How Many Times Should We Forgive?

In Matthew 18:21 Peter asks Jesus how many times a person should forgive another for sinning against him, seven times? Jesus told Peter he should forgive a person seventy times seven. There’s no limit on forgiveness.

Jesus reinforces this point in Luke 17:4, when He tells His disciples that if a person sins against you seven times in a day and asks for forgiveness each time, you must forgive him seven times.

This was such a hard lesson for the apostles that they asked Jesus to help them increase their faith (Luke 17:5). They couldn’t grasp the notion of this type of forgiveness. We are not much different.

Forgiven and Forgotten

We all know how tough it can be to forgive somebody, especially if they keep sinning against us. But God’s love goes even deeper than just forgiving us. When we confess with a contrite heart and honestly ask for forgiveness, God chooses to remember our sins no more. (See Hebrews 8:12, 10:17, Jeremiah 31:34)

God forgives and… He “forgets?” We know that God doesn’t literally forget anything. “Remembering our sins no more” signifies an intentional act by God to remove from us the penalty of our sins.

¹³ And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴ by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13-14)

God remembers our sins no more because He cancelled our debt when Christ died in our place on the cross. He took the penalty for our sins and paid the debt Himself. God doesn’t hold them against us. He did this because of His great love and grace, and in His mercy to us, because He desires that none of us should perish (2 Peter 3:9).

God expects us to forgive each other, just as He has forgiven us. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 ESV). How often do we pray these words, and how often do we abide by them?

We May Forgive, But Do We Forget?

We often have a hard time forgiving people. We’re afraid they’ll see our grace as weakness, and take advantage of us by continuing to sin against us. God didn’t wait for us to come to Him. He reconciled us to Himself through the sacrifice of His Son (2 Corinthians 5:18), even while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8), knowing we will fall short of His expectations.

On the other hand, people are different. We may forgive, even though sometimes it might be tough or it might even take years. But do we ever really forget when we have been wronged by someone? Do we give somebody another chance, even though we know they will take advantage of our grace?

I’ve been through it and I know how hard it can be to forgive somebody.

In 2015 I was going through the darkest period in my life. Facing serious surgery and unsure of my future, I was falling apart inside and I had hit rock bottom. My mind was in turmoil. During this time my boss berated me viciously in front of others for something I messed up. Yes, I made a mistake, but his response was over the top and it crushed my already fragile psyche.

I was embarrassed and hurt. What bothered me the most was that at that time he was one of only a few people who knew what I was facing, and he didn’t show me any mercy. He didn’t care that I already had a lot on my mind and that I was distracted.

At that point I wasn’t a Christian, but eventually, after becoming a Christian, I forgave him. But I have to admit that it took me several years. The hardest part in my mind is that he was the one who should apologize to me, and he didn’t even know he needed forgiveness. That was very hard to get over.

But honestly, even today I can’t say that I’ve totally forgotten it. The fact that writing this article brought it to mind shows that I still haven’t fully let it go. But that is how we as humans are. Thankfully that is not how God works. God removes the debt of sin from our ledger when we repent and ask forgiveness because Jesus paid it all.

The Grace to Forgive

This is where God’s grace comes in. We can forgive, even when it takes years, and we can even do it gracefully. But we can’t always forget when someone has wronged us. It’s always lurking in the back of our minds, waiting to come back out.

This is how we fall short on forgiveness, but God doesn’t fall short: It doesn’t matter what we have done, He is ready to forgive us the moment we turn to Him and confess we have sinned against Him. With God, those past sins never bubble to the surface of His mind, because the debt has been paid and the ledger is clean.

Jesus told us what complete forgiveness looks like in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:23-35) with the king who forgave and cancelled a large debt from his servant. Jesus also showed us what complete forgiveness looks like when He asked the Father to forgive those who were nailing Him to the cross.

God has not only forgiven us a large debt, He took it a step further when He paid the debt for us. We should likewise be willing to forgive each other’s debts. This is not easy, I am still working on it myself, but we all need to look inside of ourselves to see if we are truly forgiving others the way God forgave us, or if we are still holding on to something that makes our forgiveness incomplete.

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