Here are a few thoughts on the parable of the forgiven servant in Matthew 18:
- Our debt is of a kind that can’t be repaid. The 10k talents are a stand-in for impossibility–and yet when we ask for mercy, we still say “I’ll pay it back! I promise!” We are forgiven even above and beyond our ability to understand the debt we owe and our refusal to acknowledge that we can’t repay it.
- I think a bit later we’re free from feeling like we need to extract our due from others. If there’s one constant in life, it’s that people will let you down. I think we saw the first servant–the one forgiven–simply refuse to accept that attribute of our salvation and sanctification and take it upon himself to try to fix the guy who owed him.
Upshot: it isn’t just that we’re to forgive as we’ve been forgiven. We’re free from our own expectations of others.
