Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Happy 4th of July. This summer our nation celebrates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We are called as Christians to be people of forgiveness and mercy. God has first shown mercy to us, therefore we want to reflect that mercy to other people. Jesus teaches his disciples about the vitally important practice of forgiving people who sin against us. In Matthew chapter 18, Simon Peter thinks he is being extra generous when he asked Jesus a loaded question. Most of the 1st century rabbis were teaching if your brother sins against you three times that you should write that person off for the rest of your life. Simon Peter knows this three-strikes and your out rule and so he doubles it and threw in another extra dose of forgiveness to the generous number of seven times forgiving your brother.
(Matthew 18:21-22) 21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
In the Original language of Koine Greek, the number 77 times is a mistranslation, it really means 70 x 7 = 490. But with either translation either 77 or 490 times the meaning is the same; we are supposed to forgive each other, without a limit. The word “forgive” in Greek carries the nuance of releasing from debt or penalty, letting loose and to pardon each other. Forgiveness is qualitative and not quantitative.
When Jesus taught us to pray, a petition which used the same word as Matthew chapter 18. (Matthew 6:12) and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. This Fifth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer is explained in Luther’s Small Catechism “What does this mean? We pray in this petition that our Father in heaven would not look at our sins, or deny our prayer because of them. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.”
God’s forgiveness of our sins is what it means to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. God’s forgiveness of our sins transforms us into living breathing mirrors of God’s mercy to other people in our lives. We want to reflect God’s love and mercy better and better to others which can be expressed through the forgiveness that we share with others. We are imperfect people, and imperfect at forgiving, but that doesn’t change what Jesus taught us to live out in the world through our words and actions.
In God’s Hands, Pastor Ryan Honeycutt
