Good ol' Peter thought he was being pretty extravagant. He sashays up to Jesus with the thought, "I am now going to impress Jesus and show that I'm getting this stuff." How many times should I forgive my brother who sins against me, Jesus? Up to seven times? Peter is smug. He's sure he's got it.

Jesus knocks him for a loop, spinning him around. "Not just seven times, seventy seven times, seventy times seven." He might as well have said, "seventy million."

Silence. The bag of wind has no more wind. It has all been knocked out of him. Jesus looks at Peter. He knows exactly what he is thinking.

He looks at you too. He knows what some of you are thinking. Forgive that many times? What if my brother doesn't ask for forgiveness? What if he doesn't apologize? What if he doesn't think he needs to be forgiven? What if my saying "I forgive you," would make things worse? And what about the sympathy factor? If I forgive him, I can't tell others what I've been through.

Tough questions. And I'm sure there are a lot more. One situation is different from another. Each person is different. We all know these struggles and questions very well, even if we never asked them this way.

So, where do you start? Jesus knew just where to start-with your debt to God. Rather than speaking it directly, though, He describes it in a parable. The story is easy to understand, but you have to have the ears of faith to be able to understand what it is saying about living in the kingdom of heaven.

A man had racked up a huge debt. How he ever got that far behind is amazing. 10,000 talents is ridiculously big. We hear figures about our national debt, buy-out plans for Wall Street, and so many numbers are thrown out, they begin to lose their meaning. A million here, a million there; another billion here, another billion there.

I remember getting caught up in that when I have served as a director on a couple different boards. We'll need a couple thousand dollars here. Ahh no problem. We've got a huge budget, that should be no problem. Wake up! It's a huge problem. Where is that couple thousand supposed to come from? That is irresponsibility, and I'll be the first to admit it.

Somehow this guy had a debt of several million. Who would ever loan that much to one person? How could anyone ever get himself that deep in debt?

I don't know, but that's where we are. Deep in debt. We are born already in arrears. Our first parents left an inheritance-an inheritance of debt.

It's what I say to our kids especially when we have just talked about the prodigal son after the father divides up the inheritance between his sons. "Don't worry about your inheritance from us, kids; it will only be debt." That's what Adam and Eve passed on to us-their debt. Their act of rebellion racked up a huge debt with God, and they did nothing to pay it off. Instead they passed it on to their kids, who passed it on to theirs, and so on until you and I were born. And we still have their debt.

How much it is, I have no idea, but instead of paying it off, we just keep accumulating more debt. Every time we sin, there's another mark in our debit column. Every time we do or say or even think of something against God's will--check.

Here's the really bad thing. Every time we think we can do something to remove those marks in the debit column, it makes it worse. We show we aren't listening to what God has said. Our righteous deeds are worthless when it comes to this debt. No matter how good we think are our intentions, it's another one of those blasted marks. That's right. Our attempts to pay a little off, make the debt worse. The number climbs higher yet.

Several million? Maybe that's not enough, but we'll go with what Jesus said so we can get further into the story. The day came to settle accounts. As the servant is brought before the king, he is trembling uncontrollably. His mind is racing. How did I ever get so far behind? He has no strength in his legs as the king's guards have to practically carry him up to the king's throne. His heart is beating like a hummingbird's wings and his sweat glands are wide open pouring out rivers of water. The king, who is usually kind, has a stern look on his face right now. "I'm sorry. You are going to have pay this debt, and until you do, you and your family will be indentured servants to someone else."

The legs that could barely support him before, completely collapse as he falls to his knees, and he begs for mercy. But listen to what he asks, "Have patience with me." Patience? Patience for what? And then he says it, "and I will pay back everything." Has this guy lost his mind? He owes several million dollars. Does he have any grasp of reality? He thinks he can pay this off?

The king does have pity, but he goes way beyond what the man had begged for. He sees that the man can't come anywhere close to paying any of this debt, and so he releases him from all of the debt. He wipes it clean. He says, "You are free to go. You have no more debt." No more debt. I will pay it myself. As far as the servant was concerned, it was fully paid.

That's what the Lord said at the cross. The debt is fully paid. That's what He applied to you at your baptism. When He first spoke forgiveness to you, He said, "Now, your personal debt is fully paid. You owe absolutely nothing."

It's an amazing statement, so we wonder, "What about sins I will commit?" He answers, "My Son has already paid the price." "What about when I sin again-and I know I will-are you going to drag out my old ticket and stick it in my face, and make me regret being forgiven?

