Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. Matthew 18:27
It is the season when my daughter, like many others heading to college in the fall, is putting in a lot of time and effort arranging financing for her first year of school. It is a complicated process, figuring out our incomes and obligations against her expenses and choosing the best option for covering that gap. It’s not any easier for our third child than our first. Plus, college isn’t our only obligation. We have a couple of cars, retirement, property taxes, insurance, and so forth. I’m sure you can identify.
All those obligations — debts — are a result of choices we made. We chose to buy a house. We chose to provide cars for the kids to drive. We even chose to take vacations, buy things for our home, and have pets.
It is no accident that Scripture uses accounting language when it talks about our sin. It is often characterized as a debt charged, or imputed, to our account. And we are responsible for satisfying that debt.
Now, in the last few years, we’ve paid off our house. And the orthodontist, the seminary tuition, and the air conditioner. We can see on the horizon when we pay off the cars and the credit cards. That will be a great day, finally being out from under the burden of those debts and obligations. Imagine what it would be like if, on the first of September, the bank said the loans were forgiven. And there was no tuition bill or car payment due. What if we no longer had to work to pay those debts . . .
In the Old Testament, the word most often used for forgive is nasa, which means to remove a burden or to carry it for you.
That, my friends, is exactly what Jesus did for us. He removed the burden, the crushing debt load that our choices heaped on us. We chose to be rebellious, to go our own way, to ignore God and His precepts. Each time we did, that was charged to our account. God’s holiness is so perfect, that our violation of it can never be repaid through anything we could do.
But God, through Christ, was moved with compassion, released me, and forgave the debt, just like the master in the parable Jesus told. And it’s not a scammy, spammy, empty promise with ridiculous strings attached. It’s freely available to anyone who wants to take advantage of it. Don’t miss out.