Scripture Reading: Matthew 18:21-35
Perhaps no other lesson is harder to learn than to be forgiving. It never gets easy to bear injury or wrong. Yet the lesson is essential. We can ask forgiveness for ourselves only when we are ready to forgive those who trespass against us.
Jesus had been speaking to His disciples about forgiving others. He said if anyone sin against us, we should first go and talk the matter over with him privately. Mutual explanations will likely settle the matter. It will be still better if the two kneel and pray together before they begin to talk about their differences. If the matter cannot be settled between the two, then one or two witnesses are to be taken along. If one man still remains implacable, the other has done his part.
It was always Peter who spoke first, and when he heard the Master’s words, he asked Jesus how often his brother should sin against him and he forgive him. This question still troubles many people. In some person’s minds patience quite soon “ceases to be a virtue.” If they have forgiven another two or three times, they think they have really acted very generously. Peter supposed he was going to the very extreme of Christian tolerance when he suggested that seven times would be a good limit for Christ’s disciples. The rabbis said, “Forgive the first offense, the second, the third; punish the fourth.” But the answer of Jesus showed that there should be no limit. That is what seventy times seven means — not any definite number, however great, but infinitely. We are to forgive as God forgives us, and He does not keep account of the number of times. He forgives all the multitude of our transgressions. The time never comes therefore when we may say: “I have exhausted the requirements of Christian love. I cannot forgive you anymore.”
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