We will quickly take Jesus’s explanation into account in Matthew 18:22-35 so we have deep rooted understanding. Do you know that when you decide not to forgive whoever, you actually invite all sort of problems into your life? I used to be an unforgiving, I-must-revenge-kind-of-person till the Holy Spirit sat me down and helped me understand somethings.
In vs 22 of Matthew 18, Jesus was responding to question that Peter asked, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” and I love Jesus’s epic response “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”. lol if you get a diary for everybody in your life and start marking everytime you forgive someone, you will spend your whole life marking. Imagine after spending a third of your life sleeping (if you sleep 8hours daily), you then take up the marking task again lol sorry to say but you would have lived a sorry life so please if you are doing that please desist from it.
To go to the main point of this post, if you read that passage further, Jesus gave an illustration that I believe is a popular. He mentioned a servant(servant A) that owed a king 10,000 talents – my version of the bible didn’t say if it was talents of gold or silver but 10,000 talents of silver in our time is at least double digit millions of dollars. He cried and begged the king and the bible says the king had compassion and forgave his debt(don’t forget the amount of debt if was lol). This servant left the king’s palace and deliberately went to look for a fellow servant(servant B) that owed him 100 denarii (maximum of $2000). The servant B begged him the exact same way he(servant A) begged the king, word for word but instead of at least pushing the debt to another time, servant A jailed servant B. The king found out and was mad as you can imagine and the bible says “And in wrath his master turned him over to the torturers (jailers) until he paid all that he owed”. Now the most interesting ending from Jesus, ” My heavenly Father will also do the same to [every one of] you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”.
Except we take God, our King, for granted, we should realise the number of times we sin and the number we ask for forgiveness daily. Except we take Him for granted, same way we can’t compare those two amounts, we can not compare our sins to God daily to what our fellow man can do to us. What is that thing Jesus said His Father will do for people who don’t forgive? He will hand them over to torturers till they pay all they owe… Can you actually pay for all the sins you have committed? meaning you pay for life if you give chance to unforgiveness. What then is life when you are paying a debts all your life with torturers on your case?… Ask for forgiveness and forgive.
Please leave questions if you have any or prayer points or comments. God bless!