In the parable about forgiveness that Bible publishers refer to as "The Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor," Jesus taught us that it behooves each of us to completely wipe the slate clean, because our slate has been wiped clean (See Matthew 18:23-35).
The unnamed debtor, who is the primary focus of the story, owed a very large debt, 10,000 talents. Let's call him Ted. The man who owed Ted money, owed him much less, a 100 denarii. Let's call this second debtor Ed.
A denarii was the equivalent of a day's wages. To owe someone 100 of these means you actually owned him about a third of your annual income. Ed's debt was no small amount.
Ted, on the other hand, owned a king a boatload of money. It would take Ted, earning the typical denarii for a day's work, twenty years to pay off one talent. It would take him another 200,000 years (you read that right) to pay off the rest- a truly impossible debt to repay (See http://chimes.biola.edu/story/2010/oct/27/parable-two-debtors/)
Ted pleads with the king, not for mercy, but for time (Ed's approach was similar, but a bit more realistic). Brennan Manning, writing in The Signature of Jesus, credits his friend and psychologist, Molly Clark, with the following insight about the man I'm calling Ted in this parable: "He hadn't asked for any favors! He'd been going to repay that impossible sum through his own efforts. And because he could not conceive of forgiveness, he could not extend it to his fellow servant who owed him a paltry sum."
I wish to suggest that we, like Ted, can't conceive of actual forgiveness. Much of how we live as believers reveals this. We live like we are trying to repay our debt. Our self-recriminations and self-loathing, not to mention our Herculean efforts to produce a more presentable self, testify to this. This is the merit system.
A life based on mercy is foreign to our culture. In order to forgive from our hearts, we must fully embrace mercy! Mercy alone fully acquits, justifies, sanctifies, and ultimately glorifies! When we live under and by mercy, we can experience real joy. We can laugh and even poke fun at our posing, reveling in the great and expansive mercy of the One we call Savior.
Please join me today in asking God for a fresh revelation of His mercy!