Word for Today - 30 April 2026
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“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?” Matthew 18:21 NIV
Paid in full
There is a saying in baseball: “Three strikes and you’re out.” We tend to play life the same way. We give people two or three chances, but no more. But God never gives up on us. It’s not in His nature. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother, Jesus set the gold standard. Peter answered his own question by saying, “Seven times.” But Jesus ups the ante to seventy times seven (see v. 22 NLT). Then He ups the ante even more with a story of a master who forgave his servant a ten-thousand-talent debt. Let’s do a currency exchange. One talent totaled 180 months’ wages—that’s fifteen years! And that’s just one talent. So a 10,000-talent debt totaled 150,000 years of wages. Using today’s average life expectancy, it would have taken his servant 2,232 lifetimes to pay off the debt. Of course, the average life expectancy in the first century was less than half of what it is now, so it would have taken twice as many lifetimes to pay off the debt. But instead of years, let’s put this debt into dollars. Using a minimum wage of $7.25, let’s take a nine-to-five job, Monday through Friday. That’s an annual income of $15,080. That might not seem like much, but when you multiply it by 150,000 years, it totals $2,262,000,000. (Three commas means billions.) Now here’s the thing: by virtue of what Christ accomplished on the cross, your sin debt—past, present, and future—is paid in full. That’s a truth you can be confident in and stand on.
Paid in full
There is a saying in baseball: “Three strikes and you’re out.” We tend to play life the same way. We give people two or three chances, but no more. But God never gives up on us. It’s not in His nature. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother, Jesus set the gold standard. Peter answered his own question by saying, “Seven times.” But Jesus ups the ante to seventy times seven (see v. 22 NLT). Then He ups the ante even more with a story of a master who forgave his servant a ten-thousand-talent debt. Let’s do a currency exchange. One talent totaled 180 months’ wages—that’s fifteen years! And that’s just one talent. So a 10,000-talent debt totaled 150,000 years of wages. Using today’s average life expectancy, it would have taken his servant 2,232 lifetimes to pay off the debt. Of course, the average life expectancy in the first century was less than half of what it is now, so it would have taken twice as many lifetimes to pay off the debt. But instead of years, let’s put this debt into dollars. Using a minimum wage of $7.25, let’s take a nine-to-five job, Monday through Friday. That’s an annual income of $15,080. That might not seem like much, but when you multiply it by 150,000 years, it totals $2,262,000,000. (Three commas means billions.) Now here’s the thing: by virtue of what Christ accomplished on the cross, your sin debt—past, present, and future—is paid in full. That’s a truth you can be confident in and stand on.
