Seventy Times Seven and the Sum He Put Next to It

She has forgiven it about four hundred times and she has begun to suspect that means she never did.

That is the specific trouble. Not that the person keeps doing the thing; she is realistic about that and has been for years. The trouble is what the repetition seems to say about her own forgiving, which is that if it had worked once, once would have been enough.

So she has started to think of herself as somebody who says the words and does not mean them, which is a heavier thing to carry than the original wrong, and she has never said it to anybody because it sounds like complaining about being asked to forgive.

Peter asks for a number about this, and the answer he gets is a number and then a story in which the arithmetic is the entire point.

Peter's question is generous and it is still a limit

Here is the question, and it is worth knowing that he was being generous.

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:21-22, King James Version)

Seven was well above the going rate. Peter is not being stingy; he is offering a number he considers impressive and he is probably expecting to be commended.

And what he is asking for is a limit, which is a completely reasonable thing to want. Anybody in this situation wants one, because a limit is what makes a thing survivable.

Until seventy times seven. Which is not a bigger limit. It is a number chosen to be uncountable in practice: nobody keeping a tally to four hundred and ninety is keeping a tally in any meaningful sense, and the counting collapses long before the number does.

You are not being handed a bigger number to keep track of. Matthew 18:22 answers a request for a limit with a figure that makes counting pointless, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is longsuffering rather than an endurance a person rations.

The parable is about two sums and they are not close

Then the story, and it is an arithmetic problem, and most people remember it without the numbers.

And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents. (Matthew 18:24)

Ten thousand talents. That is a deliberately absurd figure. It is more than the annual tax revenue of a whole region in that period, and everybody listening would have laughed at it, because a servant could not have contracted such a debt by any means available to a servant.

And the second one:

But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence. (Matthew 18:28)

An hundred pence. About three months of a laborer's wages. Real money. Not nothing, and worth being annoyed about.

The parable is not saying the second debt is imaginary. It is saying the two are not the same size, and it makes the gap so enormous that nobody can quibble about the ratio.

You have been forgiven an amount that makes the ratio unarguable. Matthew 18:24 chooses a figure larger than a region's revenue against three months' wages in verse 28, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 5:5, that the love which does the second forgiving is shed abroad rather than found.

The first servant's request is exactly right

There is a detail in the middle that is almost never noticed and it is the saddest line in the parable.

Both debtors say the same thing. Word for word, in the Greek, the two requests are nearly identical: have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.

The first man says it about a sum he could never repay in a hundred lifetimes. He is asking for time, which is useless, because time will not close that gap.

And what he gets is not time. He gets the debt canceled outright, which is not what he asked for and is enormously more.

So the man who has just received something far beyond his own request goes out and refuses the identical request, for a sum that time actually would have covered.

That is the mechanism the parable is exposing, and it is not stinginess. It is that he never took in what happened to him. He walked out still calculating.

You are able to take in what was canceled rather than walking out still calculating. Matthew 18:27 has the lord forgiving the whole debt rather than granting the delay that was asked for, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, by whom the size of that is actually known.

The measure Paul gives is a manner, not a count

Paul turns the whole thing into one instruction and the operative words are about how rather than how often.

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13)

Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. The standard is a manner and a source rather than a quantity.

And forbearing sits next to forgiving, which is worth noticing, because they are two different activities. Forgiving deals with what has been done. Forbearing is what a person does with what is still going on, and Scripture puts both in the same clause, which means the ongoing case is anticipated rather than treated as a failure.

That is the direct answer to four hundred times. The repetition is not evidence that nothing took. It is what forbearance looks like from the inside, and it has its own word in the verse.

You have been doing two things at once and Scripture names both. Colossians 3:13 puts forbearing beside forgiving in one clause, and it is by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22, whose fruit is longsuffering, that the first of them is possible at all.

The mercies are new every morning and so is the need

There is a verse everybody knows out of a book almost nobody reads, and its context is a city in ruins.

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

New every morning. Which means they are needed every morning. That verse is usually read as a promise about supply and it is equally a statement about frequency: this is a daily arrangement because a daily arrangement is what is required.

Nobody reads Lamentations 3:23 and concludes that God's mercy did not take the first time.

And that is the whole answer, put plainly. If the mercy a person is living on is renewed daily, then the mercy they are handing on being renewed daily is not a defect in it.

If the thing being forgiven is still happening and is causing you harm, forgiving is not the same as staying in reach of it, and nothing on this page asks anybody to. Say it out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust, and in the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour.

You are living on mercies that are renewed daily rather than issued once. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and it is by the Spirit, Titus 3:5, who is named as doing the renewing rather than a person sustaining it.