Pastor's Sermon - September 13th, 2026 - The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 18:21-35
Jesus gave the disciples, and therefore, the Church, the outline of repentance and reconciliation. If your brother sins against you, go alone and tell him his fault that he may repent and be forgiven. If he doesn’t listen to you alone, bring two more witnesses so that he may repent and receive forgiveness. Finally, if he still won’t listen to you, tell the Church. Let the Church then urge him to repentance and forgiveness. If he won’t even listen to the Church, then let him be left unforgiven. Of course, Jesus teaches this with the intended outcome of faith always being repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It isn’t Jesus’ desire for anyone to go unforgiven, nor is this the Church’s desire.
But this prompts an obvious and important question and Peter voices it. “How many times do I need to forgive my brother?” It’s a good question because we’ve all experienced the frustration and sometimes even the hurt of someone sinning against us. So, when this happens, how many times do we forgive it. Peter is a generous man and so he picks a nice symbolic number. “As many as seven?” Surely, such a good and generous number would suffice. Seven is a number for completeness, so it may be that Peter thinks he’s really gone above and beyond. There is a rabbinic tradition reflected in the Jewish literature of the period that forgiveness for a repeated offense might be limited to three times. Peter’s really set the ceiling high. After all, how many of us are willing to give our kids seven chances before a punishment is enacted? Seven is a generous number.
In fact, for our human flesh, I think Peter is being a bit too generous. Sure, it’s easy to nod our heads and say that we can forgive someone seven times when that person is near and dear to us and the sin is something dismissible. If someone steals a cookie from the cookie jar seven times, I won’t be pleased about it, but I think I can manage to forgive them. After all, at the end of the day, I can live without some cookies in the cookie jar. Truly, by the time I’m climbing into bed, I’m over it.
But consider this ‘seven times’ as the sins grow bolder and more offensive. What about when someone mocks or insults you. Gossips unkindly about you behind your back. What about when someone steals from you—not cookies, but something more important. Things you treasure—books or fashion pieces, or even money! What about when someone intentionally harms you, and what if this is done more than once?! Consider the depth of some of these sins! What about the time when adultery is committed against you! When murder is committed against you! When lying and stealing is committed! When someone covets you and your things and acts wrongfully from this! Not just once. Oh, no. Over and over again. Even up to seven times!! These terms are very religious and biblical to use: murder, adultery, and the like. And they can mean a wide gambit of specific things…but when you consider those specific things and when these specific things are done against you, they hurt. These are not typically considered minor offenses.
Well, Peter, do we still want to stick with seven times? Because considering some of the biggies, like murder, adultery, and theft, seven seems almost recklessly high.
We’re likely all familiar with something like this. Maybe there’s someone in your life that really puts this to the test. Someone that consistently lets you down. Someone who consistently is offending you and trespassing, whether intentionally or unintentionally against you. Oh, how difficult it is to forgive such a person after the seventh time! Or even the fifth! Or the third! Or even the second! Truly, sometimes it’s difficult even at the first offense!
Where do we draw the line, am I right? Surely, there’s a place where a man falls that is outside of grace and forgiveness. If we name the world’s top ‘bad guys’, the genocide enactors, the rebellion inciters, the stalkers, the murderers, and the ‘worst of the worst’, Peter can’t possibly be thinking about these people, right? Surely, Jesus isn’t speaking of these people. They don’t deserve the opportunity to repent and they certainly don’t deserve forgiveness.
So, why seven times? I think once is often more than deserved.
In fact, once is always more than deserved.
But let’s not just take Peter’s word for it. We all recognize that Peter has his shortcomings and so his forgiveness formula may be errant. Let’s see what perfect Jesus has in mind for these sinful and deplorable offenders.
Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Seven was too much to begin with, if I’m being honest. Why or how should I offer such grace to someone so prone to repeat offenses? And now, Jesus, perfect Lord and Judge of all, wants to up the game and say not seven, but seventy-seven, or sometimes it’s translated, seventy times seven. So, being generous, is Jesus setting the new forgiveness ceiling at 490? Because, let’s be honest, if my brother has sinned against me in 490 ways that I have taken notice, chances are, I’m done with him. That’s the end of that relationship, because no one can deserve that much forgiveness.
