The crappy servant and the crazy king

Disclaimer:

So I just finished typing and this ones a doosey or some other word that means long. Then again, since when did I write short blogs? It's one of my better ones though. Check it out!

So here's what I gathered from the parable of the wicked servant....

23 Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. 26 The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, 'Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.' 27 Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. 28 But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!' 29 So his fellow servant fell down at his feet F90 and begged him, saying, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.' F91 30 And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. 31 So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. 32 Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?' 34 And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. 35 So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses." F92 Matthew 18

So the first servant owed ten thousand talents. That translates to about 60 million denarii. One denarii is one days wage. The second servant owed him only 100 denarii. Lets do some math....

Granted I didn't put much effort into my math, I still think it makes a good point. Check it out-

• To pay off his debt, the first servant would have to work 60 million days and give every cent he earned to pay off his debt.
• To put it on a more reasonable scale, if he worked every day of his life, from his day of birth to the day of death, without a single day off, sick day, vacation, Sabbath or weekend, without any childhood and never retiring, and then he lived to the ripe old age of 85, he would have to live one thousand nine hundred and thirty-four life times to pay off his debt, and that's without taking a single penny for himself. This proposal is preposterously simple and generous, considering according to Jewish law, one couldn't work on Sabbath and I'm sure no man employs new born babies...
• Look at it this way- If he somehow gained immortality, then worked every day of his immortal life to pay off his debt, and never kept a cent, he would only have to work for 164,383.5 years. Pittance.

When he told his master he could pay off his debt, he must have been lying through his teeth, completely insane, or vastly ignorant of the immensity of his debt. Now for the second servent who owed 100 denarii...

• To pay off his debt to the first servant, he would have to work a full 100 days and give every penny to him
• Translating into dollars, if he worked an eight hour day getting a low pay of $6.50/hour, his debt would amount to $5,200, a substantial debt, especially for a low income earner. If he had a family to support, this debt could quite possibly be unpayable.

So a glance at both debts shows us that both responces were appropriate for the time. The kings original plan, to sell the first servant and his entire family to pay off at least a fraction of the debt, was quite acceptable. Likewise, the first servant's responce to the second servant was not at all unwarrented. My denarii-to-dollar example may not be completely historically accurate, but in some places $6.50 or even higher is the minimum wage, so I think it works. If you were working a minimum wage job and somebody owed you $5,200 and just wasn't going to pay off, how would you feel? Society would say sue him or send him to debtors prison (assuming we still had such a thing...). This was his responce, perfectly reasonable.

So what's the spiritual application? This is obviously more than just a story about some people owing each other money. The servants represent mankind, the king is God. We all owe a debt to God, and like the wicked servant, we all owe a debt that's so immense it's almost funny, except for the fact that the wages of sin is death. Because we've all accepted sin (for all have sinned and fall short) over the grace of God, we all deserve complete and horrible damnation. When we choose sin, we spit in the face of God, the embodiment of Love itself, a Love that lives out it's very existance soley for you. How horrible a thing. This Love has and will try everything to reach you, even if this Love knows you will never love it in return. So great a Love is this, it's simply uncomprehendable. The wicked servant is a fool for allowing himself to fall into such a deep, unpayable debt. How infinitely more foolish are we to deny Love the only thing it wants for it's love- our flawed love in return. We scoff at the wickedness and foolishness of the first servant when the fact of the matter is Jesus is pointing at us- every man or women born to this earth, and our debt and wickedness far extends the bounds of finances. I could go on, but I think I've expressed myself- we are the first servant, and we suck, really really bad.

Back to the story- the king forgives the debt of the servant. This king is so gracious and compassionate, it is offensive to the mind. The very fact that the king gave so much to the servant in the first place makes us wonder how sane this king really is, or if there was some scandal behind his giving. Then he just forgives him. What? How dare he! It almost seems like an injustice! It's rediculous finacially and hard to come to terms with morally. That servant ought to have been taught a serious lesson at least! What kind of grace is this, grace that is so good, it's almost scandelous? Am I on my own on this one? Seriously, this servant was crap and at least something ought to have been done. Not even a slap on the wrist or some sort of agreement- "You pay me 5 bucks a month, we'll call it even." Nothing. Complete, unconditional, 100% forgiven. Not a penny owed. And the worst part of it all is, this analogy Jesus uses is only a fraction of what the kingdom of God is really like. It's only a snippet. In reality, we are far worse than the servant and God's grace is so much more than that of the king.

Consider owing somebody over 160,000 years worth of work. Seriously stop and think about it. Think about one year in a crappy, hard, unfufilling job, and getting nothing for it. That, times 160,000, and there's still more to go. And that's only an analogy. There's much more to it. Praise the Lord. Praise Him with tears in your eyes, tears of remorce for how much you've grieved Him, and tears of gratitude in its truest form, dripping with love. The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. May His name be praised on earth as it is in Heaven. Glory, glory, glory be to God on high!

The second servant owed the first a lot of money. There's no way he could have gotten the money together in any reasonable amount of time, not as a servant. There's living expenses to pay, possibly a family. If you buy my $5,200 model, consider working $6.50/hour and raising a family. People do it, I don't know how. It's commendable really, especially in our materialistic Western society. Now imagine working $6.50/hour with a $5,200 debt, and he demanding you pay up. It just isn't possible. "It's too hard to make mends meet as it is, how can I even pay five denarii?", I imagine him thinking. He owed him a great debt.

Who owes you a great debt? Have you let someone borrow money or some tangible thing that you're still expecting back? Are you still expecting somebody to make good on a promise, or is the debt even deeper? Has somebody hurt you in the past? Perhaps someone has broken your heart in a such a way, there's nothing they can do to repair it. Perhaps somebody owes you an unpayable debt...

The debt the second servant owed was great, but lets compare the two-

• The first servant would have had to work a measley 164, 383.5 years to pay off his impossible debt
• The second servant would have had to work a whopping .274 of a year to pay off his debt
• Like I proposed before, the second servant owed a possible conversion of $5,200. If you convert the wicked servenats debt into dollars using the same 1 denarius to $6.50/hour for an 8 hour day, his debt would amount to a minescule 3.12 BILLION dollars.

Even my improper use of adjectives doesn't mask the incredible difference between the debts. Looking at the comparison, we naturally feel he should immediatly be so filled with gratitude that he forgives the other man's debts. And why not? He nearly lost his life, but because of the indescribible grace of the king, he has been given a new life, a new start! He owed lifetimes of debt to the king, now he literally owes him nothing! (and now he owes him so much more than he did before) Because he throws the second servant into prison, onlookers report him to the king, who in his fury delievers him into the hand of torturers, an even worse fate than he faced before. We feel his punishment is just.

How about you? Are you holding some debt against someone? Have you thought about that debt in comparison to the immeasurable debt God has forgiven us? In fact, don't even bother comparing the two debts, just consider how much you actually owe to Him. Try asking Him to help you understand just how much He's forgiven you, and then chew on that for a while. Dwell on the mercy you've recieved. Consider going to Hell, and, if you've recieved His free gift of grace in faith, be grateful He's pulled you out of that and into eternal glory. When you begin to realize just how much He has done for you, just how much He loves you, all the other problems of this world just don't seem to matter as much. He can handle it if you just trust in Him.

If I wanted to say this in a lot less words (a LOT less....) perhaps I could simply have said this-

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangly dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Amen.