Many of us are willing to forgive, but only so much. Sometimes a betrayal is too great, or a person just keeps sinning the same way too many times. Sometimes we’ve just had enough, and we’re tired of showing mercy. We’re tired of forgiving. Enough is enough. We stop forgiving, and shut whoever it is out of our lives. We punish them. We hold a grudge. We do not forgive.
We can try to justify this all we want, but the words of Jesus make it impossible. He had a conversation with Peter about this very subject in Matthew 18:21-22:
“Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”
We are supposed to forgive someone as many times as they sin. It doesn’t matter how difficult this is. It doesn’t matter what’s been done to us, or how we’ve been hurt. We must never stop forgiving because we will never stop being forgiven.
Jesus asks nothing of us He was not required to do. He had to forgive countless sins. We may need to forgive a lot in our lifetime, but not as many as Jesus. If not for His forgiveness we would not be forgiven. We cannot hold back the forgiveness that was so freely given to us. There is no number of times we have to forgive that is too many. This doesn’t mean being a pushover. This doesn’t mean we should never wage war, never put people in jail, or never stand against evil. I’ll get to that stuff more in later entries, and what it means. For this entry just understand there is one rule there are no exceptions to. We must always forgive.
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