(Luke 7:41,42 ASV)
Enjoy this devotional about our sin-debt and Christ's payment for it, written by Dr. J. Howard Goddard.
Darby's translation reads, "One owed five hundred denarii and the other fifty." Weymouth renders it, "One owed him five hundred shillings and the other fifty." Phillips has, "One owed him fifty pounds and the other five." Williams puts it, "One owed him a hundred dollars, the other ten."
Pence, denarii, shillings, pounds, dollars, or what-have-you, one of the debtors owed ten times as much as the other, but both were totally bankrupt. They differed in the amount of debt but were alike in their ability--or rather their inability--to pay. And when they had nothing to pay the creditor frankly--the Amplified says freely--forgave them both.
Note that it is the bankrupt debtors who are forgiven, not their debts. What, as a matter of fact, happened to their debts? The answer, while obvious, is full of meaning as an illustration of the way God deals with sinners and with sins. The answer is that the creditor himself paid the debtors' debts.
"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). But "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3) and so "Through this man [Christ] is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:38, 39).
What gives the believer settled peace in respect to his status with God is that his sins--every single one of them, whether he be a fifty-pence or five-hundred-pence sinner-- have been paid for in full by the precious blood of Jesus shed on the cross of Calvary. God cannot forgive sin. He must judge it. But Christ "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24) and consequently sinners, like the two bankrupt debtors in our parable, may be freely forgiven. The sinners may be forgiven because Christ died for their sins. What a God! What a Savior! What a salvation!