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This is a familiar story with a great deal of Law-the parable of the unmerciful servant. The overlord is owed a great deal of money, so much that it can never be repaid, and yet he forgives fully and totally the debtor. And then that same debtor who has had his life virtually handed back to him goes out and refuses to forgive another poor servant who owes him a few measly bucks. This is wrong. This is not fair and certainly shows the first servant to be a horrible person. So; so what. Everyone of their own merit and worth is a horrible person. I apart from Christ am nothing but a horrible person. All of you, detached and away from Jesus are nothing but foul and contemptible creatures. The second servant who owes but a hundred pence (denarii) is not a better person than the mean spirited ungrateful cur who had originally owed the Master ten thousand talents. No one is good no not one. The only one who is good in this parable is the one who represents God-the Lord of the Parable-the certain King who is settling accounts with his servants.

You know the Ten Commandments by heart, by memory-good. But knowing them means nothing unless you also know that they knock you down flat every time you see them (see them, hear them, taste them, have them touch you with their razor sharp claws and beaks). Keeping the Law will only keep you from being thrown into prison IF you keep all the law perfectly all the time. You can't do it; you deserve to be incarcerated in Satan's gaol for eternity. Keeping the Commandments, paying every debt you truly incur, will only keep you from dying IF you pay back every single farthing, every penny, every last cent. You can't do this either. Neither servant in the parable could pay back what they owed. They both should have been sold into bondage and then summarily executed when they no longer could perform forced labor. The wages of sin is death. All who break God's Law should die-period. But the King (God) showed mercy and forgiveness for the first debtor, even though that debtor was not deserving of any-that is the definition of Grace. The King forgave the first debtor even though the first debtor had not forgiven anyone else up to this point. And that is a crucial reality of how the Lord deals with you. God forgives you first. God totally wipes your slate clean; He totally washes you pure, even before you do anything, before you forgive anyone else anything. Your redemption is not conditonal on you performing your part of a bargain or contract. Your absolution is not contingent upon your actions but upon the King's Grace. This Grace in the real world is not nameless and amorphous feel-good emotion or whim, but is rooted only in the Incarnation of the Son of the King, and then in the dutiful obedience of the Son and in His Passion and Death for all sin, trespass and debt.

The point of teaching that Jesus was making in this difficult parable is not that you have to forgive others for the King to forgive you, NO. The point is not that if you refuse to forgive others that you will instantly be seized and thrown into the dungeon of death and damnation, NO. The Kingdom Reality, the "Faith Focus," is that those who truly believe the Lord's love for them, His forgiveness of them, his loosing of them, will be able to either forgive their own debtors, or else will be ashamed of their own reluctance and inability to show mercy and then AGAIN seek forgiveness for this particular damning sin. You can't be Jesus-perfect. You can't be like Jesus always doing the right thing. You won't always be able to forgive the way He demands. Heck, you'll hardly ever be able to be merciful the way the Law demands. So, just because you know the Lord's Prayer, and pray it daily; and just because you know you don't forgive your debtors as Christ forgave you at Calvary, at the Font, at the Communion rail, are you going to go to hell? No, of course not, because you are not standing before the Judge, the King, as yourself, by yourself, and in yourself. You are in Christ. Jesus is saying that by the first servant refusing to forgive the second, the servant was showing unbelief, disbelief, and nonbelief in the Mercy and Love shown to him by the King. In essence he was blaspheming the King and committing the unforgivable crime of not having faith.

If you refuse to forgive others because you are weak, because you are having a difficult time with long-standing hurts, disagreements, misunderstandings, slights, personality struggles, and wounds that cleave to your soul, you are not damned because you have been temporarily tripped up by 'Old Adam,' so long as you remain firmly rooted in the God/Man Who does perfectly forgive you, and everyone else. "Father Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Jesus forgives you in His Blood. When you wear that blood + and when you drink that Blood, you have Christ's Word of forgiveness for yourself and for others that you do now forgive IN CHRIST. It is only the unbeliever who rejects Jesus, the Son of the King, who will one day feel the terrible wrath of the King for not forgiving. For that person has attempted to live by the Law and not by the Cross; by the Good News of what the Son has done. The first servant was going about relying not on the King's mercy, but upon his own smooth talking, excuse making, promise rendering, SELF to get him out of his scrapes and entanglements. He wanted to live by the Law and so, he got what he desired. When he was unable to forgive perfectly on his own, he was sent to the prison of Hades on his own. Not so you dear brothers and sisters. When you fail to forgive others, your wife, your husband, your brother or sister, your children or parents, your pastor or your parishioner, you are not cast away from Christ because you are IN Christ Jesus and He loves you and fills you and works in you. Believe He died for your wrongs. Believe He died for the wrongs of all those people you are having an impossible time forgiving. In His Word of release, of freedom, of acceptance of you, the waters + of cooling will wash over your hard heart; His Blood will lubricate your stiff neck and gritted teeth… and IN Jesus you will forgive all those who trespass against you. Hold on to the Lamb and it is already done.

In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost