Parables of Jesus–
The Parable of the Servant Who Owed Money
By Joyce Webb 2008
A parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
Jesus told stories so people could understand things about heaven.
Parable of the Servant Who Owed Money
Matthew 18: 23-35
The kingdom of heaven is like a king who brought in his servants who owed him money.
One servant owed him 10,000 talents (talent is an amount of money).
The servant did not have the money to pay him back, so the king said that the servant, the servant’s wife and children would all to be sold as slaves.
All the things in their house was to be sold, too. Then the money was to be given to the king.
The servant was very upset. He begged the king to give him more time and he would pay it all back.
The king listened and he felt sorry for the man, s o he said that he would forgive him of the debt and he would not have to pay it.
You would think the man would be so happy that he did not have to pay the money back. The king had forgiven his debt.
But the servant went out and found a man who owed him some money.
He wanted the man to pay him now. The man begged for more time.
The man would not listen to him. He had the man put in jail until he paid the money.
Some of the men who worked with the man who had been forgiven found out what he did to the other man.
They went and told the king what the man did.
The king called the servant in to see him. He said to the servant, “You owed me a lot of money. When you asked me for more time, I felt sorry for you. I forgave you and said you did not have to pay anything.
Now I hear what you did to a man who owed you a little money.
You did not feel sorry to forgive him.”
So the king told the servant, “You will go to jail just like you did to that man.”
Then Jesus said: “So will my heavenly Father do to you if you do not forgive everyone who does wrong to you.”
Jesus was saying that God will not forgive you of your sins against Him, if you will not forgive other people when they sin against you.
It is hard to forgive someone especially if they have hurt us deeply.
Forgiving people does not mean that you “forget” it ever happened.
Our minds do not work that way. We remember.
Forgiving means that you choose not to hold it against them, or make them “pay” for their wrong doing.
Just as we want God to forgive us for our wrong doing then we need to be willing to forgive others.
God says we must forgive others—–if we want forgiveness from God.
God will take care of other people’s sin and wrong doing. We do not have to make them “pay”.
When we will not forgive others that stays inside of us and turns into bitterness and anger. Bitterness and anger work their way into our personalities and character—-it is not good.
Forgiving others lets you go free. We think that if we forgive others we are letting them go free.
They are already free. They do not care if we forgive them or not. They do not care what we think. We are the ones with the problem.
We are the ones who hurt ourselves by refusing to forgive.
We want others to forgive us when we hurt them or do wrong to them.
We want God to forgive us so we can go to heaven.