Up to Seven Times?

“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” (Matt 18:21).

Peter’s question makes so much sense to me.  Wouldn’t life be easier if we could keep track of the offenses of others until, eventually, we could just write the person off altogether?

I get that.  

The problem with that thought process is that it turns forgiveness into a statistic and not a spiritual characteristic.

Peter and I both want mercy to be a quantity...not a quality.  It would be so much easier. I could feel like I had been obedient before sinking back into my resentments.

Doubtless, Peter thought offering to forgive someone seven times to be generous.  Most rabbis of the day said that one only had to forgive a particular person three times, so Peter had more than doubled that at least.

Jesus’s answer is that there is no end to our forgiveness, and the real answer to Peter’s question comes in the form of the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt 18: 23-35).

The unforgiving servant is called to pay his debts to the King.  His debt is astronomical, and although he says he will pay it back over time, the reality is that there is no way his debt can ever be repaid.  

Do you ever wonder what the servant thought when his debts were forgiven?  I wonder if he went off congratulating himself for outsmarting the king, or if he simply thought the king was an idiot, stupidly falling for his manipulation.  He had just escaped a sentence that was, after all, JUSTICE.  The king had every right to sell into slavery the servant and all of his family members; it was a sentence the law demanded.

And yet, this king hears the servant out and forgives an unpayable debt.  

The servant’s reaction shocks the other servants of the king, it undoubtedly shocked the crowd listening to Jesus, and it shocks us.

This servant, with the ink barely dry on his own pardon, sees one who owes him a small fraction of the debt he’s just been forgiven of, takes the man by the throat, and demands repayment.  

He doesn’t seem to see the connection at all between his own situation and this other fellow’s.  The irony is extreme, and, of course, there is outrage at this behavior and the king’s other servants go to tell him what they’ve witnessed.

It’s when the king recalls the servant to him that he calls him wicked.

The wickedness of this man isn’t connected to his original debts that he had accumulated with no apparent plan for repayment…the wickedness is that although he had mercy modeled for him in the most intimate way, he refuses to be merciful.

The king, no fool after all, gives the man over to the torturers until his debt is paid.

“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?” Jesus’s final answer to Peter’s question is seen in Matthew 18:35: “So my heavenly father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”

There’s no hidden, cryptic message.  Jesus is crystal clear.  We forgive because we are forgiven.  It doesn’t matter what someone else has done or said.  I will not stand before God at judgment and explain why I never forgave someone.  I will not be able to blame my resentments on someone else.  

It’s a hard lesson…it may be the hardest lesson.  

If we are unforgiving, then we are wicked.  We, who have been offered exceeding mercy and patience, must demonstrate the same mercy and patience as our king.  Otherwise, we are the wicked servants.  We cannot have a double standard wherein we receive mercy and hand out justice.  That is not the way this works.

I do believe that justice will be delivered.  Those who do evil will be judged by the king as well.  The servants who are outraged by the unforgiving servant’s behavior don’t take matters into their own hands, by the way.  They take the servant back to the king.  He alone hands out judgment.

I know, in my own life, my desire for justice is really just a petty disguise for my unforgiving and judgmental nature.  I have to watch that, and I’m guessing I’m not alone.

God will judge, and He will judge righteously knowing each heart…including mine.  David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psa 51:10).  That should be our prayer, too.

Everyone else’s heart isn’t my problem - mine is.  To receive mercy, I must distribute mercy…not in limited quantity but as a quality of my character.  

When we fail to be merciful, we show contempt for the mercy we have received.  We show contempt for God’s patience and for Christ’s incredible sacrifice.

If we want to deal with justice, then justice is what we’ll get.  We will get exactly what we deserve, and the time for mercy will be done.