Owing a Debt

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

OWING A DEBT

Matt 5:25-26

25 "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.  

NIV

Does this deal entirely with lawsuits in the realm of the world, or is there some spiritual truth beyond the trivial experiences of human laws? Some would suggest there is none and the use of making any parallel between God being the judge and our being the accused and that we should reconcile our differences with God before the judgment is given is an abuse of this verse. This may very well be true because Jesus makes reference to having to pay any debt to the last penny before being released from prison. When any attempt to make this about us and God, all the price, down to the last penny has already been paid by Jesus on our behave, thus it cannot be used in that spiritually. But how do we make this applicable to our lives today? We certainly owe no debt to God, it has been paid. We cannot simply look at this teaching of Jesus as one regarding human lawsuits, for those are rather non-existent in our lives, especially regarding any financial matters. Fiscal debt is almost a way of life in our culture, in fact, many institutions encourage our indebtedness to them. Could this be applied to any or all our relationships with each other? We do not know what the prison could be, but it is possible if we do not reconcile any differences with each other, that is if we feel that we have been offended, we need to resolve that matter quickly otherwise we are in somewhat of a prison of our own making. Having hurt feelings without a resolution because we think someone offended us keeps us pent up inside in the prison of unforgiveness. In the first place, feeling we have been offended could be seen as a prison of self-righteousness, or thinking more highly of ourselves than we should. On the other hand, being the offender is sort of a prison of self-centeredness. The point is if we are to love the Lord our God with every fiber of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves then they would be no adversaries in this life. In other words, the only thing we should owe each other is love, a debt that is consistent, that needs to be paid to the last penny.