Matthew 18:21-35
New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
21 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?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b]was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
A continuation of yesterday... again, wow. What a lesson here. When I think about the thousands, even millions, of things I have done wrong since I've been old enough to know the difference, I can't believe that the Lord has seen fit to even give me the time of day. Yet he's given me so much more than that. He's given me the life of his only Son.
So he says here, just about as clearly as it could possibly be said, that if he's done that much for me, I have absolutely no excuse for being unforgiving toward other people.
This is huge. Just like yesterday, it's so simple and yet so incredibly profound. So easy to understand but sometimes so hard to do. Hard, I think, until you start to look at everything through a big-picture lens: How does what this person did to me rank in the grand scheme of things? When you compare it to what people did to Jesus, or Stephen, or Paul, it probably won't rank very high. How does my forgiveness of others stack up to God's forgiveness of me? The problem is that we know ourselves... all the evil thoughts and poor attitudes and secret sins. So it should make us all the more aware of how very much we've been forgiven, and make us all the more eager to share that forgiveness with others.
After all, I'm not that important. HE must become greater, I must become less.
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