The Greek noun daneion refers to a financial loan or debt — money lent out to be repaid. It appears in Jesus's Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:27), where the king forgives his servant's enormous debt. The related verb daneizo (to lend) appears in Luke 6:34–35.
Jesus's use of the debt/forgiveness metaphor (daneion) in Matthew 18:23–35 becomes one of Scripture's most powerful pictures of divine grace and its ethical demands. The servant's debt of 10,000 talents — an astronomical, unpayable sum — represents humanity's moral debt before God. The king's forgiveness is pure grace, not merit. The servant's subsequent refusal to forgive a small debt exposes the grotesque inconsistency of receiving radical grace without extending it. The parable grounds the Lord's Prayer petition 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' in this debt-cancellation theology.