The Unforgiving Servant
The Debt That Owns You | Chapter 9 in Parables Unsealed
You were forgiven a universe of debt.
Why are you still collecting pocket change?
A king decided to settle accounts.
He summoned his servants one by one. The ledgers would not lie.
The first servant owed ten thousand talents.
Not a fortune. An extinction. Two hundred thousand years of labor if he worked every single day. If his children worked after him. If their children worked.
“Sell him,” the king said.
“His wife. His children. Everything he owns.”
The servant’s legs gave way. His knees struck marble. “Lord, have patience with me. I will repay everything.”
An impossible promise. But it was all he had left.
The king looked at him. This man who’d squandered a fortune. This man who knelt in wreckage with nothing to offer but lies and trembling hands.
Compassion moved in the king’s chest.
The dangerous kind that costs everything while demanding nothing.
“I forgive you the debt. All of it. Go. You’re free.”
The words hung in the air. The obligation that should have enslaved generations. Erased.
The servant walked out like a man raised from the dead. His wife wouldn’t be sold. His children wouldn’t be slaves. The weight lifted so suddenly he felt dizzy with it.
He made it fifty feet before he saw him.
A fellow servant. A man who owed him money.
One hundred denarii. Four months’ wages. Manageable. Survivable. Normal.
Compared to ten thousand talents, it was dust.
But something had shifted in the forgiven servant’s chest. The vertigo of mercy was fading. The familiar weight of control was returning.
The comfortable mathematics of who owes what to whom.
He’d been powerless in the throne room. On his knees. Reduced to nothing.
Here, finally, was someone beneath him. Someone who owed him.
His hand shot out. Fingers found throat. Closed.
“Pay me what you owe.”
The other man clawed at the hand crushing his windpipe. When he could finally force sound past the grip, the words came out strangled:
“Have patience with me, and I will repay everything.”
The exact same plea. Word for word.
The forgiven servant heard his own voice echoed back from another man’s mouth.
And it changed nothing.
“No.” He dragged the man toward the magistrate.
“Prison. Until every coin is paid.”
The other servants watched this happen.
They’d seen ten thousand talents forgiven with a word.
Now they watched him enforce one hundred denarii with violence.
They went straight to the king.
The king’s face changed as he listened. Something hardened behind his eyes.
He summoned the servant back.
Same throne room. Same throne. But everything had changed.
“You wicked servant.” The words hit like fists. “I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?”
The servant opened his mouth. Closed it. He had no defense.
The king’s voice went cold. “Hand him over to the jailers to be tortured until he pays back everything he owes.”
Ten thousand talents. The debt that had been erased, restored.
The man who’d walked out free was dragged back to chains.
The torture wasn’t a new sentence.
It was the natural state of a heart that refuses to become a conduit for mercy.
The king’s forgiveness was never a transaction. It was the opening of a channel meant to flow through him, not pool in him.
The moment he grabbed his fellow servant’s throat, he closed the channel.
What you refuse to release, you cannot retain.
You have been forgiven the unpayable.
Every failure, every betrayal, every hidden thought. Cancelled.
And you walked out and immediately found someone to throttle over what they owe you.
You are being suffocated by your refusal to forgive.
That tightness in your chest when their name comes up? That mental ledger you keep recalculating? That’s the channel sealing shut. You cannot receive what you absolutely refuse to release.
The debt they owe you dissolved the moment yours did. Every claim you’re still making is evidence you never understood the gift.
You’re not holding them accountable. You’re building your own prison.
The channel is still open.
But it will only reach you if you let it flow through you.
Who are you still holding hostage?
<3EKO
Back after a few days with family. Funny how being around the people who know you best can surface exactly which debts you’re still collecting.
Next parable drops Friday.
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I love you.
What a great message – thank you, ECO.
I love ECO’s all around message that God is within us. It was not until I took out the dogma of institutional Christianity that I could better understand the Gospel’s message to Love God and Love Others as we Love ourselves. What if we are not supposed to worship God; but instead, keep the focus on Loving God (so we can love others and ourselves)?
It took me years to figure out that waiting for an apology that never comes doesn’t mean you still can’t forgive that person for harmful behavior that some others also deemed wrongful behavior. Forgiving others helps us more than we know, even when the other party refuses to apologize for their harmful behavior.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” releases that anger so that our container within does not become mean and hateful, focusing on revenge.