"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?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times." (Matthew 18:21-23)
These verses follow a section of verses which deal with what to do when a fellow believer sins against you in order to see him repentant and restored to fellowship. It is, essentially, Jesus' instructions regarding discipleship and church discipline.
Following that teaching, Peter asks Jesus if there is a limit to his instructions regarding forgiveness. He offers a hypothetical situation, which he believes to be absurd, where another believer sins against you, and you forgive them; then they sin against you again; and you forgive again; and you do so even up to seven times. What Peter really wants to know is if there is a limit to the mercy we are to show to someone who has sinned against us. Are we required to forgive an offending person every single time she sins against us?
Peter probably thinks, as seems to be his way, he is being very bold and very generous. Others may forgive a couple of times, maybe even three or four, but he is willing to go all the way up to seven! This is far more than even the rabbis would require!
But Jesus sees right through his attempt at piety. He tells Peter seven times is too little, he needs forgive others for the same offense against him seventy-seven times!
Both Peter and Jesus know it is hard to forgive. But, while Peter desires to put a cap on forgiveness, a very generous cap in his mind, Jesus does not. Jesus wants Peter to forgive and forgive and forgive. He wants forgiveness to become his default setting toward offenders, to become his way of life in a world where we will be offended and sinned against on a fairly regular basis.
Jesus then tells his disciples a parable in vv 24-35 to drive his point home. To demonstrate how serious he is about what he just said. We know it as the parable of the unforgiving servant. The story goes like this. A king desired to settle his debts with his servants. One servant owed him a massive amount of money. But the servant can't pay and moved by request and compassion the king forgives him. However, upon leaving the presence of the king the forgiven servant immediately encounters a fellow servant who owes him a about a hundred days wages, a substantial amount but nothing compared to what he was forgiven by the king. The forgiven servant grabs the man and violently demands repayment. The debtor pleads for mercy, but the forgiven servant refuses and has the man thrown into prison until he can pay the debt. Other servants witness this and report it to the king. The king is enraged by the forgiven servant's lack of mercy after being shown so much, so the king hands the forgiven servant over to be tortured until he can repay the original debt.
Jesus concludes, "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." Sounds a lot like Matthew 6 doesn't it?
The lesson is as clear from the parable as the identity of each of the characters. The king is God the Father. The forgiven servant is each of us who likes to receive mercy from God but does not like to give it out. The second servant is pretty much everyone we know, they are the people who owe us a modest debt - and require us to forgive that debt -- in comparison to that which God has forgiven us.
This puts us firmly in our place -- Like Peter and the first servant, we owe God a vast debt due to sin. Like Peter and the first servant, we do not grasp the implications of God’s mercy. No matter how much we are forgiven, we hesitate to forgive. Like Peter, we want limits. Like the first servant, we want to be forgiven more than we want to forgive. Jesus challenges these attitudes. If God forgives “all that debt,” (v 32) we must forgive lesser debts. The forgiven forgive. (cf ESV-C)
Jesus is saying to Peter what we saw Paul say to the Ephesians in an earlier blog, God's children must forgive "as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32) As one commentator concludes, "Jesus freely forgave us, at great cost to himself. Therefore, we should forgive our brothers, from the heart. Learning from the Lord, we lay down anger and the lust for vengeance and extend mercy as God has to us."
Soli Deo Gloria