Matthew 18:21-35 is a parable about forgiveness. Peter comes to Jesus and asks if he should forgive someone who has offended him up to seven time. Jesus says that Peter shouldn't stop at seven times, Peter should forgive seventy times seven times. To illustrate His point, Jesus tells a story about a king and a servant who owes the king an extraordinary amount of money. There's no way the servant can ever pay back his debt, so he begs the king to have patience and he would pay him. The king was moved to have mercy on the servant and forgave all the servants debt.
Later, the servant whose debt had just been forgiven found a servant who owed him a small amount of money. The servant in debt begged for more time to pay the debt, but his fellow servant had him thrown into debtor's prison.
When word of this got back to the king he became very angry and called the unforgiving servant into his presence. Because the servant had received such extravagant forgiveness from the king, the servant should have been willing to forgive his fellow servant. Because of this, the unforgiving servant was cast into prison until all of his debt was paid.
All of us who have come to faith in Jesus Christ have been forgiven of our extraordinary debt of sin. It was a debt we could not pay. The Lord now expects us to be a forgiving people. Nothing that anyone can do to us can compare to the offense our sin brought against God.
Jesus said that we should forgive others from our heart. That is part of what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
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