“Up to seven times?” The Jewish law in those
days talked about forgiving someone three times as evidence of compassion and
kindness. So this man figures he’s going to try to look big by doubling that amount
and then throwing in an extra one for good measure to get it up to the perfect
number seven (to seal the deal of his image of generosity). “Up to seven
times?”
What’s Jesus’ point? He responds to the question
by saying, “No, not up to only seven times, but seven times seventy!” In other
words, think big, think way bigger than you’re used to thinking. Think, not
three, not even the seven of perfection, but 490. In other words, live your
life continuously with an attitude of forgiveness.
So what’s Jesus’ point? Why does he tell the
story in answer to the man’s question? We can observe the second point here:
2. Living in this truth empowers us to forgive
others. Like the little four-year-old prayed: “Forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put trash in
our baskets.” Not a bad paraphrase! But certainly difficult to do sometimes, isn’t
it?
Time magazine some years ago told about a Sarajevo man named Pipo. He
was partners in a restaurant with a Muslim man. They were good friends. Until
Pipo’s mother was jailed and beaten by Muslims.
“When she got out,” Pipo recalled, “she wouldn’t
talk about it. That’s when I picked up a gun and began shooting Muslims. I hate
them all!”
So Pipo vowed to live his life in revenge and
hate against any Muslims he could find. He became a sniper and through the
years shot and killed 325 people. But the more he killed, the less free he
felt. It took a toll.
“All I know how to do is kill,” he told a
reporter. “I’m not sure I’m normal anymore. I can talk to people, but if someone
pushes me, I’ll kill them. In the beginning I was able to put fear aside, and
it was good. Then with the killings I was able to put my emotions aside, and it
was good. But now they’re gone. I have no feelings anymore. I went to see my mother
in Belgrade, and she hugged me, and I felt nothing. I have no life anymore. I
go from day to day, but nothing means anything. I don’t want a wife and
children. I don’t want to think.”
Straight talk from a person who has chained
himself to the past, who refuses to let go. Now he has nothing. Even the
feelings of hate that empowered him and drove him and compelled him are gone
and he’s simply become a robot who breathes and walks and shoots. Trying to
imprison others, he’s become a prisoner himself.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive others.”
Jesus is letting us in on one of the most profound secrets to liberated living:
our willingness to forgive others the wrongs they’ve done to us. Our
willingness to no longer demand payment from them. As we did with our own sins
and shortcomings and failures we do with theirs – we take them to God and let them
be cancelled by God’s compassion and love. We let them go. And by doing this,
we liberate ourselves from our own prison of anger, resentment, hate, and
bitterness.
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