Quote:
Originally Posted by bearbear
Jesus gives more detail here:
Matthew 18
33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers,[e] until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
The servant has no way of paying back the master if he is in jail so he'll stay there until he rots. The Father will probably doing the same to us in eternity if we do not forgive. We have no way of paying back the wages of sin which is death since only Jesus could do this for us.
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Another principle that must be considered is when to stop milking the metaphor or the analogy. And this is being spoken in terms of extremes. Are we in a situation in which the extreme is provided to make a point. Not to assert some extreme absolute of eternity? I do not know the answer. But a response that simply says something like "that is what it says" will be ignored because there must be a reason for such certainty.
It is pretty well accepted that the discussion about loving God and hating money or loving money and hating God was not the literal opposite pole discussion that was spoken. It was understood as getting priorities clear. But since nothing is that extreme (except maybe some kind of ascetic), we are often too quick to question the faith of a rich person because they surely could not love God if they could accumulate that much money.
Says who? Do we know their heart? For some people, their lot in life is to make and accumulate money without much effort. Without the kind of greed that would drive a Richard Cory to go home and put a bullet through his head. "But I . . . I work in his factory. And I curse the life I'm livin'. And I curse my poverty. And I wish that I could be . . . Richard Cory."