No One More Than I

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells a story to illustrate His point on forgiveness. I'm sure you've heard it - a King is collecting his debts and calls a servant that owes him an enormous amount of money. The man cannot pay, so the King decides to put him in jail. The man begs and pleads; the king is compassionate and lets him leave. Just as he's left the servant sees another servant who owes him an insignificant amount of money. He goes to collect it and of course the man cannot pay. He gets angry and threatens to throw the man in jail. The man begs and pleads, but the servant does not have compassion, and he throws him in jail anyway. The King hears about it becomes angry and throws the servant in jail saying, 'I just forgave all of your debt, why wouldn't you have forgiven this man his tiny debt to you?'

That's the basic idea anyway. This is a basic lesson that we learn as children - do unto others as you would have them do unto you - or we love because God first loved us - but this morning, it all of a sudden became much more personal to me. I will forgive or try to - and get sidetracked by the lies that say, "uh, well, yeah, at least I wouldn't do that...." I fall into the trap of comparing myself to the person that I'm forgiving instead of remembering where I have come from. The truth is that God has forgiven me a debt so enormous, so huge and overwhelming, that there is no way I could have even come close to ever being able to pay it off - Now, NOTHING that ANYONE ever does to me can come close to comparing to the debt that I had towards God. He set the example - He has forgiven me, therefore, I MUST forgive (and not judge). Wow - I don't know if I can get the full weight across of this truth that I stumbled on this morning - perhaps it is too basic. It is basic, but I've missed it. I've always thought of, "Well, I should forgive this person because I've done something similar and God has forgiven me for that" - comparing situation to situation - Instead of looking at the whole picture - God has forgiven my LIFETIME of sin that placed His ONLY SON on the cross to be tortured and killed. He has forgiven me and now I can forgive anyone who's path I cross any instance of sin. Praise the Lord!

Jesus, please heal my judgementalness. Take it away and make my heart right before You in everything. I love You!