Peter thought he was showing off. “How often should I forgive? up to….seven times?” The rabbis of Peter’s era had weighed in on this already. Forgiving someone 3 times was considered extravagant and gratuitous. But here, Peter might feel like he’s showing off showing a willingness to forgive 4 more times – up to 7?

Jesus steps in with a deflating explanation: Not 7, but 70 times 7. Some translations say “77 times,” but if you know how Hebrew works, this would have been a sort of unlikely way for Jesus to say that. Multiplication was a hallmark of Hebrew superlatives, sort of like it is for grades-schoolers. (“Oh yeah? well I’m that *times infinity*!”) Jesus is not saying 77 or 490 necessarily directly, He’s saying, you need to multiply what you’ve got there by a lot. All of the sudden Peter doesn’t have something to brag about, he just has a multiple. 

Plenty of questions come up about this one in my office. They usually come in the form of, “Pastor, do I *really* *have to* forgive that person?” The person in question? Sometimes unrepentant, sometimes simply sinned against the person in an awfully extravagant way, sometimes hurt not the person directly but a loved one of the person….the list goes on. There are those people for whom we recognize that even *one* forgiveness feels like 490. Can I even do that?

But the problem with that sort of thinking is that it often makes forgiveness to be a work by which you save yourself, particularly because the parable of the unforgiving servant scares the everliving crap out of us or because we pray “forgive us our trespasses *as we* forgive those who trespass against us.” That sure looks like I’ve gotta save myself by a weird quid-pro-quo with God. I have to forgive because He forgave, otherwise my initial forgiveness is declared null and void.

We don’t believe we save ourselves though. We don’t even save ourselves by forgiving others. And we stand damned as sinners before the throne of God for a whole lot more reasons that just a failure to forgive someone. If it weren’t for Jesus, we’re not saved, plain and simple. So why forgive? 

Because we’re invited into a Kingdom that doesn’t keep scores. We’re invited into a Kingdom where God isn’t counting down to your 490th sin and then damning you to everlasting hell. Instead, we’re invited to a Kingdom of the 70×7, a Kingdom where the upper end of our willingness to forgive is just a multiplier for God. When you join this Kingdom, forgiveness doesn’t get counted, it gets distributed – 70 times over.

So if you’re having a hard time forgiving. If you’re asking “do I have to?” Maybe it is time to ask a better question, a question of God: “Can you help me? Because I don’t feel like I can forgive this person on my own.” You might be surprised by the answer that comes from the God who has forgiven you.