Doing The Harder Thing Series

Look at the parable He tells. You’ve got a debtor who owes 10,000 talents – it’s the rough equivalent of literally millions and millions of dollars. The amount is staggering and would have blown the minds of those to whom Jesus was speaking. The king wants to collect on the debt, as is his right, but the man cannot pay. What would typically happen then is that the man and his family would be sold, along with anything they owned, in order to begin collecting on the debt.

The servant cries out for mercy and begs for more time to pay back the debt even though it is hopeless – there is no possibility whatsoever that he could ever pay this back. But the king takes pity on him and does the unthinkable. He forgives the debt. He absorbs the loss and the servant is free to go completely released from the debt that moments before had hung over his head and which threatened him with the loss of everything he knew and loved and held dear. You think his response would be one of wonder and gratitude, but look at what happens.

On his way home he comes across a fellow servant, someone just like him, who owes him money. A hundred denarii would be the equal to about sixteen dollars or so. He grabs his fellow servant by throat and begins to choke him demanding that he pay up. This second servant cries out with words that are hauntingly familiar … “Be patient with me, and I will pay it back,” – the very words the first servant had used with the king.

But instead of showing mercy he takes his fellow servant and has him thrown into prison until he pays off the debt! He makes a mockery of the grace, mercy and forgiveness that has been extended to him, as he refuses to extend it to his fellow servant! This second man owed less than 1 one millionth of what the first man owed – there was no comparison – and yet the heart of the first man was so hard that he refused to forgive the one who owed him.

The king hears of this and is understandably outraged – as are we! How could this man, who had been forgiven so much, be so ungracious in refusing to forgive the debt of one who owed him so little in comparison? Ought not he to have forgiven the lesser debt just as he himself had been forgiven the greater debt? And our hearts cry out, “Yes! That’s the very thing he should have done! How could he refuse to forgive someone else where he had been forgiven so much?!”

But here is the hard truth: It is we who stand in the place of the first servant. We are the debtors who’ve incurred a debt beyond our ability to master! In the pages of the Bible the language of sin is often the language of debt and like the first servant we owe to God a debt of sin that we can never repay. It is beyond our grasp and every careless thought, word and deed has added to that debt. God’s justice demands that sin be atoned for, that debt paid in full.

When Jesus died on the cross that’s what was taking place – sin was being atoned for – the penalty was being paid – the debt was being satisfied. The Scriptures tell us that the blood of Jesus was shed so that our sins could be forgiven. This is God’s grace: that we who did not deserve it, that we who could not earn, that we who have no right to expect it – have received forgiveness for our sins through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord! In Jesus, that debt is no longer held against us. It has been satisfied, wiped clean, removed from the record! We have received mercy instead of justice and for this we ought to be overflowing with gratitude and thanksgiving.