For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life.
You might not have ever considered this before, so I will say it again. For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life.
Here is what I mean. We have certainly all had the experience where someone (like a coworker) does something to you, like taking and eating the last piece of sour milk chocolate cake in the break room fridge which was saved especially for you. They say, “Oh, I didn’t know that was yours. I’m sorry.” And, you forgive them because, well, we are supposed to forgive, right?
But then, it happens again. This time it is the soda that had a sticky note with your name on it. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was yours.” And, you assume that the sticky note merely fell off, so you forgive them again because, well, we are supposed to forgive, right?
But, then the cookie incident occurs. This is the incident where the designer cookie, from the bakery, literally has your name embossed with icing across the top. Further, the Styrofoam container has your name written in pen, pressed down into the foam, making a lasting impression that generations from now will still be able to be read by our children’s, children’s, children when excavating the landfill. “Oh, this guy must have had some sort of celebration. His name is right here.”
Yes, it is right there, but this forgiven, “co-worker” somehow is not able to see the “lasting for generations” indentation in the foam, nor can they see the name that they are literally putting right into their open mouth. They eat your cookie, you finally flip your lid, and now you have to make a visit to the lovely people in Human Relations.
I get it. The first time, I am supposed to forgive, because we all make mistakes. Heck, I will even grant forgiveness a second time because, well, sometimes we just did not learn from the first time. But, the third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh times; we have to forgive all of those as well?
Peter must have had a coworker steal some of his icing embossed cookie because he comes up to Jesus right after Jesus teaches about how forgiveness works in the church and Peter says what we all want to say to Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” (Matthew 18:21).
Peter is being really generous here. I am at my end after three food stealing offenses… I mean, I am theoretically at my end after three food stealing offenses, because, that story was definitely not about me. But, Peter gives the offender seven tries to get things right. Seven times, Peter forgives the offender. I wonder if he must have someone in particular in mind? But, seven times!
In Peter’s world, that is the end. Seven is a whole and complete number is Peter’s world. God created and rested in seven days, and it was at an end.
For Peter, needing to ask for forgiveness seven times is plenty of times. If a person is still sinning after seven times, they have proven, without a doubt that they are a complete…not nice person. I was never very good at swearing, not even as a teen.
For Peter, after seven times, it is fine to take a rest from the person. It seems holy even; baked right into the fabric of existence. God rests on the seventh day, after-all. After sever times, it is fine to just step away and relax Peter assumes.
Unfortunately, for Peter, Jesus has the power of the number seven on his side also. In Leviticus 25, in the laws that God handed down to Moses we hear:
“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family” (Leviticus 25:8-10).
Now all of you know that I am not very good at math, but what I do know is that there are a lot of sevens in there and they all point to forgiveness. They do not point to giving up on people. Again, I am no good at math, but these combinations of sevens seem to be pointing to things like the Day of Atonement, when observant Jews seek forgiveness from God and a new start in life. These combinations of sevens also carry us to the year of jubilee when debts are mandated to be forgiven by God and people are set free.
Seven is a number of forgiveness; not a number symbolizing giving up and taking a vacation. Seven is a number that offers a new start, a new creation, not the closing off of possibilities.
If seven in the Hebrew world has a sense of being whole or complete to it, and it does, then it appears that wholeness and completeness has everything to do with being forgiven and given a fresh start.
In God’s mind, you are not whole and complete until you are forgiven. You are not whole and complete until forgiveness is a part of who you are. Forgiveness is not something you do; it is who you are as a follower of Christ. When the gift of forgiveness is poured into you by Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, you become forgiveness.
For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life.
Jesus said to Peter that you do not forgive, “seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22).
“Seventy-seven times;” where have we heard that number before? The first time we hear that in the Bible is way back in Genesis, coming out of the lips of Lamech, who is Cain’s great, great, great grandson. But, if you know his story, he was not that great. You see, after Cain murdered Abel, Cain worried that he would be murdered himself by others out of fear and revenge. The Lord shows mercy on Cain and gives him a mark of protection, telling Cain that God will avenge anyone who tries to murder him. I guess that you could say that the Lord forgave Cain in a big way.
