One of the things that causes us to empathize with hurting people is to have a relative experience that they’ve had.  But even if we have, it can become easy to forget our experience and lose our empathy for others…

This is what happened in the story above, regarding a man who pleaded to be forgiven an enormous debt, and turned around to choke a man for a small debt he was owed.  This man quickly forgot that he was shown mercy by his master, and only cared about his own welfare.  He had no heart for people who might need mercy from him!

Jesus was explaining how we prove God’s forgiveness is real in our lives, by how we forgive others who have offended us, like we offended Jesus.  But this man proved that his heart was never changed by the forgiveness of his own debt, he only wanted to be relieved from it…

There is really nothing godly about wanting to be forgiven, because unbelievers don’t want to live with the burden of shame or “debt owed”.  But what is spiritual is knowing how much God has forgiven us in Christ, with our insurmountable debt we owed, to now live extending forgiveness to others who have offended us.  That is why God will never let us feel the freedom of His forgiveness, if we don’t extend it to others.

In His Love, LD