Yesterday we looked at why we need to forgive; today we’re going to look at how far we need to forgive. We are going to look at a parable we looked at yesterday, but today we are going to look a bit deeper into this parable in order to help us understand our desire to forgive.
Read Matthew 18:21-25, focus especially on verse 22 and journal your thoughts
Sometimes forgiveness can be really hard, but what about when the person keeps hurting you. There reaches a point when you just want to yell out “how many times am I supposed to forgive this person!?” Have you ever been in a situation like that?
Now for many of us when we read verse 22, the number 7 jumps out at us. Most Christians will say the number 7 is a “Holy number” or “God’s number”, but we have to remember that Jesus was a 1st century Jew. For a Jew at this time the number 7 has symbolic meaning. Any good Jew would recognize the number 7 as going back to creation, and along with that is this idea of completion.
The phrase 77 is only used one other time through the Scriptures, so read Genesis 4:24 real quick. Now we don’t know a whole lot about Lamech, but what we do know is that he wanted revenge on someone really badly. If 7 means completeness, then Lamech went above and beyond. Now a good Jew would have recognized the reference to Genesis 4, but what exactly is Jesus saying? What Jesus is saying here is that we should be the opposite of Lamech, for as much as Lamech wanted revenge so we should want to forgive.
Once again, Jesus brings things past legalism (a set amount of times) and focuses on the heart. If we have a heart that is opposite of Lamech’s then our desire is to forgive above and beyond to the point where you cannot place a numeric value on it. We should have an attitude or a passion for forgiveness. Forgiving should just be what we do.
Today pray that God would give you a heart that desires to forgive.
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