The debt is paid, the ticket is torn up, there is no record. This is what it means to be forgiven. Wow! A feather now weighs more than we do. No more chains holding us down. We mount up as though on the wings of an eagle. But then Satan comes along, to kill our joy and bring us back to the ground. He plants doubt in that word of forgiveness. "Yeah, maybe He forgave you, but you want to show Him you love Him." That's good, but the tempter has no intention of stopping there. "You want to show Him that He made a good choice when He chose to forgive you. You want to show Him you're worthy of being forgiven. How do you think you can do this?"

Already, he's getting us into trouble. We're not worthy of being forgiven. Plain and simple. We are forgiven by God's grace. That's it. But our sinful nature hates that thought and Satan knows it and uses it. Our sinful nature hates the idea that we are forgiven simply because the Lord has chosen to forgive us. So, Satan tells us, for the sake of satisfying our sinful nature, we need to find something in ourselves that says, "This is why He forgives me."

What do we have? We know if we do good things, it won't do anything for our salvation, since we are saved by grace, but we figure it will show that we were a good risk. What else? How about if we are better than some other people? We may not be perfect, but we're not as bad as some others. Yes, yes, yes, then God will see that picking us was a good choice; that we have proven that we were worthy to be chosen.

Now, certain people do things that are so thoughtless, so bad we figure they should never be forgiven. Compared to them, well, we shine. We show Him that we deserve to be forgiven, because we're not as bad as them. Hitler, Lenin, Saddam Hussein, serial murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer, all our favorite sinners along with people who have sinned against us personally. They are trotted out before God to say, "I may not be perfect, but I'm not that bad."

I doubt we knew any of these guys, but we do know our brother and we know his sin because it was the one against us. So we hold him hostage in our hearts. His sin is still chained to him, and we don't dare set him free. If we do, then we lose our point of comparison. If we can forgive him, then we have to admit God can, but we are sure God can't forgive him either. So, the way we see it, his debt against God still stands.

Now we have this point of comparison. Someone like us-not a mass murderer, but still unforgivable as far as we are concerned-is held before God's eyes.

What are we doing, but making small steps toward paying off our own debt through this comparison? Our efforts to show we deserve to have our debt paid, is a way of saying, "I'm doing what I can to pay my debt. I can't receive this priceless gift of forgiveness simply for free."

That's what the servant thought. "I can't receive this simply for free. I'm going to show my master that I really meant I would pay it off. I may not be able to pay all of it, but I will pay what I can."

So, he goes out to collect the debts that were owed him. He finds a guy that owes him a few bucks. "Pay what you owe me." The scene repeats itself, as the guy begs for patience, but then the earlier scene comes to a screeching halt. Instead of forgiving the debt, he throws the guy in jail until he can pay it. "No, I can't afford to forgive you."

Is that the reason we don't forgive? "I can't afford to forgive you? If I do, then I won't have a comparison. Then my own sins will look bad. Then I will show I don't deserve to be forgiven."

We might have been inclined to look at the first guy and say, "Surely he could have forgiven the other guy when he was forgiven his massive debt. How ungrateful!"

But it's not merely a matter of ingratitude. It's a matter of unbelief. He did not believe the word that was spoken. He did not believe his debt was forgiven. That's why he felt he had to collect his debts, because when his master came calling later-which he was sure he would do-he would be ready to pay what he could.

Isn't that our problem? God says He forgives our sins, but we question the extent of it. How freely are we forgiven? Was it really free? He must decide to forgive us because we have earned that forgiveness. We lose a crucial piece of showing we have earned it, however, if we don't have someone worse to hold up as comparison.

That's why Jesus says, "My heavenly Father will do the same to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from the heart." We hold our brother captive in our heart. In this case our heart isn't a nice place. It's a dungeon. Cold, concrete walls, with chains screwed into those walls. We hold these people who have sinned against us locked up there until the day of judgment, and then plan to turn them over to be judged.

And why? Because we question the word of forgiveness we have heard and have been hearing. We don't believe we have been freely forgiven. Forgiveness? Yes, but we have trouble believing it is free.

When we do that, it would be wise to hear His Words again. "Forgiven for Jesus' sake." Turn again to receive that forgiveness given to us freely, without any merit or worthiness in us, and see that when it is fully paid, there will never be a time when he is going to collect. In other words, fully paid is freely paid.

AMEN