The teaching about “seven times seventy” and the parable about the limitless forgiveness of the king is a profound parable about God’s overwhelming grace and abundant forgiveness.
There is no bottom to the well of God’s forgiveness.
There is no way that we can repay God for the enormous debt that His Son paid for our sin. Some of our sins are deep-seated habits that are repeated endlessly and when we ask God to forgive our oft-repeated sins, God does.
It's a tremendous grace considering what God does with our confessed sins. He doesn't send our sins to a temporary recycle bin, just in case He needs to remind us of them later. They're totally removed from the hard drive!
God’s forgiveness is so infinitely and unfathomably great that such forgiveness should inspire us to forgive the people who hurt us in this life. We are invited to have the same attitude towards others’ sins as God has to our sins.
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Jesus teaches us that we are not to seek revenge, but to forgive our brother and sister “seven times seventy”.
Seven times seventy! There is both power and symbolism in that number. It represents infinity – limitlessness and unfathomable. The number, seven times seventy, reverses the seventy-seven in Genesis 4:24: If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.
Jesus is teaching to forgive by reversing the statement of Lamech in Genesis 4.
The phrase “seventy-seven” refers to the number of times a person gets revenge. Jesus breaks that cycle of hate and revenge. Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:22 intentionally reverse the cycle of human revenge.
Forgiveness trumps revenge in God’s blueprint for life.
Friend, “Seven times seventy”… these words are deeply embedded in our Christian memory bank. How do we apply this to our own daily
The Lord was so gracious that he died for us so that we can repent, and we should use that gift for granted.
“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You can’t earn that or deserve it” (Portis 40.) Everything you do, good or bad, carries some sort of judgment from the Lord. You might slip through the cracks from this world judgments and law, but you will be judged according to your doings, in this world by God. You can’t earn nor deserve the Grace of the Lord, because it was already given to us in the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. “Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25.) This gave us Grace to be forgiven after our sin if we repent from further sinning’s. This means you can’t go and commit a crime of revenge, knowing God’s words
Life as we all know is full of disappointment and filled with disparity. Most of us are able to go through these and learn from and forgive ourselves. Yet, this isn’t always the case. People are faced with traumatic experiences that often take a long time to get over, if they ever do get over it. These experiences brew in our brain popping up at the most random points often bringing our spirits down. Although these experiences may scar us and fill us with regret and guilt, we can’t continue to live in the past and let these regrets haunt us. Self forgiveness is a key to healing and to moving on in life, no matter how hard it is.
Revenge is best served cold or so says the well-known expression. This idea of revenge that they seek is usually to restore balance and take an “eye for an eye” as the Bible says. Revenge, if by chance everyone were in Plato’s perfect utopia, would be in a perfect form, where justice and revenge would be one, and the coined phrase “eye for an eye” would be taken literally. By taking an eye for and eye, and punishing those who did wrong equally as they did wrong, there is justice. However, this revenge sometimes goes too far and is consequently not justice.
Sometimes in our lives, someone whom we care about and trust ends up betraying us or acting in a way that feels like a betrayal. We feel hurt by their actions and wonder why they would do such a thing, asking ourselves what we had done to deserve it. Then things go one of two ways: either we forgive and forget or we feel the need to take revenge; we want them to feel the pain we felt and understand what they’ve done, although ultimately, our vindictive actions only serve to hurt us further.
Forgiveness and justice are very similar than we believe them to be. We believe that justice is
The rattling story of Joseph told of a man who must struggle with the most horrid betrayal from his family in which he learned to forgive them and even helped them flourish in later life. Justified by a need to make them properly atone for their sins, Joseph put his brothers through hell and back. In the end, Joseph ended up feeling happier for reconnecting with his family and saving them from the ominous hands of the famine that plagued Canaan. Although it may seem that the Bible suggests exonerating those who have deeply wronged one shows weakness and too much leniency, forgiveness allows one to become a stronger person and allow for the restoration of bonds amongst once-close companions.
One aphorism that hit me is “To learn to forgive yourself and to forgive others”. I had a few people in my life that had hurt me so much that I hated them. But, I was so miserable that I was not happy. I prayed to God to help me forgive them, a little by little I learned to forgive myself and then forgive them.
Today, we take this parable very lightly, as we have been brought up in a culture that forgives people’s faults easily. Most people think, “Yeah, I forgive everyone who harms me.” However, if you think about it, this just isn’t true, as everyone has a couple of people they hold a grudge against, and this parable is telling us to stop holding that grudge. Forgiving is a huge part of Christian teaching and should not be taken lightly.
Is it possible to forgive a wrong done to someone else? Should only those who repent be forgiven?
Marty, Martin E. "The ethos of Christian forgiveness." Dimensions of forgiveness: Psychological research and theological perspectives (2008): 9-28.
Burgess, Olivia. "Forgiveness Is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope, And: Total Forgiveness, And: Radical Forgiveness." Project MUSE. Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. Web. 19 Apr. 2014. .
Steven Standiford, chief of surgery at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, says that unforgiveness can make people sick. Emotional wounds are more harmful to our health than we realize. Built up anger will weaken your immune system causing you to feel sick more often. For this reason, we must make forgiveness a lifestyle rather than a one-time event. We must learn how to surrender the burden of anger and resentment over to God and allow Him to heal the wounds caused by others. When we forgive from our hearts, we will begin to experience the peace of God in our souls. Unforgiveness is an unnecessary weight that we carry around not realizing that it’s weighing us down and hindering our growth.
Forgiveness has set me free. My moments of the perpetual journey of repeated practice and willingness to forgive has
A strong Christian lesson on the true nature of forgiveness can be found in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: