Unforgiving Servant
- stpeterstoronto
- Sep 5
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 29
Did you know...
that we need to show mercy towards other people? Mercy means to be be kind, compassionate, and forgiving.
This story is a parable about forgiveness.
One day, Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who does something mean to me? Up to seven times?”
“No,” Jesus answered, “Seventy times seven!”
Now, let’s do some math here, that would equal 490 times! Basically Jesus is saying we should always forgive someone.
Jesus told the story of a king who was looking to see how much money his servants owed him.
One man owed him a lot of money – ten thousand talents (that was what money was called then) and the king wanted the money back. The man, however, didn’t have the money to repay him.
The king said that to pay him back, the man, his wife, and children would all be sold to pay for the money he owed. To be sold would make them all slaves!
When the man heard this, he fell on his knees before the king and began to beg, “Oh sir, be patient with me and I will pay all the money back.”
When the king saw the man begging, he felt sorry for him. He told him that he was forgiving his debt, meaning that the man didn’t have to pay back any of the money. He released him and told him to go home.
The man was very happy – he no longer owed any money and his family was safe.
When the man left the king, he met up with a fellow servant who owed him a hundred pence. This was much less than what the man had owed the king.
He grabbed the servant by the throat and said, “Pay me what you owe!”
The servant fell down in front of the man and begged for more time to pay. But the man didn’t listen and was impatient and unforgiving. He ordered that the servant be put in jail.
When the other servants saw what had been done, they were very upset and they went to the king to tell him what had happened.
The king called in the man who he had forgiven and said, “You evil man! I forgave you the huge amount of money that you owed me because you begged me and I had mercy on you, but you didn’t do the same for the man that owed you much less money. You didn’t show the same mercy on your fellow servant in the same way.”
The king was so angry with the man that he sent him to prison until he had paid back every penny.
Jesus ended the story explaining, if we don’t forgive other’s in our hearts, then God won’t forgive us either.
Images are the copyright Sweet Publishing (Parable of the Unforgiving Servant) for teaching purposes only, all rights reserved, and are used according to their terms of use - Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. Distributed under a license with FreeBibleimages.
Learning Activity Extensions
Read about the story in the Bible:
Matthew 18:21-35
Colouring pages courtesy of Supercoloring.com.
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