IS IT HARD TO FORGIVE?
Some years ago, there was a boxer in Ireland. He was a very famous boxer. Everybody in the country knew him, he was a familiar face. But two things happened to him: 1) he gave his life to Christ; 2) he entered the ministry. So, we have this famous boxer, he’s now in the ministry, and he went from town to town in Ireland setting up his tent and doing tent revivals. He was in one town setting up his tent, getting ready in the afternoon for the evening service, two thugs walked in the tent not recognizing the pastor—boxer, championship boxer. They don’t recognize him. They’re walking through the tent looking around mouthing off saying inappropriate things.
The pastor just has his nose to the grindstone, pays no attention to them, busy about his business. The thugs get a little closer, get a little mouthier saying more inappropriate things. They look like they want to fight the pastor, the pastor does nothing. They walk up to him, and one of them hauls off and hits him right in the face. The man stands back up after being struck, turns his cheek, and the thug hits him on the left side of the cheek. At that point, the preacher took his jacket off, rolled his sleeves up, leaned in and with a smile said, (in an Irish accent) “The good Lord has given me no further instructions,” right? “Turn the other cheek.” Well, the thing is the good Lord has given us further instructions, and the instructions are, forgive.
We are called to forgive, and it’s something some of us struggle with. If we were to close your eyes, we would see on our eyelids the image of somebody that perhaps we have held grudges against, bitterness against, for a number of years. It’s not uncommon. I came across a survey of love and forgiveness. That got my attention. Who does a survey of love and forgiveness? In this survey they published, they said, “Fifty-eight percent of people agree that there are instances where people should never be forgiven.” There are just certain crimes that people can commit, that if they commit them, you do not forgive them—ever.
Then, there was a study by The Barna Research Group, they look at churches and Christian values. They stated, “One in four practicing Christians struggle to forgive someone.” They polled a thousand people, and they wrote 23 percent has a person in their life who they just can’t forgive, “Can’t do it! Can’t forgive that person. I’ve tried, can’t get over it.” The head researcher of that little study from the Barna Research Group wrote this: “Forgiveness is essential to Christianity. It’s what distinguishes it from any other religious faith. If Christians struggle to extend forgiveness, not only do their relationships suffer, but the church’s witness is marred.” Here’s what we need to know: In God’s curriculum, forgiveness is not an elective, it’s a required course.
In the New Testament, in his teachings, Jesus Himself brings up the topic of forgiveness several times. It’s peppered throughout the teachings during His earthly ministry. He taught His disciples in the Lord’s Prayer, “And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.” When Jesus was asked the most important commandment in the law, He also made a statement that implied forgiveness when He said, “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart . . . soul . . . mind, and . . . strength.” And, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Implied in that statement also is that we extend forgiveness.
On another occasion, Jesus said to His followers, “. . . bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” Then, here in Matthew 18,last Sunday we heard Jesus saying, “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault”—just—“between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother.” So, obviously then forgiveness was a big deal to Jesus Christ because He teaches a lot about it and because He taught His disciples to pray a prayer to be able to forgive others. So, “The Lord has given us further instructions.”
Now, why is it so important? Why is it such a big deal? Because not only, as the researcher pointed out, does forgiveness set us apart from other belief systems, but if we do not find a way to deal with our past, we are not going to be able to move forward in our future. It’s hard to go forward when we don’t make a right choice about our past. We cannot change the past, it’s happened. It’s over. But we can choose to forgive, and thus be unencumbered with the bitterness that comes with unforgiveness.
Let us look at a few facts about forgiveness. Forgiveness is difficult. We’ve already established that it is difficult for a great number of people; but watch Peter here, it was difficult for him, verse 21, “Then Peter came to Him”—Jesus— “and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’”
First of all, let me just speak on Peter’s behalf for a moment because everybody disses Peter for something. I love the fact that Peter personalized the truth that he heard. He just heard Jesus talk about forgiving a brother who had sinned against you, going to him, telling him, and resolving it. That is in Peter’s mind. He’s thinking about that and he is personalizing it, he’s applying it to himself. He comes to Jesus when there is an open moment and asks Him this question…so something in that got Peter’s attention when He said, “If your brother sins against you,” and that got Peter’s attention.
I don’t know what’s going on with Peter, we’re not told. Maybe he’s mad at James or John or both, remember because they wanted to be at the right and the left hand in the Kingdom? None of the disciples liked that whole disagreement. Maybe Thomas snored at night and that really bothered Peter or Judas had bad breath. We’re not told. But something gets Peter’s attention, bothers him enough to come to Jesus and ask Him this question. What this tells me is that forgiveness was hard for Peter, and here’s what you need to know: Forgiveness was hard for Peter because forgiveness is hard. It’s difficult to do.
