YOUR DEBT IS PAID

YOUR DEBT IS PAID
Luke 7:36-50
Jerry Vines
11/10/96

One of the things that made the Lord Jesus Christ so attractive and His teachings so interesting is
that Jesus would take stories from ordinary life - things that people understood - and would use them to
teach about spiritual truths. That's what a parable is. A parable is an earthly story that has a heavenly
meaning. In this particular passage of Scripture Jesus tells a story that I think most of us in the building
today could readily understand.
Let me bring it up-to-date for you and I think you'll catch what Jesus is trying to say. Let's
suppose that you and I have the same banker. Let's suppose you owe your banker $500 and I owe him
$5,000. Then, let's suppose that neither one of us has any money at all. We are both absolutely broke.
There's not a way that you and I can pay what we owe to the banker. Then on a Monday morning both
of us get a call from our banker. The banker says to both of us, "I just wanted to call you and let you know
that I know you don't have anything to pay this debt with so I'm just going to clean it off the record and you
owe me absolutely nothing. I don't know about you but I'd spend the rest of the day praising my banker.
I'd be praising my banker all day long because I had a debt that I could not pay and he freely and frankly
forgave that debt.
This is exactly what Jesus is telling in this particular story. He is telling us what forgiveness is all
about. He is also telling us the secret of a great love for Jesus. If you understand what forgiveness is and
if you have experienced forgiveness in your personal life it creates in your heart a great love for the Lord
Jesus Christ.
When Jesus told His stories most of the time He told those stories in a setting. There was an
atmosphere, a context ...

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