"How many times must I forgive," Peter asked Jesus. "How many times do I have to forgive my brother when he sins against me?" Peter remembered his lessons from synagogue school. He remembered that the rabbis said three times. You were obligated to forgive your brother three times for the same sin. Three is God’s number, so three times is enough.
Peter raised it to the next biblical "lucky" number: seven. How about seven times? Seven times my brother sins against me, the very same sin each time. And seven times I forgive him. That ought to be enough, right?
Jesus says, "I’ll see your seven and raise you seventy times seven." Seventy times seven. About as perfect as it gets when it comes to biblical numbers. And if you’re multiplying to come up with 490 and think that’s the Jesus standard, you’ve missed the point. Forgiveness doesn’t count.
To forgive is to let something go, to leave something be, to relinquish control over the thing, to act as though it didn’t happen, even though you know darned well that it happened. The owner of the weedy wheat field says, "Forgive it" when the help wants to pull the weeds ahead of their time. Leave it be. Let it alone. Forgive.
If you’re counting, you’re not forgiving. Love keeps no record of wrongs. Forgiveness keeps no book on sins.