But is Jesus actually running a mathematical formula on forgiveness? No. He’s destroying the very idea that forgiveness can be reduced to a bookkeeping exercise. There is no ledger. In fact, Jesus is echoing the Old Testament and taking it far beyond. After Cain murders Abel, Cain is marked by God so that he won’t be killed. Then, we meet Lamech, who boasts, “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.” He magnifies it further. Then, Jesus steps in, who rightly deserves revenge for the sins of mankind, and flips it over in an exaggerated way. It’s not about revenge. Quite the opposite. Forgive. Not in such a manner that you can keep record. But rather, forgive, and this is where the numbers’ symbolic meanings play in, in a complete, by complete, by complete way. That is to say, how often does the Lord expect us to forgive our brother? Completely. No math needed.
Jesus tells a parable to explain this. In it, a man is forgiven by the king for a very large debt. He didn’t deserve it, but the king gave it to him freely as a gift. A total release from the debt. Yet, that same forgiven man turned around and found his neighbor who owed him a much smaller debt, but refused to forgive it as he had been forgiven, and instead, had the man imprisoned. Rather than treating others as he had been treated, he acted hatefully and wickedly.
What does Jesus’ parable have to do with us and the number of times we forgive?
I think the point is staring us down. Why should we forgive our brothers and sisters for their repeated and sometimes deep sins? Or, why should we bother forgiving anyone at all?
Because we have first been forgiven.
All have fallen short of the glory of God. Each one of us, in thought, word, and deed, has sinned against, not only our neighbors, but against God Himself. Not once. Not twice. Not even a hundred times. Not even 490 times! We have sinned against God so many times and so gravely the number cannot be recounted and the sentence should only be eternal damnation! This is no joke. This is serious.
Yet, like the king in the parable, God has seen our great debt to Him and has covered the cost Himself. He has absorbed the blood-cost of our faithlessness and our sin Himself. Jesus Christ came to bear that price and die the death we deserve on the cross. Therefore, by His death, blood, and resurrection, the Lord has graciously forgiven us, not once, not seven times, not even 490 times, but totally and completely. Not only has He forgiven us, He bears no record of our sins whatsoever. We who deserved damnation so completely, have been freed from that debt, by no worth or merit of our own, and have been made to be in a forgiven and right relationship with the Lord. Only because He is gracious. And there is no repentant sinner outside of this grace. God’s forgiveness is complete and for all who trust in Him. Even the ‘worst of the worsts’.
So, what now of us? The Spirit moves within us to accomplish the same thing. Just as the Lord has forgiven us, we forgive others. Once? Twice? Seven? 490? Yes, and then some. Completely. Totally. When our brother repents, we forgive. That’s the simple equation. It’s not math. It’s love. It’s faith. And if they sin and repent again, then what? We do it again.
Do we forget every sin committed against us? No. That’s not how our minds work. We can’t forget even if we want to, sometimes. In fact, sometimes, we help our brother by remembering. If we know our brother struggles deeply with stealing and has trespassed against us in such a way before, it is wise and loving to keep our wallets from being left where he would be alone. Not for hate of him. But to help our brother against his own struggle. Even so, do we hold a grudge against him for his sin struggles? No. Just as the Lord has not held a grudge against us for the sins that placed His Son on the cross.
Forgiveness isn’t an act of the mind. It is an act of faith. It is the Lord that drives our forgiveness and it is our Savior that makes it possible. And the promise of the Lord is that the sins loosed amongst us, by repentance, forgiveness, and faith, are loosed in Heaven, also. Then we are blessed to stand amongst one another, as we do today, forgiven and in right and reconciled relationships with each other, and we are blessed to stand before the Lord on the Last Day with right and reconciled relationships with Him, to be brought to our eternal home where there will be no sin. And no record of sin. By total perfection and love.
In Christ’s Name, Amen.