Luke 12:58

“For as you are going with your adversary before the magistrate, on the way give diligence to be quit of him, lest haply he drag you to the judge, and the judge shall deliver you to the officer, and the officer shall cast you into prison.”

He depicts their response to Him in terms of debtors who are in danger of being dragged before pagan courts where they will be shown no mercy, and it because they have refused to seek conciliation with their creditors. If only they had put in some kind of effort and admitted their debt, and had come to some kind of agreement with their creditor before they came in front of the magistrate all would have been well, and arbitration before a Rabbi might well then have solved the problem. Israelite law was notoriously favourable towards debtors (Deuteronomy 15:1). But if they do not then they may be dragged before a civil court, and once they reach the civil courts, (because by their refusal to conciliate they have in essence rejected God's word as the measure by which to be judged and can no longer look to it), they will experience the courts full severity. It is clear that the creditor has chosen this approach as being more effective, for both methods were available in the Palestine of that day. The result will be that the whole process of the civil law will go into motion and they will end up in prison. By his obstinacy in refusing to be reconciled the debtor has put himself beyond mercy. The ‘magistrate' is the court official who introduces the case, the ‘judge' is the one officially appointed to give the verdict, ‘the officer' is the gaoler who seals their fate.

In the same way if only they will come to agreement with Him before Judgment Day comes, then they will save themselves from having judgment made against them there. But if they refuse they simply bring on themselves their own fate.