Forgiveness

 

I want to share today on forgiveness. I'm going to be reading out of the passion translation today and we're going to be in Matthew chapter 18 and starting in verse 21.

Later Peter approached Jesus and said, “How many times do I have to forgive my fellow believer who keeps offending me? Seven times?” Jesus answered, “Not seven times, Peter, but seventy times seven times! The lessons of forgiveness in heaven’s kingdom realm can be illustrated like this: “There once was a king who had servants who had borrowed money from the royal treasury. He decided to settle accounts with each of them. As he began the process, it came to his attention that one of his servants owed him one billion dollars. So he summoned the servant before him and said to him, ‘Pay me what you owe me.’ When his servant was unable to repay his debt, the king ordered that he be sold as a slave along with his wife and children and every possession they owned as payment toward his debt. The servant threw himself facedown at his master’s feet and begged for mercy. ‘Please be patient with me. Just give me more time and I will repay you all that I owe.’ Upon hearing his pleas, the king had compassion on his servant, and released him, and forgave his entire debt. “No sooner had the servant left when he met one of his fellow servants, who owed him twenty thousand dollars He seized him by the throat and began to choke him, saying, ‘You’d better pay me right now everything you owe me!’ His fellow servant threw himself facedown at his feet and begged, ‘Please be patient with me. If you’ll just give me time, I will repay you all that is owed.’ But the one who had his debt forgiven stubbornly refused to forgive what was owed him. He had his fellow servant thrown into prison and demanded he remain there until he repaid the debt in full. “When his associates saw what was going on, they were outraged and went to the king and told him the whole story. The king said to him, ‘You scoundrel! Is this the way you respond to my mercy? Because you begged me, I forgave you the massive debt that you owed me. Why didn’t you show the same mercy to your fellow servant that I showed to you?’ In a fury of anger, the king turned him over to the prison guards to be tortured until all his debt was repaid. In this same way, my heavenly Father will deal with any of you if you do not release forgiveness from your heart toward your fellow believer.”

Now. We get stuck on what Peter was asking. He was asking in regards to how many times should I forgive one of my brothers and if he does me wrong. In that time frame they thought that if they were to forgive someone 3 times, that was good. Peter was going even above that by asking Jesus should he forgive his brother seven times.

Well, Jesus responded to him by saying, “no Peter, you really should forgive him 70 times 7, and let me relate how it works in the kingdom of heaven.”

Now after that Jesus told the parable of the king forgiving the servant for a large debt, because he wanted Peter to understand that Jesus was going to wipe out all the debt of sin on all of man, and if Jesus was to forgive us all for such a large debt, then we should forgive our brother for his small debt against us.

We often get stuck on the numbers that Jesus was using to tell Peter how many times, but Jesus was not giving Peter a specific amount of times, but He wanted Peter to understand that forgiveness is without measure and is to be constant between brothers in the Lord, not just a certain number of times.

Also when we forgive another, it is really releasing us, because if we hold unforgiveness towards another, it becomes like a poison to our soul and slowly eats us away as well as keeping us in bondage.

So I encourage you to forgive because you are really releasing yourself so you can continue to move forward in the Lord.

Shalom