People love rankings. Ten best movies. Twenty most common spelling errors. Top five tennis players. Ranked lists can be useful. But they can also have a darker side.


In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders were proud of their righteous lifestyles. They did not see themselves as sinful – or at least, not as sinful as everyone else. As a result, they dismissed their own need for forgiveness. Other people needed to repent before God, but not them. The problem is, they compared themselves to the wrong standard.


They missed the point in two ways. First, whether by a little or a lot, we all fall short of God’s standard of holiness and deserve His judgment. Second, the more we realize our need for God’s forgiveness, the more grateful we are to receive it. Still, we must first recognize the depth of our own debt to God. When we do, the gift of forgiveness in Christ is a joy to accept. But it doesn’t stop there. We are then free to forgive others because we know – like the man whose debt was great – how much we’ve been forgiven.