Here is the twisted part. You would think that having that sort of radical forgiveness shown you would filter down through the generations. And, if you thought that, you thought wrong. That is not the way the human mind works. Instead, of Cain’s great, great, great grandson being a really forgiving guy, he too murders someone, refusing to forgive that person, and then says, “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24).
Lamech believes that he does not need to forgive. He believes that he can murder in revenge and can generally be as rotten as he likes because God will cover for his crimes seventy-seven times.
And, though God is that forgiving, even willing to go to the cross and die because God is that forgiving, Lamech has totally taken the forgiveness given to Cain and his descendants by God and twisted it terribly. Lamech lives a life of corruption rather than a life of forgiveness.
Jesus takes Lamech’s story and updates it for his audience. Jesus’ story is about a slave who needs to repay his king a lot of money. He owes the king so much that the only way to settle the debt would be to sell the slave himself, his family, and all that the slave owns. The slave falls to his knees, begging for more time to pay all his debts. In response, the king forgives the man all that he owes, and the king even sets him free.
The man is freed and forgiven! Freed and forgiven. That sounds like a good sermon title. We are like the slave, freed and forgiven! It preaches.
Now, you would think that the slave would be very generous and forgiving after such a radical outpouring of forgiveness upon him. But, as you already know, that would be a wrong assumption. The man refuses to forgive people who are indebted to him. The king is furious and punishes the man for his lack of forgiveness, and Jesus concludes that those of us who have been forgiven must “forgive [our] brother or sister from [our] heart” (Matthew 18:35).
Like Lamech, the forgiveness had not become a way of life for the slave. Rather, some sort of cold, hard-heartedness had become his daily response to others.
For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life.
Have you ever just sat and stared at something for hours on end until you finally see something new that you have never seen before? Maybe, it is a painting in which you see a small bird feeding its young after years of the painting collecting dust on your wall. Or, maybe you see a hidden joke in the background of a movie only after the seventy seventh time of watching it.
Well, that is what happened to me as I stared at this scripture.
“How often should I forgive?" Peter asks. “As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22).
I thought to myself, “Jesus tells Peter to forgive seventy-seven times. Jesus tells Peter to do this.” And, then it just occurred to me that Jesus actually tells Peter to do this.
What I mean is that Jesus actually expects Peter to try forgiving seventy seven times. We all know that Jesus is saying that we must always forgive other people, but what if Jesus is also saying, “Peter, actually try forgiving seventy seven times.” In other words, do it so much that forgiveness is no longer a thing that you are told to do, so you do it. Rather, forgiveness becomes a part of who you are.
And, that got me to wondering, “Well, I wonder just how many times someone needs to do something for it to become a habit?” So, I looked it up. Do you know what number psychologists who study this sort of stuff came up with after extensive study? Sixty-six days. To make something a habit, you need to do it an average of sixty-six days. This explains so many failures in my life. Gym membership anyone?
But, look! Again, I am not great with math, but sixty-six seems to be pretty close to seventy seven, with a little buffer in there to account for the average. What if Jesus actually wanted Peter to shoot for forgiving seventy-seven times, so that forgiveness becomes a part of who he is? What if Jesus actually wants us to forgive seventy-seven times, so that forgiveness becomes a part of who we are, and it begins to show up in our everyday lives as people of God? What if Jesus actually wants forgiveness to come as easily to us as it is to Jesus, who forgave those crucifying him on the cross, and forgave the world through his death and resurrection.
For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life. Forgiveness has been poured into our hearts by Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that it might become a part of our every finger, toe, eye, and lips. What if the world was full of people for who revenge and self-preservation is not a part of who they are, but rather forgiveness is a part of who they are in their everyday lives?
For Jesus, forgiveness is not something you do; forgiveness is a way of life. So, go ahead and try it. Try to forgive seventy-seven times. Actually, keep track. Be who you were created to be when you were forgiven and made a new person in Jesus Christ.
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