"Lord, I forgave her the first time she spoke against me. I forgave him the second time he broke his promise. I forgave them the third time they wounded me. But Lord, this is the fourth time. Surely, Lord, You understand. Surely there is a limit. Surely You do not expect me to be a doormat, to be walked upon again and again without end. "The world tells us that forgiveness has limits. Common sense tells us that forgiveness has limits. Even our wounded hearts, aching and raw, cry out that forgiveness must have limits.
Why is it hard? Well, for a few reasons. First of all, forgiveness is hard because it involves confronting painful emotions. If we’re going to forgive a person, we will come to grips with the emotions that we felt, or still feel, when we were hurt—maybe a betrayal, maybe we were abused, maybe we were lied to—but we are dealing again with those emotions that we would like to put to rest.
The second reason forgiveness is difficult is because when we forgive a person, it feels like we’re letting go of our right to see justice done. “Look, if I just let this go and forgive this person, that’s just not right. That person needs to be accountable. We need to see justice served.” Here’s another reason it’s hard to forgive people because when we forgive somebody, we are risking getting hurt all over again, and it’s hard. So, what people often do is they decide, “I’m gonna just toughen my heart. I’m gonna live with such a rough, tough exterior that I’m not going to get too close to people and let them hurt me.” Is that a good decision? Is that a good way to live? It’s not. It’s not a good way to live.
Now, back to the conversation with Peter. Peter comes up and says, “Okay, so You said that whole forgiveness thing about my brother, umm, what’s the limit of forgiveness? Give me a number, here, Jesus, that I can walk away with.” Does forgiveness have a limit? I mean, if somebody blows it once, okay, I understand that. But if he does it again? And then, again? And then, again? Peter says, “So, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Now, we got to know something. When Peter said this, he was feeling very generous. This was very generous. He thought, okay, Jesus is really going to like what I have to say. He’s such a generous Person and a Savior and He loves forgiveness, so I’m going to say a number that is going to make Him so proud of me. I’m sure, I believe Peter was waiting for something that happened to him two chapters prior to this in Matthew 16 when Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven,” you know, and renamed him ‘Peter.’ That was a wonderful moment. He is waiting for one of those kinds of compliments from Jesus, but it never came.
So, here’s why I say that. The going rate for forgiveness was three times. There actually was a number the Jews had in which they said a person can be forgiven, and it was three times. It’s like baseball—three strikes and you’re out. What Peter did is he doubled the number, the going rate, and added a 15% tip and came up with seven times. One rabbi, Rabbi Jose ben Hanina, wrote this: “He who begs forgiveness from his neighbor must not do it more than three times.” Another rabbi, Jose ben Yehuda said, “If a man commits an offense once, they forgive him. If he commits an offense a second time, they forgive him. If he commits an offense a third time, they forgive him. But if he commits an offense a fourth time, they do not forgive him.”
So, Peter says, “Seven times?” thinking Jesus will be impressed. Jesus said to him, Jesus said to him: "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times."
Some translations render it "seventy times seven" - four hundred and ninety times. But whether we read it as seventy-seven or seventy-times-seven, the point is precisely the same: Jesus is not giving Peter a bigger calculator. He is telling Peter to throw the calculator away.
If we are keeping count, beloved, we have already missed the point. If we are keeping a ledger of wrongs, marking down each offense in neat little columns, waiting for the 490th offense so we can finally say "Now I am done, now justice is mine" - then we have not understood a single word of the Gospel.
So, that’s the first fact, forgiveness is difficult; the second fact, forgiveness is divine. God loves to forgive people. He’s in the forgiving business. So, Jesus launches into this familiar story from verse 23-28.
"The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants."
The first servant owed the king ten thousand talents. Now, we must pause here, because our English Bibles flatten what would have been a staggering figure to Jesus' original hearers. One talent was roughly equivalent to twenty years' wages for a laborer. Ten thousand talents - well, some scholars estimate it would take a laborer roughly two hundred thousand years of work to pay it off. It would take the annual tax revenue of entire nations to settle such a sum. It was, quite simply, an unpayable debt. Jesus chose the largest number and the largest currency available to make one undeniable point: this debt could never, ever be repaid.
The servant falls on his knees. "Be patient with me," he begs, "and I will pay back everything." Notice, he does not even ask for forgiveness. He asks for time. He still imagines, in some fantasy of self-reliance, that he can pay it back. He has not yet grasped the impossibility of his situation.
And what does the king do? Scripture says he was moved with compassion - his heart went out to him - and he canceled the debt. Not reduced it. Not refinanced it. Not set up a payment plan. He canceled it. All of it. Every last impossible talent. The servant walked out of that throne room owing nothing, absolutely nothing, carrying a forgiveness so vast that it should have changed the very chemistry of his soul.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii." A hundred denarii was about three months' wages. A real debt, to be sure - something that would sting. But compare it to ten thousand talents. The difference is not merely large; it is absurd. Jesus is deliberately painting a picture of cosmic disproportion. In modern terms, it is as if someone who was just forgiven a debt of billions of dollars grabbed his neighbor by the collar over a twenty-dollar bill.
"He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!'" And here is the heartbreaking detail: the fellow servant uses the exact same words. "Be patient with me, and I will pay you back." The same plea. The same posture. The same need for mercy. But the first servant refuses. He has him thrown into prison until he can pay the debt - payment, of course, that can never be made from a prison cell.
Beloved, hear this: the servant forgot. He forgot the throne room. He forgot the moment his face was in the dust and the king's heart was moved with compassion. He forgot what it felt like to have an unpayable weight lifted from his shoulders. And because he forgot, he could not extend to another what had been extended to him.
Is that not the story of so many of us? We come to the altar, we weep before the Lord, we feel the forgiveness of God wash over us on Sunday - and by Tuesday we are choking someone over their hundred denarii. We forget so quickly. We remember every offense committed against us with perfect clarity, yet we cannot remember the mountain of sin that God has buried in the depths of the sea.
When I was growing up, my grandmother used to tell me a story about two neighbours.
One neighbour kept chickens, while the other kept cattle. One season, the woman who kept the cattle laid out her finest corn seed to dry in the sun, carefully saving it for the next planting season. Unfortunately, her neighbour's five chickens wandered over and ate every last seed.
She was furious. The neighbour came, apologized sincerely, and pleaded for forgiveness. But she would not forgive. Instead, she demanded that all five chickens be slaughtered so that the seeds could be recovered from them. Reluctantly, the neighbour agreed and lost all five chickens.
Five years passed.
One day, the woman who had demanded justice found herself in trouble. Her ten cattle broke through a fence and wandered into her neighbour's vegetable garden, destroying the crops.
This time it was her turn to ask for forgiveness.
But her neighbour replied, "Do you remember what you asked me to do when my chickens ate your seed? You insisted that I slaughter all five chickens. If that is the standard you chose, then go and slaughter your ten cows so I can recover my vegetables."
My grandmother would always pause there and say, "Be careful when you refuse to forgive, because one day you may be the one in need of forgiveness."
That story resonates because deep down we all understand justice. We know what it feels like to be wronged, and we often want people to pay for what they have done. What is much harder is extending mercy when we have every right to demand repayment.
The woman in the story wanted justice when she was the victim, but she wanted mercy when she became the offender. And that is not just her story—it is our story. We all want grace for ourselves and justice for everyone else.
It is precisely at this point that Jesus speaks in Matthew 18.
.
The point Jesus wants to get across is it is unimaginable that a follower of Christ would refuse to forgive his brother. Let’s not argue about how many times the person blew it or if the person is really worthy of forgiveness. It says nothing about brooding over it first for a long period of time or punishing that person with silence or waiting to see if he’s really sincere when he asks for forgiveness. It just says forgive. There are no qualifications
We ought to be the most forgiving persons in our offices. Whatever company we’re a part of, people should say, “You know, that guy is like, they never hold a grudge. They don’t like keep things in. They are not bitter. They let things go. They are forgiving. They are not a scorekeeper.”
So the question that follows us out of this place is not Peter's question - "How many times must I forgive?" The question is this: Will we walk out of the throne room changed? Will we go out into a world full of debtors and wounded people and become instruments of the same mercy that saved us?
The world keeps score. The world holds grudges. The world chokes its debtors and exacts its pound of flesh. But the people of God are called to a different economy - the economy of grace, where ten-thousand-talent debts are canceled, and canceled debts create forgiving hearts.
So today, whoever has wounded us, whatever they owe us, however many times it has happened - bring it to the altar. Release the debt. Tear up the ledger. Forgive from the heart, not because they deserve it, but because we did not deserve it either, and we were forgiven anyway.
Seventy times seven, church. And then, seventy times seven more. May the Lord who forgave us everything grant us grace to forgive one another everything, and may the sweetness of mercy mark our lives until we stand before the King and hear, at last, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Amen.