Peter once asked an extremely important question, one that continues to be just as important today as it was then.
Matthew 18:21 (ESV)
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
That is a great question. It is a question that, so far as the will of the Lord is concerned, most people answer incorrectly. Some believe the answer depends on the severity of the sin that was committed against them. If it caused too much pain or suffering, some would conclude that they are justified in not giving a person a second chance. In other words, the answer to the question would be never. Has anyone ever sinned against you in such a way that you feel they are not worthy of forgiveness?
Here is a lesson we should learn about forgiveness—no one is worthy of it. Inherit in the practice of forgiving is the offering of mercy. Forgiveness is a demonstration of compassion. In answering Peter’s question, Jesus gave an example of a man who owed his master ten thousand talents. A talent was worth about twenty years of labor. So, for this man to pay his master what he owed, he would have to work for him for 200,000 years. No problem, right? Obviously, the only way this man was going to get out of debt was for his master to have mercy on him, which is exactly what he did. We are told that the master was moved with compassion and forgave him (Matthew 18:27). Now then, when someone sins against you, your decision to forgive that person or not, should have nothing to do with what the person has done or how much pain he has caused you. And, it certainly does not have anything to do with whether or not the person deserves it. If he deserved it, he would not need mercy. Forgiveness only comes down to one thing—do you have the compassion to offer mercy?
Before we decide if we are going to forgive a person, we better consider our own situation with God. In the illustration that Jesus gave to Peter, God is the master who was willing to show mercy to his servant who owed him an unsurmountable amount. We are represented by the servant who was forgiven. Before we obeyed the gospel, we owed God an unpayable amount. We can not pay God back for all that He has done for us if we had 10 X 200,000 years to do it. Yet, out of the unsurpassed mercy of His heart, God forgave us of all our sins. Should we not show others the same kind of mercy when they sin against us? Regardless of how we feel about it, God says we should, and He has the final word on it.
You will recall from our Lord’s illustration that the servant who was forgiven had his own servants. One of them could not immediately pay back the amount that he owed, which was a hundred denarii. A denarius was about a day’s labor. Given the chance, he could pay that back. However, his master, the same man who was forgiven so much by His own master, refused to forgive the debt, and put his servant in jail. Of course, when his master heard of his unwillingness to forgive, it made him so mad that he had him arrested and thrown into jail until he could pay the debt that he owed, meaning he would be in jail forever. The application of the illustration is clear—if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us, and we will be punished forever (Matthew 18:35).
So, what was the answer to Peter’s question? Should we forgive those who sin against us as many as seven times? By the way, since the Jewish practice was to forgive others 3 or 4 times at the most, Peter was being pretty generous by suggesting seven times. Jesus, however said, “…I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). In other words, indefinitely. This is a divine directive. We must forgive others the same way that God forgives us (Ephesians 4:32). He forgave us even though we did not deserve it, and, even though we caused Him so much pain (the pain of watching His Son die on a cross). Are you willing to forgive others the way God in Christ forgave you? If not, be prepared to pay the price.
As you wind down for the night, think about these things