, in speaking of being faithful and unrighteous wealth, in speaking of making friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, it truly is simply that, unrighteous wealth.

Not unrighteous in the sense of being ill-gotten, but rather that which has no righteousness. It is the money of this world. And what are the eternal dwellings? Well, here, as he is, as he is interpreting, the houses that these people would bring the man into while being real houses, what they represent is the dwelling that we should desire.

A dwelling with God. A dwelling where it is one that takes us out of this, out of this place where we have a limited stay. As the, as the people of Israel were taken out of the land of Egypt, they dwelt in booths.

And so God had them celebrate this yearly by dwelling in booths, by dwelling in tents and tabernacles. This word that's used here for dwellings is the same word for tabernacle. It's describing just as the people of Israel were taken out of bondage by dwelling in booths, so you should desire to be allowed to dwell in booths as you're taken out of that, that booth and tabernacle being synonyms, taken out of, of this world.

So these are, these are the various comparisons that are being made here. Now, considering those analogies, the way we might consider this, what is, what are these debtors then? What are these debtors that we give to?

Once again, you know, I think this resists a direct analogy because who is it that, that allows us into the eternal dwellings? Well, it'd be God that allows us into the eternal dwellings, but who is it that we are supposed to show our kindness to?

Well, in some sense it is God we are supposed to show is our kindness to. In some sense, it is our brothers and sisters in Christ. Even as much as you've done it for the least of these, you've done it for me.

Right?

And so there are aspects of this where the comparison is twofold. In some way, these debtors represent God himself, who, who brings people into his kingdom. In some way, it represents fellow servants of Christ.

And so the idea is not that we should be giving in order to uh, get the generosity of that specific individual, right? Because even giving to the ungrateful as God himself does is something that is rewarded by him.

But rather that as we give the way that God would have us give, he recognizes this as service to him and receives us. Now one question, one of the most important questions to answer here is what is unrighteousness?

What does it mean when it says that this man is unrighteous? What does it mean when it calls this money unrighteous? Well, this money, like I said, lacking in righteousness is called unrighteous wealth, not because it is wealth not to be touched, not because it is wealth not to be used.

In fact, Jesus later on says, if then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth. So unrighteous wealth is actually something that you are supposed to be faithful in. It is something that you are supposed to make use of, unrighteous wealth.

It's not talking about the wealth itself being evil. However, it draws men towards evil. It is something that they desire to place their trust in. In fact, the word used here for wealth is mammon. The word mammon describing something that people put their trust in.

Mammon has etymology. It comes from the word amen. What does amen mean? Yes, I trust in that. Yes, I affirm that. We were talking about the word amen in Sunday school today. And so mammon coming from that word, only being used here in this passage and in the parallel passage in Matthew and nowhere else in Scripture, Jesus is particularly using that word and not a more generic word for money or silver because he is describing a something that tempts people away to put their trust in this.

He is calling them to not put their trust in money, but to rather put their trust in himself, rather put their trust in God and his kingdom. And then why is this man called unrighteous? When you see that the same word is being used, it opens you up to realize that this is not primarily talking about his, this is not speaking of him so much as dishonest.

In fact, I don't believe that dishonest is a good way of describing this man. He is unrighteous. He lacks righteousness. He has been wasteful with the money. But this manager trusts him. He trusts him to give an account.

In fact, he even commends the man for how he has dealt with the accounts he has. Now, some people have interpreted this differently, right? They say, okay, well, he's, they say, well, he's getting rid of the interest that was wrongly being taken from them, or he's giving back his commission, or there's something else going on here, or maybe the man is sarcastically speaking to him and not commending him at all, and what he's doing is dishonest by changing people's bills.

And I think that's what a lot of people think when they read this, is when they see him changing the amounts, they see, ah, this is where the dishonesty lies. It's in changing the amounts. No, the word unrighteous here, simply speaking of unrighteousness, simply speaking of his wastefulness, is not speaking of him doing that which his master commends.

Rather, it's speaking of how he has gotten himself into this state. He has been wasteful. His master does not distrust him, to be honest. Rather, he sees what he does. The man operates quickly because his time is limited, not to hide it.

The master sees it, and the master commends him for what he has done, acknowledging that this is within his authority to do. This is what you do if you have authority over something for a season of time, is you do the best that you can with that to your advantage.

And so this is, this was right for the man to do this this way. And he is called more shrewd for having done so. He's shrewd. He is, the Greek word is phronimos. Another word might be wise, but it's not speaking of wisdom in the typical sense that we think of it, speaking more of shrewdness, of street smart.

Like Jesus says, to be wise as serpents, to be phronimos as serpents. This is the kind of shrewdness that we should have. We should not be unaware of the opportunity that we have to use the wealth that we have, but we should take full advantage of it.

Now, if this man had been foolish, if he had not been shrewd, he would have just sat there and waited to lose his position. Well, if he's going to lose his position, no point in, maybe he'd just waste more money.

