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Unlimited Forgiveness

Love is living in the spirit of forgiveness. Peter came and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times?" (Matt. 18:21) Peter was so proud of himself for coming up with that number seven. Jesus said, "Not seven times, but seventy times seven." You know that freaked Peter out. The natural mind, the natural man, can't receive those things. Peter was looking for a number, and then all of a sudden he saw 490 times in a day.

Jesus went on and said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who would take account of his servants. When he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents" (18:23-24). I tried to calculate this once. If they were gold talents, this would be somewhere around $260 million. The exact amount is not the point. The issue is in verse 26, "[He] fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all." The king knew there was no way he could pay this debt back, even though his intentions were good. The servant really preferred not to be cast into prison, so he said, "Have patience with me; I'll make it right." The king, knowing he couldn't make it right, forgave him all of his debt. The real fact of the matter is that in our natural man (our flesh) none of us can make it right.

As we mature in our sanctification and sin's power becomes less and less dominant, we rejoice because the beam is out of our eye so we can see more clearly the speck in our brother's eye. We can comfort with the same comfort wherewith we've been comforted. We're not absolutely free from the sin that's still in our members. We still sin by commission, omission, thought, intent and action. "Let him that's without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7). When we want to express the love of God, we don't lower the standards. We minister to one another and die to self-effort so we can receive sufficient grace to meet the standard that can only be met in Jesus. The reason they sinned is because self is still working in them. We're helping one another to die, to be emptied of self, and to become without reputation so that Jesus can be all and all in our lives.

This man that was forgiven went out and found one of his brothers who owed him fifteen dollars. The main problem in most of our lives is that we think we're the ones that have the fifteen dollar debt, and we're really the ones with the $260 million debt. Most of us think we can pay ours off because it's not that bad, comparing ourselves by ourselves. Many of us have the same perspective on life that the pagans have, thinking that our good outweighs our bad. Our good is not enough, because that's not what the last and final judgment will be based upon.

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