Forgive the Debt

Matthew 18 | Liberation and Inclusion Translation

Matthew 18 in the Liberation and Inclusion Translation (LIT).

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Peter confessed that Jesus was divine.

He bore witness to who Jesus is, the Son of God, a title that Caesar reserved for himself and his divine right to rule the empire. Peter took that title and gave it to Jesus, stating clearly that Jesus wasn’t the decent of someone proclaiming divinity for themselves. Rather, Peter asserted that Jesus was the son of the God who is, the God that heard the cries of the Israelites when Egypt exploited and enslaved them. This is the God who saves, who frees, who liberates. The one true God. When Peter states that Jesus is the Son of the living God, Peter is confessing his conviction that Jesus is equal with the God of Israel, that Jesus is this God.

This is the living God in the flesh. So, when Jesus starts talking about the inevitability of his suffering and death in Jerusalem, Peter has a minor crisis of belief.

He pulls Jesus aside and says, “Look, this can’t be true. Stop talking such nonsense.”

And what does Jesus do? He rebukes Peter as an adversary.

Peter, who had just received a glowing commendation from Jesus for his confession that Jesus is God, is now treated like an enemy of the kingdom.

Oof.

I think this is fresh in Peter’s mind as he approaches Jesus with a question about forgiveness. Under Peter’s question about how many times one should forgive a member of the gathered community is a question about himself.

How many times would Jesus forgive Peter?

And that’s the question, isn’t it? How many times can we be forgiven?

We know what we have done, what we have left undone, our part in the systems of oppression, and so much more. We are culpable for our actions, words, choices. We also harm people without intention, without knowledge. The truth is, in so many ways we sin against each other all the time.

So how many times can we be forgiven? When we are apologetic, when we are remorseful, when we are sorry, we long for forgiveness, and some of us worry that there is a limit to the forgiveness in relationships that matter to us.

But in many cases, we have conflated forgiveness with reconciliation. We want a relationship to be like it was before we caused harm. We want to feel better, to know we are still embraced. We want reconciliation.

The truth is, forgiveness isn’t about us. Forgiveness doesn’t center the one who harmed, the one who sinned against the other. Forgiveness is a release by the one who was harmed. It is a renunciation of debt and repayment. Forgiveness is the cancellation of the demand for repayment for the harm.

And Jesus says every time someone sins against us, we are to forgive, to release the expectation and demand of revenge or repayment.

When someone sins against you, they cannot go back and undo that hurt. And we shouldn’t expect them to.

The answer to Peter’s question—would Jesus forgive him—is the same answer we are given about how we are to forgive: seventy times seven.

It’s unthinkable. The amount of times we are to stop expecting the hurt to be undone, to not require repayment, is every time. Jesus forgives the disciples every time. Jesus forgives his accusers and murderers from the cross. Jesus forgives all every time. If we are going to be like Jesus, we need to forgive in this extravagant manner.

Since we are forgiven, we are to go and forgive those who have harmed us.

But why?

Why the extravagant number?

Why every time?

Why forgive when we have been harmed and hurt in some way?

Forgiveness is an invitation, for the forgiver and the one being forgiven, to leave the system of violence and scarcity. Forgiveness is an off-ramp from the speeding freeway of ego and demand. Forgiveness is an open-armed place where we are allowed to put down our indignation, to grieve the hurt, and to heal from it with forward motion. We don’t get stuck in the past when we forgive. Instead, we can let go of that which we grip so tightly because we fear it will never get better.

But when we hold our hurt with clenched fists, promising to never let go until it is undone, we stop ourselves from the one thing that can heal our hurt: grief.

Forgiveness is an invitation to grieve our hurt, our loss, our pain, and to begin the journey of healing. But we can only do that when we release the other person from the expectation that they must repay us, undo the harm, give us back what they have taken.

When we grieve these things instead of demanding vengeance, we cease the cycle of violence that crushes us, keeps us indebted to each other, and chains us to expectations we can never fill. Grief allows us to move through the pain, to feel it in its fullness, and to accept that the hurt and harm happened, and it will never be undone.

Let’s step back for a moment and be real: there are times when people harm us to the point that we have to draw a firm boundary or even cut them off from access to us. How do we forgive in these situations? Should we forgive?

I am not here to tell you that you have to forgive everyone. I am saying the invitation to forgive, to exit the cycle of scarcity and demand that leads to violence that is forgiveness is radical, revolutionary, and will change your healing process. But if you forgive, it has to be at your pace, in your time, with your work.

Also, and this in important, forgiveness is not reconciliation.

Just because you release someone from the debt they have accrued through sin and hurt, you are not automatically giving them the same access to you that they had before the hurt. Forgiveness is for yourself. You don’t even have to tell the person you forgive them. Forgiveness is one hundred percent an internal stance that you choose to take toward the person and the situation.

Forgiveness is a part of reconciliation, but reconciling with someone, restoring that relationship, is not automatically part of forgiveness.

This is important because there is real hurt, real pain, and real trauma that we sometimes have to work through to heal from the sin against us. I never want to diminish the wounds people need to grieve to find their own healing. Hurt hurts. That is the god-awful truth. But when we begin to loosen our grip on that demand the hurt be undone or repaid, we begin to name the hurt, to give it shape, to let it be seen in the light. Our anger is justified. Our rage, weeping, bargaining, remorse… everything is allowed during grief.

You may get to the place of forgiveness. You may not.

Either way, I am inviting you out of the cycle of envy, oppression, violence, belittlement, and demand. There is a way to break the trauma cycles in our lives, and that way is seventy times seven ways to forgive.