Maybe he wouldn't do anything. But no, he takes advantage of the opportunity he has, and he uses it in order to make friends. Now, another question that should be, it rattles around my brain when I read these parables, and I would like to think it maybe rattles around yours as well, is, is this saying that it is through our, it is through our good stewardship, or through our obedience of God's law, or through our generosity, that we earn for ourselves a position in his kingdom?

No, I, obviously, this is a, this is a church that believes very much in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. That is not the idea. In fact, to understand this, it becomes very clear when you read this in context, once again, how this relates to the gospel.

In fact, this is not only not contrary to that gospel of grace, but it is speaking of that gospel of grace, that rather than trusting in something other than Christ, rather than trusting in our own money, we should be willing to part with it all, knowing that it is all temporary, and trust only in God and his kingdom.

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, and the Gospel Context of Luke 14–16

So consider how this discourse has gone. It began in chapter 14. One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of the ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. So he speaks to the Pharisees.

He tells them the parable of the wedding feast. There's the question of who is it that is invited to the wedding feast? Who is it that is permitted to come? Now, on one hand, there are those who are not permitted to come.

On the other hand, he goes out to the streets and calls for the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. These are those who are appropriate to come, who are willing to come as they ought, and not in their own pride, in their own sense of right and wrong, in their own sense of.

Goodness.

And so, as he continues speaking to them in 1425, now great crowds accompanied him. And he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brother and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Now, why are all these things the case? Why are all these things the case? Because true faith is one that recognizes the excellence of Jesus Christ and realizes that nothing else has any worth. The challenge of, I wouldn't say necessarily interpreting, but appreciating the various gospels are in recognizing how they are ordered.

A lot of these passages, if you look at them on their own, you'd wonder, well, why did God write this twice over? Why did he give this twice over? These are almost identical. There's hardly any change.

But a lot of times the importance is given to us in the ordering of these things. You notice that here Jesus is at a man's party, right, at a man's house. He's dining at his house. And then it talks about, now great crowds accompanied him.

So somehow we've transitioned from this private thing where only a few people were invited and Jesus is actually addressing the matter of who do you invite to an event like this to there being great masses who have gathered to him.

This is not a, this is not, this is something where you would expect an interruption, a little more narrative to explain where he gets to this point. When did he get outside the house to a point where there would be a great crowd of people?

But Luke has put these together to show that these logically follow one another. As he speaks of who is invited, and the answer is not necessarily those who think they are invited, but rather the crippled, the blind, and the lame, those who are willing to give up everything because they acknowledge that nothing they have is worth anything.

These are the ones who are called. And then as he is criticized for this, as he is criticized for welcoming the blind, the crippled, the lame, for eating and dining with sinners. He then tells the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the prodigal son, and all of these are designed to show God's heart for those who are who are crippled, poor, blind, lame, who have nothing, who are coming with the empty hand of faith.

Now as he's explaining that to the Pharisees, he then turns and he speaks to his disciples. Now the Pharisees need to hear about God's love. The disciples who are the ones who have come, who are the ones who have come empty-handed and recognize that they have nothing.

He then speaks to them of the matter of shrewdness. So now he compares God not to this loving father, but he makes a comparison to this just rich man who is removing him. He says this is what a man of this world would do.

He would know how to take advantage of his position. You in your position where you have a limited time being steward over it, how should you act in this world? He's going back to the same point he was making at the end of 14.

He's going back to say that you need to be ready to count the cost, that you need to hate your own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters. Yes, even your own life. What is the gospel?

The gospel is that God's gracious goodness is available to us through Jesus Christ because he has died for our sins. We must come to him and trust and trust him alone for our salvation, nothing else. Not our own works and not our own wealth.

Generosity, Forgiveness, Hospitality, and Urgency

Why do people hang on to their wealth? It's because they love their wealth. It's because they trust their wealth to give them comfort. Why do people, why are people generous with their wealth? Why are they ready to give it away?

Those who do so with true intentions do so because they don't believe that their wealth gives them any comfort. They don't believe that ultimately their wealth will give them comfort. They are trusting in something else to give them comfort.

The Christian who gives, the Christian who gives out of a heart of generosity that desires to please God recognizes that his wealth will not bring him comfort, that it is instead only God who will bring him comfort.

It is God who is preparing a place. It is Jesus Christ who is preparing a place before us. And rather that we should give in a way that makes a heavenly investment, that takes advantage of the situation, that comes empty-handed.

This is not talking about earning a place in heaven. This is talking about the one who recognizes that that is far more valuable than anything in this world. And there are eternal implications to how we act in this life.

Galatians 5 .4 talks about the importance of leaving behind all our works. It says that, it says that you are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. You know, a lot of people realize that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, but they don't realize how critical it is.

If you do not believe this, if you believe it is through you, if you think that you are justified in part by your own works, you have a different gospel and you are severed from Christ, according to that passage.

