Who owes you? Do we keep score? I read about two brothers in Virginia in the early years of the United States. The court record said, “They were insolvent after the war and remain so to this day.” These men apparently could not and would not repay their debts.
Forty years of business transactions in the wilderness meant some of the Israelites had incurred debt. If things went terribly wrong, an Israelite might sell himself into slavery to escape a debt. Moses envisioned a Jubilee year every fifty years in which every debt was forgiven and all lost land was restored. After studying this and preaching about the forgiveness of debts and restoration of what was lost, I read that we have no record that Israel actually fulfilled this part of the law. We don’t know if Jubilee ever actually happened. Here Moses reduces the time frame to seven years. Every seven years forgive. Apparently debts were sometimes not forgiven. Lands were not restored. Slaves were not emancipated. God made provision for emancipation and forgiveness, but the people did not practice it.
We, too, are sometimes educated beyond our level of obedience. How long does a person have to pay in order to receive our forgiveness? Remember the joy of being forgiven. Share that joy with others by forgiving them. The old acapella singing group Glad said it well in their theme song: “Be ye glad, Oh, be ye glad. Every debt that you ever had has been paid up in full by the grace of the Lord. Be ye glad, be ye glad, be ye glad.” Once we realize the price God chose to pay to release us from our debt, we learn to forgive others freely and fully. In Christ our Jubilee year has finally come. Forgiven by God, let us freely forgive.
