Following Jesus Even When It Doesn't Add UpSample

70 x 7 = A Nice Beginning 

One day Peter came up to Jesus and asked him, “Lord, how many times should I forgive someone who sins against me?” Seems like a fairly valid question, huh? But Peter doesn’t just stop after the question. 

He politely gives Jesus a number he seems to think might be more than generous. And that number would be 7 times. And as generous as that number sounds, I’m sure glad Peter isn’t God, aren’t you? 

Jesus responds, “No, not 7 times, but 70 x 7!” 

Did you notice the exclamation mark after Jesus’ response? That would imply Jesus is pretty serious about this issue of forgiveness. An astute mathematician may figure out that 70 x 7 = 490. And guess what? They’d be absolutely correct! But that isn’t what Jesus was getting at.

His response to Peter was meant to be so exaggerated that Peter would be shaking his head at this point. Jesus was essentially telling Peter to offer forgiveness without limits. He was politely blowing Peter’s original number out of the water.

Consider God’s forgiveness toward you and I. Imagine if each of us had a 7 time limit for forgiveness of sin. Any sin. And what if an alarm went off when we each hit our limit? How embarrassing would that be? You can just hear some bystander commenting, “Did you hear that Frank? Another one bites the dust.” Bummer. 

As someone who’s sinned beyond reasonable limit, I’m especially grateful to God for his ‘unreasonable’ forgiveness threshold. We might even call it extravagant forgiveness that refuses to be calculated, computed or added up.

Reflection:

Have you had situations where you had to offer forgiveness to a person over and over again? Ever been on the receiving end of this kind of extravagant forgiveness?