Matthew 18:23-35

This passage is the parable of the unforgiving servant. Many people know this parable. The servant owes his master 10,000 talents, and his master forgives him his debts, then the servant turns around and strangles a guy who owes him 100 denarii. The master gets pissed because the servant who had been forgiven had been so unforgiving. It's got an easy messge to understand, we have been forgiven a lot, so we shouls forgive those who owe us less.
The lesson takes on a whole new significance, however, when we focus on the amounts owed. 1 denarii was a day's wage for a laborer, and owing someone 100 denarii was about the same as 1/3 of a year's wages. The servant was owed a lot of money. If you look at a 30,000 dollar salery, that would amount to about $10,000. There are very few people who would look at forgiving a debt of $10,000 very easily, until you look at the next number. A talent was worth about 20 years wages for a laborer, and this guy owed 10,000 talents (without interest) That's 200,000 years worth of work. Comparing that number to a $30,000 salery, the amount would be roughly $6,000,000,000. You end up comparing ten thousand dollars to six billion. Imagine having to pay a six billion dollar debt when you are making thirty thousand dollars a year, and you still have to pay your normal expenses, such as house payment, phone bill, gas, electricity, and all of the other expenses. That would put you down to pay a maximum of about 10,000 dollars a year, and you could NEVER pay off six billion in a lifetime. Comparing that to the ten thousand that the servant was owed, the ten thousand hardly seems like much at all, it's about the leftovers after bills and expenses each year.
This is the extent to which we have been forgiven for our sins by God, and the comparatively small amount is how much we have to forgive others who have sinned against us. It seems like people have wronged us in significant ways, but when we compare how much we have wronged God to how much we have been wronged, we see that nothing significant has been done to us. This passage not only talks about how we should forgive because we have been forgiven, it also talks about how much more we have been forgiven than we will ever have to forgive.
Our responsibility upon understanding how much we have been forgiven is clear. We need to forgive others, even though what they have done seems large to us.
We also need to recognize God for the sacrifice that he made to forgive us for our sins. God has forgiven us through Jesus Christ's death on the cross, and all we have to do is accept that forgiveness. If you have not accepted God's gift of forgiveness, I would beg you to do so now. Simply admit to God that you cannot pay back that debt by yourself, and thank him for paying it for you. If you understand the numbers and the concept here you have to understand that there is no way we could ever earn salvation in our lifetime, our debt is just too great, and it only continues to grow the longer you don't accept God's forgiveness. No matter how large it grows though, he will always pay for you.