An incredible story from Jesus

I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 a lot lately.  I would encourage you to read this story in the next few days.  By the way, not only just the parable – which appears in verses 23-35 – but also the context of why Jesus was speaking about this to begin with in the earlier verses of Matthew 18.

In a nutshell, Jesus, the amazing storyteller, speaks of a servant who owed a massive amount of debt that he could never hope to pay off.  The servant goes to his master and says, “Listen, I cannot pay this off.  Please forgive me this debt.”  The master agrees.  While he is still rejoicing over his cancelled debt, a fellow servant comes up to the just forgiven servant and begs for forgiveness for a debt that he owes.  But the servant refuses to forgive the debt, even though the amount that this fellow servant owes was minuscule in comparison to the amount that this servant was just forgiven.  The master is understandably is ticked off: “I cancelled the debt because you begged me to.  Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you” (Matthew 18:32-33)?

Jesus’ point seems clear to me: we owed God a huge debt of sin, but in His mercy, He cancelled the debt when we put our faith and trust in Him.  Why then would a Christian turn around and nurse any kind of grudge or hidden resentment?  Why should we fail to extend mercy and forgiveness to others when we consider the incredible mercy and forgiveness that God extended to us?

The Bible tells us, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).  The Bible says, “Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).  There are no loopholes in these verses.  And while some of you may be getting angry at me for even bringing this topic up, I think that while we are still barely into 2012, it’s a great time to search your heart for unforgiveness and choose to let it go.  I can tell you from personal experience – I’m not asking you to do something that I haven’t done in my own life, if I were I’d be guilty of hypocrisy – bitterness and unforgiveness is not worth it.  It is far better to “forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Kevin