Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
- Matthew 18:21-22
It was a morning where my kids were definitely acting like siblings. Lots of bickering, lots of teasing, lots of yelling. I was counting down the minutes til we could get out the door to take the eldest two to school.
Then one little moment popped that I want to share with you. Isaac was wanting Katherine’s attention, and she was not in the mood to give it. In fact, she snapped at him to get out of her room. Butting in, I said, “Katherine, he just wants to play. You don’t have to do what he wants, but give him a little grace.”
Her response stuck with me: “I gave him grace yesterday! What, am I supposed to do it every day???”
The gospels tell us that Simon Peter once asked Jesus a question quite similar to Katherine’s: how many times is a believer expected to forgive someone? Peter thought he was going above and beyond by suggesting that seven might be the magic number, especially given that rabbinical teaching released you from that obligation after three forgiven offenses.
But Jesus’s conception of grace stretches far beyond the bounds of fairness or social acceptability. Some translations say that he told Peter to forgive seventy-seven times; others say seventy times seven. The point remains the same either way: there’s not a specific number. Rather, the life of a believer is to be one marked by grace, where instead of keeping track of the ways you’ve been wronged, you are always looking for opportunities to do right. You don’t forgive because you’re expected to do so, you forgive because you’ve been forgiven.
Grace every day—it’s a tough challenge to be sure, an impossible one without the Lord’s help. But for those sustained by his grace, the least we can do is extend it to others.
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