If you are a child of God through faith in Christ Jesus, you belong to a very great family, and you have all God’s other children for brothers and sisters.
The Lord Jesus told His disciples one day how they must act if one brother sinned against another brother. Peter was one of those who heard what He said, and he came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times?” Peter thought seven times was a great many times to forgive his brother. To have someone do us a bad turn spitefully, or say what is not true of us, or even carelessly destroy something we value, tries us very much, and we may find it hard to forgive them even once; it is no wonder Peter thought that to forgive the same person seven times over was quite the limit.
How different God’s thoughts are from our thoughts. Listen to what Jesus answered him, “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”
Have you learned your seventy-times table? If so, you will know what seventy times seven makes; but if not, you need not trouble to figure it out, for to forgive a brother seventy times seven means that however many times he may offend against us, we must forgive him every time.
It is so easy to talk about forgiving, is it not? especially when no one has offended us. But when anyone has hurt us very much it is quite a different matter. The Lord Jesus knows how hard we find it to forgive one another, so He told Peter a story, one of His beautiful stories with a hidden meaning. The parable Jesus told was about a king who had a reckoning day with his servants, and when he began to reckon, one of his servants was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents — millions of dollars. And because he had nothing to pay it with, his lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and children, and payment to be made. But the servant fell down at his feet and begged for mercy. He said, “Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.”
And now you shall have the rest of the story just as it is written in the Bible.
“Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him a hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.
“So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall My heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses” (Matt. 18).
How terrible it is when our heavenly Father has to deliver any one of us to the tormentors because we refuse to forgive a brother or sister. We lose the enjoyment of His love, and we do not know a moment’s peace or happiness till we forgive them and own to Him how wrong we have been.
And suppose it is not a brother or a sister who hurts us, suppose it is an enemy. Ah, then we need to remember that hour when Jesus was nailed to the cross, when He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”