I think that Jesus gives us some of his most difficult teaching in Matthew 18. Many commentators would say the source of difficulty is in verses 8-9. Jesus' words about plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand are not easy to swallow. Still, to me, those words aren't as tough as the ones that follow later in the chapter. Jesus has taught us earlier in Matthew that the body is not the sole or even the true source of sin. Sin comes from our minds and hearts and souls. If this teaching is true, lopping body parts off will not curb our predilection for wrongdoing. In the rhetorical fashion of first-century Israel, Jesus is using hyperbole to remind us of how important holiness is.
Verses 8-9 aren't the difficult part. Verse 22 is the hard one. Jesus says we should forgive not seven times but seventy-seven times. I know translations vary in how they render Jesus' forgiveness count. But whatever the right translation is, that is a lot of forgiveness. The meaning of these words is obvious; it is the execution that is difficult.
Forgiveness implies that I have been hurt- deeply. This week, someone accidentally stepped on my foot. The person who did that was very apologetic: "I hope you can forgive me." And I did forgive them. But not really. You see, I hadn't even felt them step on my foot. In my mind, there was nothing to forgive. That is not real forgiveness. Real forgiveness comes when you feel the pain. It happens when the person steps on your foot even after you have warned them not to be clumsy. It happens when the person stomps on your foot again and again. Those who forgive have been wounded. Those who forgive are saying it is okay that the score will never be settled. To forgive is to love and accept even when the pain cannot be mitigated.
Think about the ruler whose servant owed him so much money. Jesus says the man was owed ten thousand talents. In today's currency, that was millions of dollars. Yet, the man forgave his servant that debt. Do you think that the master didn't miss his millions? Somehow, when I read this story before, I figured the master was so rich that a few million was no big deal. But could that really have been the case? Can we really think that the master wasn't going to take some sort of economic hit from the loss of a few million dollars? The loss was going to hurt, but the master forgave anyway.
How do we forgive when our foot is still broken? How do we forgive when we have millions gone that we will never recover? That is hard. And that is exactly what Jesus calls us to do again and again. God has done that for us. How can we expect to be forgiven if we don't do the same?
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