An Impossible Debt

An Impossible Debt

The king called in the man he had forgiven and said, “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Matthew 18:32-35

Forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

Matthew 6:12

What’s the largest bill you’ve seen? A fifty-dollar bill? A one-hundred-dollar bill? The man in Jesus’ parable owed the king millions of dollars—which would mean thousands of one-hundred-dollar bills today! His debt was not just large; it was an amount of money he couldn’t even comprehend, let alone repay.

But there are two debtors in this story, and there is a great difference in the amount they owe. The debt owed to the servant by another man was a few thousand dollars—not an insignificant amount—but nothing compared to the debt the servant had been forgiven.

In reality, however, this parable is not so much about the two debtors but about the character of the king. The generous forgiveness of the king shows how big and gracious God’s forgiveness is—the kind of forgiveness that sets prisoners free from an unpayable debt.

In order for us to forgive others when they hurt us, we have to first see how big our wrong has been toward God—how much he has forgiven us. When we finally see the enormity of our sin and the generosity of God’s forgiveness toward us, only then will we really be able to forgive someone else.

DISCUSSION STARTERS

Can you retell the parable of the debtors in modern terms, as if it were happening today?

How would you describe the size of your debt of sin that God has forgiven?

In this parable, the man who refused to forgive was handed over to torturers. How is refusing to forgive like being tortured?