70 Times 7

A Story of Forgiveness

He was seriously in debt.  This man owed the king what would be millions by today’s standards.  And as it is with all loans, it became due and payable.  The king was calling in the debt owed him by the man.  It was time to repay the king.

While the man may have been savvy at business, his fortunes were down and he did not have the means to repay his loan.  That is bad news when you owe so much and can’t pay it back.  It is even worse when the man you owe is the king.

The man was brought before the king and confessed he could not repay the loan.  The king’s response?  He told his servants to sell the man, his wife, and children to repay the debt.

Sold Into Slavery

This story was told by Jesus Christ at a time when life was different.  Debtors were handled differently than they are today.  In fact, those who go into debt and are unable to pay has changed dramatically over the centuries.

For example, when Charles Dicken’s was a boy, his father was thrown into prison because he could not repay a loan given to him.  His father stayed there until the loan was repaid, which meant that his wife and children had to bear the burden of work and sacrifice, to earn enough to repay the loan.  Fortunately for them, a family member repaid the loan.  But it was not that way for everyone.

We are fortunate by these standards that only our credit history suffers when we default on a loan.  If we file bankruptcy on debt owed, few of us goes to prison and certainly none of us are sold into slavery to repay that debt.  We take the hit on our credit and work to rebuild it.

His Debt Was Forgiven

The man’s heart was broken.  He did not want to lose his family and could not bear the thought of his wife and children being sold for his failure in repaying.

Falling down before the king, the man begged for mercy.  He told the king that if the king would be patient, he would repay the king everything he owed him.

The king was a very rich man.  He did not need the money the man owed him but he had to settle his accounts with all who owed him.  When the man begged for mercy, the king’s heart softened and he had compassion on the man.

The king told the man his debt was forgiven.  He owed nothing.  The millions by today’s standards that the man owed, were washed away.  The debt was gone.  The man would never have to repay the debt.  He could go home to his wife and children in peace.

The Grace To Forgive

The news that he was free was huge.  The debt was so big that if his fortunes didn’t turn around, it would have taken lifetimes to pay back what he owed.  The debt was more than he could pay back, even with his life.

How would you feel if someone told you that the many hundreds of thousands, or millions, you owed were released and you would not have to pay it back?  I don’t know about you, but I would be pretty grateful.  I imagine that most of you would be grateful too, if you were freed from so great a debt.

The gratitude this man felt did not go very far, though.  After being freed from his debt, the man went to another man who owed him money.  Since we don’t want to get bogged down in converting the value of money in Jesus’ time to today, let us just say that the second man owed the first man roughly a hundred dollars.

So, after being forgiven for a debt that he could not repay, the man did not have the grace to forgive another.

How Many Times

The story Jesus told was a parable.  It was an analogy of what our behavior should be towards our fellow man.  It was also an example of what will happen to us if our hearts are so hard, we can’t forgive others.

You have been called to forgive your fellow human beings.  Let me say it again.  You have been called to forgive every single person who has ever done anything wrong to you.  When Peter asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”  Jesus responded by saying, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Matthew 18:21-22 

Peter and Jesus were not talking about forgiving others a total of 490 times in your life.  They were discussing how many times to forgive one person.

Beyond All Crimes

It is not always easy to forgive others, but that is your heritage.  Jesus Christ has shown you how to behave with the people in your life and in the world around you.

Before Jesus Christ was in our lives, you and I owed a debt we could not pay.  When we discovered Jesus Christ and the life He has for us, we approached Him, asking for His mercy and forgiveness.  Now we are assured that when the bible says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

Jesus Christ has paid the price for the debt we owed.  It is washed away in His blood.  We have been cleansed with a heavenly forgiveness that goes beyond all crimes against us.

70 Times 7

Have you been treated so poorly by your fellow man that you cannot forgive them?

Tell that to Corrie ten Boom.  She paid a very high price to forgive a German guard who stood watch over the women in the prison while they showered.  But she learned an amazing lesson in the process.  Jesus Christ did not let her down.

I cannot say it as eloquently as Corrie, so I have included the Guideposts story and link to the original story below.  It is an 8-minute read and one which should be required reading for all Christians.

I feel we, as Christians, have forgotten the greatness of the gift of God’s salvation and the forgiveness we received when we first accepted Jesus Christ.  Too often, we hold back the forgiveness we owe others to give.

There is great freedom in forgiving others.  In forgiving, you lay down the burdens you carry regarding the behavior of another.  And while laying down those burdens, you lift a weight God never wanted you to carry.

Must I challenge you on whether you are forgiving others 70 times 7?  Or can you see the condition of your heart, as it pertains to forgiveness, on your own?

Resources

Guideposts Classics: Corrie ten Boom on Forgiveness

Link to original story:  https://guideposts.org/positive-living/guideposts-classics-corrie-ten-boom-forgiveness/

In this story from November 1972, the author of The Hiding Place recalls forgiving a guard at the concentration camp where her sister died.

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.

It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.

“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”

The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.

It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.

Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.

And having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I never again had difficulty in forgiving: I wish I could say it! I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on. But they didn’t.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior–but only draw them fresh from God each day.

Maybe I’m glad it’s that way. For every time I go to Him, He teaches me something else. I recall the time, some 15 years ago, when some Christian friends whom I loved and trusted did something which hurt me.

You would have thought that, having forgiven the Nazi guard, this would have been child’s play. It wasn’t. For weeks I seethed inside. But at last I asked God again to work His miracle in me. And again it happened: first the cold-blooded decision, then the flood of joy and peace.

I had forgiven my friends; I was restored to my Father.

Then, why was I suddenly awake in the middle of the night, hashing over the whole affair again? My friends! I thought. People I loved! If it had been strangers, I wouldn’t have minded so.

I sat up and switched on the light. “Father, I thought it was all forgiven! Please help me do it!”

But the next night I woke up again. They’d talked so sweetly too! Never a hint of what they were planning. “Father!” I cried in alarm. “Help me!”

His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks.

“Up in that church tower,” he said, nodding out the window, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.

“I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversation. But the force–which was my willingness in the matter–had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether.

And so I discovered another secret of forgiveness: that we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts.

And still He had more to teach me, even in this single episode. Because many years later, in 1970, an American with whom I had shared the ding-dong principle came to visit me in Holland and met the people involved. “Aren’t those the friends who let you down?” he asked as they left my apartment.

“Yes,” I said a little smugly. “You can see it’s all forgiven.”

“By you, yes,” he said. “But what about them? Have they accepted your forgiveness?”

“They say there’s nothing to forgive! They deny it ever happened. But I can prove it!” I went eagerly to my desk. “I have it in black and white! I saved all their letters and I can show you where–”

“Corrie!” My friend slipped his arm through mine and gently closed the drawer. “Aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? And are the sins of your friends etched in black and white?”

For an anguishing moment I could not find my voice. “Lord Jesus,” I whispered at last, “who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others! Give me grace to burn all the blacks and whites as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to Your glory.”

I did not go to sleep that night until I had gone through my desk and pulled out those letters–curling now with age–and fed them all into my little coal-burning grate. As the flames leaped and glowed, so did my heart.

“Forgive us our trespasses,” Jesus taught us to pray, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In the ashes of those letters I was seeing yet another facet of His mercy. What more He would teach me about forgiveness in the days ahead I didn’t know, but tonight’s was good news enough.

When we bring our sins to Jesus, He not only forgives them, He makes them as if they had never been.

What the Bible Says

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant

Then Peter came to Him and said, “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. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt.

“But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.

“So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” Matthew 18:21-35