"How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?"
When Peter asked this leading question he may have been trying to seem magnanimous. For Jewish law required only a threefold forgiveness, after which, apparently, you were free to take revenge. Our Lord rejected this whole legalistic approach by his reply and penetrated, as he always did, to the inner spirit of the matter. Until seventy times seven was a traditional way of saying "without limit." He was trying to make Peter realize that to attach numbers to an action of this kind prevents your heart from being in it. Even if there were no chance of your brother sinning against you more than seven times, you were not really forgiving him the first time as long as you had a limit set to the extent of your forgiveness.
The forgiving love of God, which is the pattern for the same spirit in man, has no boundaries, no qualifications.
But hasn't it? you may well ask. Doesn't the Lord's prayer set a condition to his forgiveness of trespasses that we forgive those who trespass against us? Doesn't the parable of the unmerciful servant which follows Peter's question end with the stern "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not everyone his brother their trespasses."
No, to regard this as a condition to God's forgiveness is to misunderstand radically the way God works, to mistake his very nature. To regard him as a bargainer, an exchanger of favors, is to descend to the really false kind of anthropomorphism which is to impute to him our weaknesses rather than to find in us his strength.
God's forgiveness flows from him continuously. When we do not experience it, it is because we fail to allow it to operate. To put the situation in its real terms, unless we learn to apply the spirit of forgiveness toward others we can never expect to discover the meaning of God's forgiveness in our own lives—we can never forgive ourselves; for that is one step more difficult than forgiving others. This may sound like nonsense at first. Difficult to forgive ourselves? Why that's easy, we reply. We are always coating over our mistakes, rationalizing our errors. But don't you see? In the very use of the words coating over and rationalizing, we admit that there is a core of guilt there somewhere that has not been forgiven but just covered up temporarily—and if the truth were known, allowed to fester and grow till its effect becomes deadly indeed. If you don't believe this, explore the inner recesses of your mind and look for a minute at the gallery of thoughts and actions you are trying to forget because they hurt. They hurt you still because they have never been touched by God's forgiveness. You have not learned the spirit of forgiveness toward others sufficiently to apply it to yourself.
But suppose you have tried to be forgiving and found it difficult or well-nigh impossible. It actually is not an easy thing to learn. And it cannot be accomplished merely by saying to oneself in a stern voice, "Forgive others and forgive yourself." Much could be said on how to learn, but one point stands out above the rest as wise counsel. Look at others and yourself with a sense of perspective. Our brother sins against us, the magnifying glass is brought out and focussed upon that sin, and our brother appears entirely sinful. We ourselves commit a sin, the microscope is turned upon that spot in us, and all our good seems evil in its darkness. Learn to take away the magnification as soon as the trouble is sufficiently examined. See again the good which greatly outweighs the evil, for that good is the light in which forgiveness thrives.
"How oft shall I or my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" I hope you know by now.