Hammer on Anvil '

Matthew 18: 23-35 (The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant)

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Are you familiar with this parable? To make a long story short, a king was settling his accounts and one of his servants owed him a LOT of money. The servant was brought before the king. He fell on his knees and pleaded for mercy, and promised he would pay off the entire debt in time. The king was so moved that he canceled the servant’s debt and let him go.

The servant had barely left the palace when he ran into a fellow servant who owed him a small sum of money. He demanded payment, but instead of being merciful as the king had been to him, the first servant had the second thrown into prison. 

It seems this is how we sometimes react about the sins of others. Though we have experienced God’s abundant grace and mercy, we are sometimes reticent to extend that same mercy. When someone has hurt us or offended us or treated us unjustly – or even when we haven’t been personally affected at all, but are simply appalled by another’s sin that we just can’t imagine committing – suddenly we turn into the wicked servant who has forgotten the great debt he was forgiven and wants to exact justice swiftly and with no mercy.

I used to do that. I remember very clearly saying things like, “I don’t see how anybody could do that,” or “I could never do that.” Then God humbled me. I DID do something I boasted I would never do.

Jeremiah 17:9 tells us our hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. God has mercifully shown me some of the depths of wickedness in my own heart, and thankfully I don’t trust it anymore. That’s the whole point; we all need to get past the place where we think there is any good in us, and throw ourselves on God’s mercy.

Next time you are tempted to judge another, stop and think. Do you know the dynamics in that person’s life? What kind of family did he come from? Has he ever known love or acceptance? The bottom line is that unless you can crawl into another person’s skin, you have no idea what atrocities they may have had to endure in their lives – atrocities that drove them to behave in a way you might find reprehensible.

Nobody is beyond God’s reach. It behooves us to remember Paul’s wise words to Timothy: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.”