Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
– Matthew 18:21
We tend to like write offs, especially around tax time. It can be to one’s benefit to write off the depreciated value of an asset. Sometimes we might write off an unrecoverable debt so our financial records can be clear of it. In a more unfortunate way, it is people who are often written off. It may happen due to a failure to advance in learning or an obvious unwillingness to improve behaviorally. When that happens the unspoken message regarding that person is, “You will no longer be the beneficiary of my time, energy and attention.”
Peter was moving in this direction when he approached Jesus with a question. “How many times do I forgive someone who sins against me?” You understand where he’s going, don’t you? He is asking Jesus at what point it is okay to write off a person. It is a reasonable question, at least as far as human reasoning goes. It involves an element of self-preservation. How much can a person take before she breaks? How much does one have to endure before he erects the safety barrier between himself and the repeat offender? My suspicion is that Peter wasn’t just asking hypothetically. We don’t know for sure, but if he was carrying a burden, he was keeping track of the number of debts his offender was adding to the record.
Just out of curiosity, how long would you allow your ledger of debts against you to grow? Most everyone would allow room for one forgivable offense; an easy majority would allow for two. How about three? Four? I’m guessing at that point the graph curves downward pretty sharply. Even in his own teaching, Jesus seemed to require no more than two allowances; “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:39). Peter went way beyond this when he offered to go as far as seven. To me that sounds like a very gracious degree of forgiveness. However, Jesus had a different perspective, and I doubt that Peter was prepared for it.
Peter proposed seven-fold forgiveness. Jesus proposed much more. The text of scripture has a slight variance in Matthew 18:22. Some translations indicate that Jesus said to forgive seventy seven times, while others have Jesus saying seventy times seven. Either way the difference is not slight. We’re talking orders of magnitude. Imagine you are driving around trying to find a certain address. Thinking you are close, you stop to ask someone if you are on the right street. They reply, “You’re not even in the right zip code.” That is essentially what Jesus was telling Peter.
Why such a radical expectation? As is often the case, it is because God’s perspective is quite different than ours. In this case, Jesus is guiding Peter (and us) into how we approach the issue of forgiveness as children of the Kingdom. If we are operating as children of the world, seven times would be more than sufficient. However, the Kingdom of God functions under a different paradigm. When it comes to the matter of forgiveness, we could safely reduce the principle to a simple statement: forgiven people forgive people. No further qualifications are necessary. To illustrate the point, Jesus offers a parable of a servant whose master forgave him for an incomprehensible debt, and yet the servant was unwilling to forgive a common debt owed by a fellow servant. When the master learned of this, he was most displeased. Why? Because the servant had received immense grace, yet was unwilling to give even a small amount of the same. He had been forgiven, but was unwilling to forgive.
Peter was curious about where the God-approved threshold of grace lies. Some of us have raised the same question ourselves. When we struggle with that, Jesus invites us to ask another question: where does the threshold of God’s grace toward us lie? At what point does God write us off? When we’ve sinned against him seven times? I’m not sure what year I surpassed that mark, but I know it was a long time ago. When we consider the point Jesus is making, we will come to see that the matter of forgiveness has less to do with a certain number and more to do with magnitude. When we start to feel that the forgiveness expected of us becomes intolerable, then is the time to remember the enormity of grace we have received. Will that make forgiveness easy? Not necessarily, but it will give us the context we need to function as children of the King.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really glad God hasn’t written me off yet.
See you along the Winding Path.
(Note to readers) Thank you for your patience during the week-long absence of blog posts. My participation in a mission trip took me away from the computer, which made it impractical to write these entries. For those who are following the Winding Path faithfully, please know you are appreciated!
The Winding Path 