Try this experiment when you get home today. Take a trash can lid and lay it on a healthy portion of your lawn. Leave it there for a week. Afterward, lift the lid and look under it. See the pale, sickly grass? See the roaches and worms nesting in the dark decay of the withered grass. That's what sin does to us!

Put the lid back down on the grass. Does the grass have the power to remove the lid all by itself? No. That's impossible. And again, we are like the man in our text with an impossible debt to the king. We are helpless to free ourselves.

Finish the experiment. Take the lid away. The bugs flee. The grass begins to receive sunshine and moisture. Its health is revived, restored. It is literally forgiven, let loose from bondage and decay. Forgiveness is just like that. What we can't pay, God pays. God lets us loose from debts of sin and frees us to new life!