Settling Accounts

Settling Accounts: Living as Forgiven People

Hello, autumn.

And thank you, summer.

How do you feel when the seasons begin to change?

Is it welcome? Sad? Maybe a little anxious?

For me, it takes a little effort to give up summer, my favorite season. It's time to store the lawn chairs, get the kids back into school, put everything back on the calendar, and return to the normal routine.

There's both an ah and an ugh to it.

But these changes in season are worth paying attention to.

Maybe they're even an opportunity to pause.

Closing the Door Behind Us

Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement—a day built around confession, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and beginning again.

And it carries an important reminder:

We don't have to carry everything forever.

Every failure.

Every mistake.

Every resentment.

Every regret.

Every debt.

We can acknowledge that something happened.

It mattered.

But it doesn't have to determine what happens next.

That's what forgiveness does.

Forgiveness doesn't erase history or pretend nothing happened. It doesn't mean justice doesn't matter.

“It says that the past does not get to have the final word.”

There's something beautiful about the practices God gave the people of Israel.

As we're opening the door toward whatever is ahead, sometimes we also need to close the door behind us.

Yom Kippur helps us complete the season behind.

How Many Times?

Jesus tells a story about forgiveness in response to a very practical question from his disciples:

How many times do I need to forgive somebody?

Peter suggests seven times.

That's already generous compared with what was commonly expected.

But Jesus doesn't simply add a few more.

He multiplies.

Seventy times seven.

Then he tells a story explaining why.

An Impossible Debt

There's a king settling accounts.

He calls in one of his servants who owes him an impossible amount of money—10,000 talents.

The amount is intentionally extravagant.

The servant cannot possibly repay it.

And then the king does something equally extravagant:

He forgives it.

The debt is canceled.

Completely.

But then comes an even bigger shock.

The forgiven servant encounters another servant who owes him a comparatively small amount.

He grabs the man by the neck.

He demands repayment.

The man who has just been given extravagant grace refuses to extend even a small portion of that grace to someone else.

And that's Jesus' point.

Two Worlds

There are two different worlds we can live in.

We can live in a world of abundance.

Or we can live in a world of scarcity.

We can live as though there is enough grace.

Or we can live as though everything must be counted, repaid, earned, and settled.

And Jesus' story leaves us with a question:

Which world are you going to live in?

The question is no longer whether the servant has received forgiveness.

He has.

The question is whether he's going to live as a forgiven person.

Apparently, he doesn't want to.

He wants forgiveness for himself and repayment from everyone else.

He wants grace when grace benefits him and law when somebody owes him.

He wants abundance for himself and scarcity for everybody else.

It's easy to see the contradiction in his story.

It's harder to notice it in ours.

What Are You Carrying?

As summer becomes fall, we have a choice.

We can carry everything forward.

Or we can decide what can be left behind.

What old grudges are we still carrying?

What disappointments are we bringing into the next season?

What failures from the past are we still holding?

What could we forgive so that we can move forward?

We often pray:

“Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

What might it look like to actually practice that?

Not simply as an idea about forgiveness, but as a practical action of letting something go?

Let Something Go

Maybe the first invitation is simply this:

Let something go.

Forgiveness doesn't require us to say it didn't matter.

It mattered.

But the past doesn't have to have the final word.

We don't have to carry every debt into every new season.

There are things we can lay down.

But that's only one part of the invitation.

Step Forward in Love

The second is to take the next step in love.

“Forgiveness closes the door behind us, but then commitment opens the door in front of us.”

Those are the two movements:

Letting go.

Stepping forward.

Laying something down and then moving forward in commitment.

So as one season ends and another begins, maybe that's our invitation.

What can you leave behind?

And what is your next right step in love?

You don't have to carry everything forever.

Let something go.

Then step forward in love.