77 Times

Matthew 18:21-35… What a powerful parable on forgiveness. In this story we see how God feels with us sometimes. There are countless moments in our lives where God forgives us and erases the debts we owe from our sins committed. Yet we take our human mind and allow it to hold grudges and have anger towards others who have done the same thing to us.

It is extremely difficult in situations to have the love and forgiveness that God has. However, we must try, and it starts with our relationship with God. If we don’t have a mindset centered around a life that honors God we cannot grasp the magnitude of this overwhelming concept. If we struggle to understand why God wants us to forgive and we don’t purposefully work towards that, then we will live in that sin ourselves.

So where does the 77 times fit in this parable? I think Jesus is trying to make a statement to point out that this is an endless process for us. Our human nature is to have people hurt us in life, it’s just simply going to happen, but the point here is that we repeatedly forgive them. It is not a onetime event that we move on from, Jesus is preparing us to have a mindset of being prepared for it to happen again and again so we can guard our hearts. Our human nature lets us get even more frustrated or mad when things happen a second or third time and Christ tells us that doesn’t matter.

Forgive again and again, I mean let’s be honest how many times have we sinned against our heavenly father and he has forgiven us. He wants us to do the same in our life.

Be Blessed,

Pastor Brandon