Why must we forgive 'seventy times seven' times?
Christ teaches that forgiveness knows no limits, because mercy is the very measure of divine life within the soul.
Christ teaches that forgiveness knows no limits, because mercy is the very measure of divine life within the soul.
Editor’s Notes
The following mini-series consists of Fr Henry James Coleridge’s commentary on the Gospel pericope read on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost: the parable of the unmerciful servant.
This passage follows immediately on from Christ’s teaching on fraternal correction, and forms the natural continuation of that discourse: passing from the duty of admonishing one’s brother, the the higher duty of forgiving him.
The scene belongs to the later Galilean ministry, after Christ has withdrawn from Capharnaum and begun to prepare his disciples for the life of the Church. St Peter’s question, “How often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him?” opens the way for Christ to reveal the true measure of mercy in the kingdom of heaven.
The parable of the unmerciful servant contrasts the infinite and unpayable debt each man owes to God with the trifling debts owed between men.
For the Apostles, this lesson had immediate significance: it defined the spirit in which authority must be exercised within the Church. Forgiveness is becomes an imitation of God’s own divine sovereignty, and a means of reopening closed channels of grace, and preserving peace within the mystical body.
For us, the parable discloses a fearful symmetry between God’s mercy and our own. Each act of forgiveness becomes a key to God’s grace, while hardness of heart closes heaven itself.
The measure by which we forgive becomes the very measure by which we are judged.
The Measure of Forgiveness
The Preaching of the Cross, Vol. I
Chapter IX
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, 159-70
St. Matthew xviii. 21-35; Story of the Gospels, § 88
Burns and Oates, 1886.
(Read at Holy Mass on the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost)
St Peter’s question and the parable of the unmerciful servant
1 Then came Peter unto Him, and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?’
Jesus saith to him:
‘I say not unto thee till seven times, but till seventy times seven times.
‘Therefore is the Kingdom of Heaven likened unto a king, who would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to take the account, one was brought to him that owed him ten thousand talents. And as he had not wherewith to pay it, his lord commanded that he should be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.
‘But that servant falling down, besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt.
‘But when that servant was gone out, he found one of his fellow-servants that owed him a hundred pence, and laying hold of him, he throttled him, saying, Pay what thou owest! And his fellow-servant, falling down, besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went and cast him into prison till he paid the debt.
‘Now, his fellow-servants seeing what was done, were very much grieved, and they came and told their lord all that was done. Then his lord called him, and said to him, Thou wicked servant! I forgave thee all the debt because thou besoughtest me. Shouldest not thou then have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had compassion on thee?
‘And his lord being angry delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt. So also shall My Heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.’
The mercifulness of God
This beautiful parable sets before us one side of the mercifulness which is characteristic of God, and the imitation of which He insists on almost more urgently than anything else in those whom He makes His children in this world.
The side of this gracious attribute which is here exhibited is chosen by our Lord on account of the question asked him by St. Peter, which referred to the forgiveness of injuries to a brother. For forgiveness of debts and injuries is mercy exercised in one particular way.
We see the other side of the same attribute in such parables as those of the good Samaritan or the ten virgins. In those others the part of God’s mercifulness which is selected for display is the compassion on afflictions of every kind, whereas here, as has been said, it is the peculiar act of mercy which consists in the forgiveness of offences. For the mercifulness of God, even as far as it can be imitated by us, exercises itself in a great many various ways.
Clause in the Lord’s Prayer
But, again, our Lord is led by the form of the question put to Him, to speak directly rather of the obligation of the practice of perfect forgiveness than of the enormous blessings which are involved in that virtue, and which ought to make us welcome every occasion of its practice as the finding of a great treasure, rather than submit to the use of such occasions as a duty. Our Lord bids us pray daily, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’
Thus He bids us take into our mind and heart, whenever we repeat His Prayer, all the offences which we may have received, of every kind, as well as all those that we may have committed, and by the perfect forgiveness of the first fit ourselves to gain the perfect obliteration of the obligations we have incurred by the second. Thus we are continually to practise our souls in this Divine virtue, especially in order that we may continually receive the pardon which God bestows on us for its exercise.
This is what He means when He says, ‘When you shall stand to pray, forgive if you have ought against any man, that your Father also Who is in Heaven may forgive you your sins.’2 The teaching of this parable is precisely the same, but it is put in a different way. Instead of teaching us that if we want to be forgiven we must make an act of universal forgiveness before we ask for our own pardon, our Lord here tells us that our own pardon will be cancelled and reversed if we do not from our hearts forgive whatever we may have to forgive.
Details of the parable—repetition of the same offence
The parable is so simple in its obvious meaning that it hardly requires much explanation. But there is always in these parables of our Lord a question as to the signification of the particular details, apart from the general scope of the parable, which is plain to all. And in this case there are some few points on which it may be worth our while to inquire how far they may have a special meaning of their own.
The question of St. Peter, as has been said, was probably suggested by the general tenour of the doctrine which our Lord had been laying down. The Apostle thought it a very great thing indeed to propose that he should forgive his brother seven times over. Indeed there are very few men who would ordinarily go so far in the way of condonation of the same offence, and the mass of mankind would probably find something to blame, at least in a parent or a superior of any degree, who passed over the repetition of the same offence so many times as seven.
But it is not necessary to suppose that there is question here only of the repeated forgiveness of the same repeated offence. Our Lord does not teach that superiors or parents are to forgive offences which are not repented of, or to forbear even from wholesome punishment in cases where that may seem to be needed for the emendation of the offender, or as an example to others for the due maintenance of discipline and virtue.
There are in such cases principles involved peculiar to themselves. An offence may be forgiven from the heart which yet it may be a duty to punish externally, as the sin of David in the matter of Uriah was visited on him by God, first by the death of the child born to him, and afterwards by the chastisement which he underwent in the rebellion of Absalom, and in other ways.
But the majority of men would think that with whatever amount of sincerity the pardon of the same offence was sought at their hands over and over again, there must be some limit to their forgiveness, and few would go beyond St. Peter with his seven times, even if they went so far.
It is, of course, not so difficult to have a habit of perpetually forgiving, when there is not the additional circumstance of the repetition of faults several times forgiven, and it seems to be this habit of which our Lord is here speaking, the habit of most gladly and heartily welcoming as a great blessing every occasion of forgiveness which presents itself to us, as men bent on the acquirement of wealth hail with the greatest eagerness every occasion of enriching themselves more and more.
Our Lord’s answer of seventy times seven must be understood as simply indicating that there is to be no limit whatever, that the number of times of the occurrence of the offence must have nothing to do with the question of its condonation.
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Omitted, due to being a little obscure out of the context of the book:
Although nothing had been said in the course of the last discourse on our Lord concerning the forgiveness of injuries, still the subject of such forgiveness lies very close to that of the remonstrance with one who has injured another, and with the general tone of that instruction.
Thus it is not surprising that the question asked by St. Peter should have been connected in the mind of St. Matthew with the other subjects lately discussed, even if the question itself was not put by the Apostle to our Lord at the very same time with the former discussion. It may certainly be assumed that the interval of time was not long between the discourse of which we have been speaking, and the question as to forgiveness and the beautiful parable with which our Lord answered it.
St. Mark xi. 25.