Thursday; October 29
The other day I heard a really good lesson about forgiveness based on Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18. In this story Jesus relates how a man was forgiven of an incredible debt by a king but was unwilling to forgive a lesser amount by his fellow man. In fact the one who’d had his debt cancelled threw his contemporary in prison until he made good on what he owed. As you might suspect, when the original creditor heard what had happened, he reinstated the original debt and had the first man turned over to the “torturers” until the debt was repaid. While this is a great story about personal forgiveness, I am intrigued by the initial interaction that lead into this discussion, “Then Peter came and said to Him, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’” (Matthew 18:21-22). As the preacher tied everything into a neat little packag