In this parable, Jesus is answering a question asked by one of his disciples on how often they should forgive someone who wrongs them. “Seven times?” they ask. Jesus tells them that they should forgive seven times seventy, and then offers this parable as the reason why. There was a master who was owed ten thousand talents. When he tried to collect the outstanding debt, his slave could not pay. He forgave him the debt. After seeking forgiveness, the slave finds someone who owes him a substantial amount less, a hundred denarii, and throws him in jail for not paying it. When the original master heard of this, he was outraged that the one shown forgiveness would not in turn do the same and he threw him in jail.

This parable is given to show us that we need to be forgiving toward others because God first forgave us. However, there is another valuable lesson in here as well. What we see is that Jesus commands us to forgive others seven times seventy in a day, because God has forgiven us so much more than that. There are times in our life when we sin so often that we feel we cannot possibly gain the Lord’s forgiveness anymore. Surely He would not be willing to forgive us again, would he? Yet we see by what love he demands of us, that God will indeed forgive us for even our weakest of times.

This of course does not give us liberty. We would not want someone to take liberty because they knew we were a forgiving person. It does give us hope and confidence. We can come before the Lord knowing that no matter what we have done, or even how often we have done it, if we come before Him truly penitent, He will forgive us. Praise the Lord for His amazing love!