Jesus' Math and Ours--September 14, 2026

Jesus' Math and Ours--September 14, 2026

Peter came and said to [Jesus,] “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

We question whether or not it's foolish to give people a second chance when they mess up, and here Jesus is talking about seventy-seventh chances.  That's quite a difference, isn't it?

But then again, Jesus keeps showing us how the logic of God's Reign runs counter to the conventional wisdom of our place and time.  And in that regard, we are in the same position as Simon Peter, looking for Jesus to give us reasonable limits to forgiveness--reasonable to us, of course.  In this short scene that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, Peter voices the kind of realistic concerns that all of us have.  "Okay, Jesus, I get it--we should be merciful to other people and not hold grudges. Fine.  But come on, how many times do we have to go through the same old routine of being hurt and then setting ourselves up for more pain by forgiving people who let us down again?"  You get the impression that Peter has seen enough Peanuts cartoons to know that when Lucy insists she really will hold the football still this time, Charlie Brown still falls on his head when she yanks it away yet again.  And Peter, perhaps with good reason, thinks that is unfair.  How many times does Charlie Brown have to get taken advantage of?  How many times does anybody have to get mistreated, sinned against, or wronged before we shut down and walk away?  It seems a reasonable question, wouldn't you say?

And yet here is Jesus, speaking like he is from an entirely different world--because in a sense, that is exactly what the Reign of God that Jesus brings really is: a different way of living in the world, arranged by God's ordering of things rather than what passes for our kind of conventional wisdom.  And for Jesus, the right question to ask is not, "What about how badly the other person treated me?" but rather, "What about how God currently treats me?"  And Jesus is clear that from that vantage point, God is constantly forgiving us, giving us a new start, and not getting revenge against us.  Jesus dares us to take up a different perspective, where the definitive factor in how I treat others is how God acts toward me, not how other people have acted toward me.  In other words, we are called to forgive, not because the people who have wronged us "deserve" it, but because God has shown forgiveness to us constantly even when we don't deserve it.  And for Jesus, the kingdom way of life is really a matter of defining our lives based on how God sees us and acts toward us rather than how other people see us and act toward us.  The way other people have behaved toward us factors out of the equation, and instead we are left with the way God acts toward us--which is constantly with love and forgiveness.  That's why Jesus' math looks different from Peter's and our own.  If my choices are based on how people have already treated me in the past, then of course, I will be hesitant even to give someone a second chance.  But if I treat other people based on the way God acts toward me, well, then, grace becomes the order of the day.

And that, I am convinced, is what is going on here.  Jesus isn't just raising the forgiveness quota from Peter's proposal of seven times to a higher number of seventy-seven (or, as some manuscripts suggest, "seventy times seven")--he is changing the way we view the whole world and our relationship with everyone in it.  We no longer relate to people on the basis of what they have done to us in the past, but on the basis of how God is currently acting toward us right now.  And that means we are no longer doomed to live our lives shackled to the past and defined by what others have done to us.  That's the beauty of how Jesus frees us in his response to Peter.  As long as I am withholding forgiveness from someone else, I am chaining myself (as well as them) to the past.  I am defining my relationship with the other person in terms of what they did to me, rather than in terms of what God is doing for me right now in the present--namely, forgiving me.  Jesus frees us from being stuck in the past by giving us a new orientation for our lives: everything hangs on God's grace toward me, not on how other people have acted toward me.  Like the letter we call First John says it, "We love because God first loved us." The same is true about forgiveness:  we forgive because God has first forgiven (and keeps forgiving) us.

Now, all of that said, there is a difference between forgiving someone and choosing to put myself in a place where I can be hurt again.  Forgiveness is not Charlie Brown running up to kick the football for the umpteenth time because he naively believes Lucy won't yank it away this time.  Rather, forgiveness is the choice not to get revenge for what Lucy did last time.  It is the choice to move on rather than stay forever in the unchangeable past.  It is the decision not to weaponize the past so that you and the person who wronged you can begin again.  You don't have to set yourself up for being hurt again, and forgiving someone does not equate to trusting them again.  It simply means you are letting go of the past and refuse to seek revenge.

So, how will we face this day?  With the same old tired math that requires "getting even" with someone, even though that can never change what they did to you?  Or by seeing people in view of the way God is currently acting toward each of us--which is with grace?

If you want to stay stuck in the past like a dead-end, I suppose you can.  But it feels like a terrible waste of this day.  You and I have been freed by Jesus to move forward, because God has made everything new.

Lord Jesus, enable us to see other people in the light of how you have shown grace to us.