Judgement day is coming! (The unforgiving servant Matthew 18:23-35)

Judgment day is coming (The unforgiving servant Matthew 18:23-35)
When Shawnna and I was younger we used to like to watch some crime dramas on television. There was a common thread on all these shows, there was a guilty individual who thought for sure that they had gotten away with the perfect crime. As the show progresses, the super sleuth would slowly begin to unravel what happened and by the end of the show they would have discovered the truth and the guilty party was held accountable. It seemed that guilty characters always had a since of arrogance, they acted as though they would never be caught because they were so clever in their nefarious deeds but in the end, they all faced judgment. We begin to look at the parable of “the unforgiving servant” today and in this parable, we see a servant who owes his master a whole lot. The servant begs for mercy and the master shows him mercy by forgiving his debt but almost immediately the servant goes and finds someone who owes him some money. The servant is not gracious and kind as the master was with him and has the individual who owed him thrown in jail. When the master heard of this it enraged him that the servant did not show the same mercy that was given unto him and held the servant account for his debt. Just like a good made for tv crime drama, we must realize that judgment is coming and that we cannot escape it.
Many individuals live their lives like the arrogant criminals from the Hollywood dramas thinking they have gotten away with it. The servant from Jesus’ parable completely forgot that he has just narrowly escaped punishment when he was given mercy and went straight out and made sure the man that owed him paid up. We can not live our lives void of the fact that judgment will come, we may think that we have escaped it and that it will never come our way, but the reality is, it is coming. God offers mercy to all who except Jesus as their Lord and Savior, but this parable lets us know that with such a great gift there is great responsibility. We have to offer the mercy and forgiveness we have received to everyone we encounter no matter how great a debt they owe us or how great an offense that have preformed against us. As Christian, we must realize that our forgiveness hinges on our willingness to share and show the Love of Jesus Christ to the world around us. We can not live our lives just concentrating on the fact that we got away with our mistakes and they have been forgiven while refusing to love those around us. This parable ends with a stark warning that the Heavenly Father will treat us like the master from the parable on the day of judgment if we allow compassion and love to slip away from our lives.