The portion of our passage that struck me today was the passage on forgiveness.
Isn't it true that we want mercy when it comes to our own sins, but we want justice when it comes to wrongs committed against us? Our views of justice, mercy, and forgiveness tend to be very one-sided.
In a society that tells us anything goes as long as it's right for us, we tend to think that we're good, certainly better than most, and haven't really done that much for which we need to be forgiven. But that's because our perspective is so skewed.
We don't fully grasp the holiness of God, and we don't fully grasp our own sinfulness, which means we don't truly grasp how much we've been forgiven - particularly those of us who grew up in Christian homes and don't have a dramatic conversion story with a drastic before/after persona. And if we don't grasp how much we've been forgiven, we aren't appropriately grateful, and we aren't as inclined to bestow that forgiveness to someone else. Just like the man in Jesus' parable.
We are that man.
I pray that our eyes would be opened to His holiness, our sin, the magnitude of His forgiveness towards us, and that our hearts would overflow with gratitude resulting in our willingness to forgive others for what they have done (and will do!) to us.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage: Matthew 19:1-2, Mark 10:1, Luke 9:51-56, Matthew 8:18-22, Luke 9:57-62, John 7:10-53, John 8:1-59, Luke 10:1-24
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Matthew 18:32&33
Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’
A good reminder to me that I need to forgive everyone. I am forgiven for all my horrible sins, I need to forgive others.
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