Forgiveness 4

              Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

            Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

 

            Yesterday, Jesus taught us to forgive the same person for the same sin seven times per day – as a minimum. He wasn’t suggesting that when the person confessed the same sin to you for an either time, you got to say, “Oops, you reached your limit! No forgiveness for you!”

            In today’s passage, Peter approaches Jesus and proves he’s been listening. “Up to seven times? That’s what you said, Jesus. Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I.” Can you imagine the big grin on the face of the man who thought himself Jesus’ star disciple?

            I suspect Jesus may have smiled back. After all, seven times is much better than an eye-for-an-eye. But then Jesus drops a bombshell. Not seven times but seventy-seven. Seven times per day for a week and a half. Now I’ll drop the bombshell in case you haven’t already learned this. Some manuscripts don’t say seventy-seven times. They say seventy times seven, or four-hundred ninety times! Seven times per day every day for more than two months.

            If you deal with a large family, many friends, or the public, you’d need a servant whose only job was keeping track of which ones sinned against you each day. And then there’s the dreaded, “four-hundred forty-nine…four-hundred fifty-two…no, wait. Oh, bother, I was almost there. One…two…” And that’s Jesus’s point. It’s not that there is a limit after which you’re free to be unforgiving of that person. It’s that you’ll give up counting.