The Barefoot Evangelist

Read Matthew 18:21-35 with your family.

Have you ever noticed how often the number seven appears in the Bible? There are seven days in the week, and the seventh day is the Sabbath. In the Hebrew Scriptures, seven often represents something that is whole, complete, or finished. It was an important number in the way Jewish people talked about God and the world.

So when Peter asked Jesus, “Should I forgive someone as many as seven times?” he wasn’t choosing a random number. Seven sounded like a big, complete amount of forgiveness. Peter may have thought he was giving a very generous answer: forgive someone again and again, all the way to seven!

But Jesus surprised him. He answered, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times!” Jesus wasn’t telling Peter to carry a notebook and make 77 little check marks. He was taking Peter’s big number and making it so much bigger that counting stopped being the point.

Jesus wanted Peter to think about forgiveness differently. Forgiveness isn’t something we hand out seven times and then announce, “That’s it! You used them all!” God’s mercy isn’t measured that way, and Jesus asks us not to spend our lives keeping score either.

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