Enough Is Enough…Right?

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”  “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven! (Matthew 18:21-22 NLT)

“How many times should I forgive?”

That question is front and center in the Lectionary readings this week.

Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, poses that very question. He seems to think he is being remarkably generous when he suggests seven times. And seven does sound like a lot. Surely there has to be a limit somewhere. If someone hurts me, I forgive them. If they hurt me again, I forgive them again. But eventually, enough is enough. Right?

Jesus’ answer is startling: not seven times, seventy times seven.

Wait – now I need a calculator to figure out how many times I should forgive someone?

The point, of course, isn’t that Jesus wants us keeping a forgiveness tally.

Forgiveness isn’t really about counting.

It is about how we live.

In Genesis, Joseph’s brothers are terrified that Joseph will finally take revenge for what they did to him years earlier. They had sold their own brother into slavery. Now, with their father dead, they fear that Joseph will retaliate.

Instead, Joseph tells them, in essence: You intended to harm me, but God has brought something good out of it.

I love that response.

But notice what Joseph is—and isn’t—saying.

He isn’t saying that what his brothers did was okay. (It wasn’t – it was heartless and cruel!) He isn’t pretending that the past didn’t happen. And he certainly can’t change what happened.

What he can do is refuse to let what did happen determine the rest of his life.

And perhaps that is one of the most important things about forgiveness.

C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until there is something to forgive.”

How true.

It is easy to talk about forgiveness in the abstract. I can admire Joseph’s generosity towards his brothers.

Until I’m the one who has been hurt.

Some things are easier than others to forgive. Someone says something thoughtless. Someone acts in a way that is a bit disappointing. Someone makes a mistake, but then genuinely tries to make things right.

But then, there are those things that we just can’t let go of!

The betrayal.
The rejection.
The cruelty.
The relationship that ended badly.
The words that cannot be taken back.
The person who never apologized.
Or – the thing we did to someone else that we really wish we could undo.

(Sometimes the person we most need to forgive is ourselves.)

So, what does Jesus mean when he tells us to forgive?

I don’t think he is telling us to forget.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t happen. It doesn’t mean excusing cruelty, overlooking injustice, or putting ourselves back into a harmful situation. It doesn’t require reconciliation when reconciliation isn’t safe or possible.

Forgiveness is not saying, “What happened to me didn’t matter.”

Maybe it’s saying, “What happened to me will not have the final word.”

Anne Lamott puts it beautifully: “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”

We cannot go back and rewrite the story.

We can only decide what we will carry forward from it.

And this is where forgiveness becomes less a single decision and more a way of living. Sometimes we forgive in an instant. But I think, more often, it takes time.

We let go of the anger—and then discover some anger still remains.

We think we have forgiven—and then something reminds us of the hurt.

We pray for the grace to release it—and then we have to pray that same prayer again tomorrow.

That might be the reason for the strange number that Jesus gives Peter.

Because forgiveness isn’t a transaction. It’s a practice.

A way of loosening our grip on the past.

A way of refusing to spend the rest of our lives rehearsing old injuries, imagining revenge, or wishing we could have a different history.

And perhaps this is why forgiveness is so closely connected to freedom.

When we hold tightly to resentment, the person who hurt us can continue to occupy an enormous amount of space in our lives. They may be long gone, but the wound keeps taking up room.

Forgiveness doesn’t change what they did.

It changes what we do with what they did.

The same is true when we need to forgive ourselves.

Sometimes we hold ourselves hostage to an old version of who we were. We keep returning to the mistake, the failure, the words we wish we hadn’t spoken, the choice we wish we could undo.

But grace asks us to imagine something different.

What if we don’t have to keep paying for the same mistake forever?

What if God’s forgiveness means that we are allowed to become someone new?

Jesus taught us to pray this: Forgive us, as we forgive others.

And forgiven people are invited—not forced, not shamed, not rushed—to become people who are increasingly able to let go.

Sometimes forgiveness happens because we finally decide to put down something we’ve been carrying for far too long.

Sometimes it happens because we realize that holding onto it is costing us more than we ever imagined.

And sometimes – forgiveness is simply a prayer:

God, I am not ready to let this go. But I am willing to become willing.

And just maybe – that prayer is enough for today.

Amen.