Forgiving Challenge Kids: The 11-Day Forgiveness AdventureSample

How Do We Clean Up?

Yesterday you read about what Absolution is. It is a settling up of a crushing debt of sin that was racked up by every human being.

But how does that look practically in our everyday lives? What does it look like to have your debt of sin covered?

Jesus used a parable in Matthew 18:21-35 to help His disciples understand what He meant when He spoke about forgiveness.

A man owed the king ten thousand talents. Today that would amount to trillions of dollars. Literally, no one on earth could repay this amount! He could not pay, so he begged for mercy – and the king canceled the debt. The man then met a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii. Today that would amount to about $20,000. The man demanded payment and had his fellow servant thrown in prison when he could not pay.

When the king heard about this, he called for the first servant. "You wicked servant," he said, "I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" So the king handed him over to the jailers to be tortured.

Jesus concluded, "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

This parable was challenging to the disciples. The point that Jesus was making is that if you don't forgive others, you probably don't understand how much God has forgiven you in the first place. Forgiving others, while never easy, is much more possible when we look at it in light of how much God has forgiven you and me.

We no longer have to run around evening up scores in our lives because we have more than enough room to absorb the debt of others.

Once you get your debt settled, you then go pay the debts of others.

Living cleaned up means giving up all your rights to get even.

Challenge: It's hard to forgive others, but remembering all you have been forgiven from helps you to let go of the hurts others have caused. Take a blank sheet of paper. On one side, write a hurt you have received from someone else. On the other side, write down all the things you've done that Jesus has forgiven you. Seeing how much Jesus has forgiven us helps us forgive others.