23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25 But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. 26 So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ 27 And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.”
Being the Master teacher that He was, Jesus not only used hyperbole and picturesque wording (seventy times seven forgiveness), but now He drills home the point about forgiveness with a story. We must not divorce this parable from the precursor discussion of confronting the sinning brother, the one who has offended. We do well to use the biblical words carefully here and call sin “sin,” so that we can call forgiveness “forgiveness” in the truest, most profound sense of the word. Christendom today has watered down the seriousness of sin and its devastating effect on relationships, and in so doing has undermined what true forgiveness is and its restorative power. Forgiveness, one of the most misunderstood concepts among Christians, exists precisely because sin exists. Furthermore, it has to do with restoration of relationship broken by sin, not releasing from consequences of the sin. Where repeated sin separates, grace through forgiveness restores relationships.
In the first part of Jesus’ illustration of the importance of forgiveness, the primary character is a “slave” who owes a king the equivalent of 10,000 talents. A talent was Roman currency worth about 6,000 days’ wages for an average laborer. So the man owed about 60,000 days’ worth of wages – an impossible sum to ever repay in a lifetime. The king, wanting to recoup at least some of his losses, goes to sell off the man and his family into further slavery. The slave humbles himself, pleads for patience and time to get his payment in order—a desperate plea from a hopeless man. The king changes his mind, having compassion on the man, and releases him from obligation, forgiving his debt.
When Jesus said the king “felt compassion,” the word here was often used to describe Jesus’ response to the multitude (see Matt 9:36). When the king, “forgave him the debt,” it is the same word used by Jesus just moments earlier about forgiving seventy times seven times. It is not difficult to conclude that this story illustrates that our Lord forgives us an enormous debt that we owe Him!
Lord, I praise Your Son, “He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay, I needed someone to wash my sin away. But now I sing a brand new song, Amazing Grace. Christ Jesus paid a debt that I could never pay.”
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