THE KING’S BUSINESS
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has forgiven you debts whose greatness defies computation and you go out and ex act the paltry debts your fellowmen owe you. How many professed Christians there are who are harboring grudges over some petty slight or offense, oftentime a purely imaginary slight or offense. We should all meditate long and deeply over this parable. The debtor of the man in the parable acted precisely toward him as he had acted to ward his own creditor but he remembered nothing of his own having sued for mercy and now has no mercy on the one wno sues him for mercy. This also is true to life; others sue us for mercy just as we have made our suit to God but we have no fercy for them. “Pay the debt,” is our demand. The outcome is startling, “His Lord called him.” If we will not listen to the cry of our debtors, then we shall have to listen to the voice of our creditor. God freely offers us forgiveness for all our $12,000,000 in debtedness, but if we truly accept this offer we will prove it by freely forgiving others. If we do not forgive others it proves that we have despised the proffered mercy of God. Now we are back on the law basis and on the law basis we shall be delivered to the tormentors until we pay “all that is due.” We can never pay all that is due; so our torment will be everlasting. There is fto mercy for the man who shows by refus ing mercy to others he has despised it for hiriiself (James 2:13). The only way to learn to be merciful is by believing In the mercy of God revealed in Christ toward us (cf. 1 John 4:19 R. V.) Jesus points His own parable (v. 35) ; so there can be no mistake in its meaning. There is then no hope for many professed Christians unless they quickly repent of their attitude towards some who have wronged them. Tne gate to hell here pointed out is a wide one and “many there he that go in thereat.” Wednesday, March 17. Matt. 19:1-12. Jesus still maintains His popularity with the multitude (v. 2), though He had aroused the hitter, implacable hatred of the
God, and we have naught to pay (Luke 7: 42; Ps. 130;3; Ezra 9:6; Ps. 40:12). It is not before an abstract law that we are guilty but before a Person, and an infinitely holy Person (Ps. 51:4). If we could only be brought to realize how great our unpaid debt is which God has freely forgiven us, we surely would not find it hard to torgive others. The greatest wrongs done us would seem small indeed compared with the wrongs that we have done Him. It would be well if every time a wrong is done us we would read this parable and learn to look at the wrongs done .us in the light of the wrongs that we have done to God. The demand of just payment brought this debtor down upon his knees, and that is where the full demand of law brings each one ol us if we are wise. Yet this debtor fancied that he could ultimately pay his debts if he only had time. This, too, is exactly true of hu man experience, when first awakened to a sense of our sins, we still fancy we can pay sometime. We think we can atone for past sins by future good works. It is only after a while that it fully dawns upon us that we can do nothing at all, that salvation must be not only partly, but wholly of grace (Eph. 2:8, 9). In verse 27 we have God’s method of dealing in grace. Here it is all of grace just as before it was all of law. “The Lord” does not extend the time of paying the debt (as the debtor had asked) but fully remits it. God never mixes law and grace (cf. Gal. 5:2-4; 3:10; Rom. 3:28; 11:6). The basis of grace is nothing in us but something in God, His own “compas sion.” The condition upon which God deals in grace is in us, viz., that we acknowledge our hopeless indebtedness and sue for mercy (Luke*18:13, 14; Rom. 10:12, 13). Tuesday, March 16. Matt. 18:28-35. The one who had just been forgiven the $12,000,000 debt went right out and tried to violently exact a debt of $17 from an other. That seems incredible but it is a scene enacted every day, and alas! enacted by some of the readers of these notes. God
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