$8 debt versus $108 billion debt
What do you do if you get a sudden, unexpected opportunity to teach or preach God’s Word? I often turn to what is for me one of the most precious of Jesus’ parables, the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant—a passage one of my favorite writers on the parables (Klyne Snodgrass) groups with parables of “Grace and Responsibility.” The “grace” is truly an amazing one: the master in the parable forgives a massive, unpayable debt—ten-thousand talents. The “responsibility” is a serious one: Jesus ends the parable with the promise that the dire consequences visited on the unforgiving servant will be visited on us all by God “if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” ( Matt. 18:35 ). I think readers may not feel the weight of the grace (or the responsibility) because we subconsciously substitute “dollars” for “talents” while reading Matthew 18. Ten-thousand dollars is not really that big a debt for most of my readers. It’s certainly not an unpayable one for middle-class people in tod