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Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive our brother and
Peter suggested the number 7.
But Jesus said that we should forgive, not 7 times, but 70 times 7. His point was that we should
always always always forgive our brother.
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Jesus
told many parables to help us understand the
'kingdom of heaven'. He told this one
to help us understand 'forgiveness' in the
church. |
Oh, I love a good story!
A certain king was taking account of his servants. He called in one servant who owed him over
15
million dollars!
The servant couldn't pay..... so the king was going to sell the servant and the servant's family in payment of the debt.
The servant fell down and asked the king to
PLEASE!!! give him more time to pay.
The king was moved with compassion and said, "I'll tell you what! I'll just forgive the whole debt! You don't owe me anything now!"
So that servant left (happy
and free) and went and found someone that owed him just
$15.
He took him by the throat and told him that he must pay him now. When that person couldn't pay his debt, the first servant had him thrown in prison.
Some people went and told the king what that servant had
done. Then the king brought the first servant back in to
him and said,
"You wicked servant! I showed you compassion and
forgave you
everything because you asked me to!"
"Shouldn't you have had
pity for your servant and forgiven him what little he
owed you?
Then the king put that servant in jail until he could
repay the king all that was owed him.
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Then Jesus said, "This is how my heavenly
father will treat each of you unless you
forgive your brother from your heart."
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Now -- if you know that 70 times 7 =
490, then you should do pretty good on this
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The
king's servant
strangling his debtor!
What is forgiveness?
How can you know when you have forgiven someone?
Maybe if you can feel and
act toward that person as if he had not done anything
wrong, then that is probably forgiveness from the heart.
This is a parable that
we need to read again and again and meditate on often.
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(the Jews taught that a man only forgave someone up to 3 times -
so Peter's number 7 sounded pretty generous) |
Jesus taught about
forgiveness in the
Sermon on the Mount
In Matthew 6:13-14,
Jesus says "Forgive people when they sin against you.
If you do your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive people their sins, your
heavenly father will not forgive your sins."
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