Now the same is true with anything else you might put your trust in. It's not just true with your works. It is also true with your wealth.

Leave it behind.

Come to Jesus Christ with the open hand of faith, being willing to cast everything aside. He is kind and he is merciful. We are unrighteous people who have been wasteful with what we have stewarded. He is forgiving of that.

It explains that this man has been wasteful. And yet has a future. The previous man, the prodigal son, he was wasteful. He squandered. And yet he is forgiven. And so what this is talking about is not the conditions of forgiveness, but the mindset of forgiveness, that the one who has been forgiven comes with the empty hand of faith, knowing that he has nothing to bring.

And if your wealth will not give you comfort, what then should you do with it? You should give it to the Lord because he is the one who gives you comfort. And so consider, consider the various ways that this ought to be embraced in our life.

First of all, if you are generous, if you are generous with your time, with your money, this applies to many things. It does not apply just to money. It applies especially to money. There's a poignant factor here in the way that people are trusting their wealth.

And even later on, the Pharisees who loved wealth try to justify themselves by their wealth and their love of wealth. But if one is generous, it prevents wastefulness. These two things are at odds, right?

If you are wasteful, you are not stewarding these resources that God has given you, this position that God has given you for his glory. If, on the other hand, you are generous, you are one who is using God's resources the way he would have you, using it in accordance with his kingdom.

Secondly, you should be giving according to his kingdom. This is not talking about any kind of generosity. You know, there are all kinds of generous people out there for different causes because, you know, they've not found comfort in money and they find comfort in something else.

Idols are various. You know, people have various idols, and so maybe they don't see their money as their comfort, but they have some ideology that they find very comforting, and so they give their money to this thing.

Maybe it's to, you know, some organization that helps pets or some, you know, there's just all kinds of things that people give their money to. When you give, have—not that there aren't other causes you could give to—but have it in mind as chief of priorities, as ultimate of priorities, the kingdom of God.

Give generously for that kingdom. You know, the amount of wealth described here that he is discounting, a hundred measures of wheat, and then it said a hundred measures of oil. You know, these are substantial amounts.

The wheat is what you would get from a hundred acres. The oil is what you would get from a very large harvest. These are very large amounts. We should be giving generously, but there seems to be, in my opinion, a hint to building up the kingdom of God here, because these are the precise quantities that are mentioned in Ezra 7 .22.

In Ezra 7 .22, you have a situation where a one who is not a son of light, but rather a son of this world, gives to the kingdom. He says, and I, Artaxerxes, the king, make a decree to all the treasures in the province beyond the river.

Whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the province, excuse me, whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of God of heaven requires of you, let it be done with all diligence. Up to 100 towns of silver, 100 cores of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.

So in speaking of 100 measures of oil, 100 measures of wheat, I believe there may be an allusion to this, that they knew that this was a quantity that was used for building up the temple. And so I think that there is a subtle hint of that purpose here when Jesus uses the same quantities of oil and wheat that were spoken of in that passage.

But regardless, the intention is clear that these things should be used for preparing an eternal dwelling, used for building up the kingdom of God. Additionally, this calls us toward forgiveness. If you consider, how is it that you are a steward over your own life?

In what ways are you a steward over your own life? It's not just over your possessions, but even over forgiveness, right? When someone wrongs you, you have the option of holding that over your head, over their head.

But Jesus has called you to forgive them. Okay, we are ones who have been forgiven. We are the ones who should be forgiving. Because we recognize that holding that against them, we can take it to the grave, but not beyond the grave.

Just like wealth will not give us any advantage beyond the grave, so grudges do not give us any advantage beyond the grave. They might give you an advantage here and now, you might be able to hold it over someone, but it is not to your advantage, eternally so.

And just to illustrate this, I've preached on this particular passage in the past, but you may not have been here for this. I think this is very important in Psalm 51. In Psalm 51, this is the famous psalm where David has sinned by sleeping with Bathsheba, and he says, and he's been called out by Nathan the prophet, for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. That's a wild thing that David would say, against you only I have sinned. Has he not sinned against Bathsheba? Has he not sinned against Uriah the Hittite?

Has he not sinned against Nathan even? Has he not sinned against the whole people of Israel? How is it that he can say that he has not sinned against them and he has sinned against God alone? There is a real sense in which one can say that if they have the ultimate picture in mind.

Now, it's not just that his sin against God is greater. He's saying something more than that. There is a sense in which his offenses against others are only temporal. Ultimately, he only has to give an account to God.

If God grants him forgiveness and no one else does, that is ultimate forgiveness. He does not need beyond this life forgiveness from any other. And this is the case with us. When you hold a grudge against someone and you take that to your grave on the day of judgment, will they have to answer to you for the things that you have done to them or that they have done to you?

They will not. They will not have to answer to you. And similar, likewise, if you are struggling with guilt because someone isn't forgiving you, will you have to answer to them on the day of judgment?