Be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and comes back to you seven times, saying “I repent,” you must forgive him. 17:3-4
Jesus asks three very difficult things of us in this text. First, He says, “If you brother sins, rebuke him.” That is not an easy thing to do for many of us. Sometimes it feels easier to just let things go and say nothing than to go through the awkward process of confronting someone for wrongdoing, rebuking them, and then making things right. Some people love pointing out other’s faults, but most of us prefer to avoid confrontation when we can. Yet, Jesus is saying that relationships (both between people and between people and God) are important enough to risk awkwardness to sort things out. We don’t have the choice of letting things simmer under the surface; we are commanded by Jesus to confront people in love.
Second, Jesus says that when you confront someone and they repent you must forgive them. This is also a difficult thing at times. Forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing their wrongdoing or that you will easily forget. Sometimes a transgression is so severe that you can forgive today and still be raw about it tomorrow. It might mean having to choose to forgive every day for a while until you actually forget, or even feel like you want to forgive. Remember, forgiveness is a choice and not a feeling; we forgive because we are commanded to and because the Lord has forgiven us. Forgiveness is a process and it is sometimes very, very difficult.
Which brings us to the third hard statement, “If he sins against you seven times a day, and comes back seven times, saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” Once, “okay”… but seven times in a day? This gets down to the issue of heart and motives. It is hard to take someone seriously who says they are sorry but keeps doing it over and over again. I usually think that way until I consider how many times I have returned to the Lord and said “sorry” for the same thing over and over again. Each time I mean it, and each time I want Him to take me seriously. Forgiveness is not really about the one who sins against us, it is about us. It is about us being willing to extend grace and forgive because of who God is and what He has done in our lives. I am not to judge other’s motives; I am to do what I know I have been commanded to do. It is still not easy, but at the end of the day, the one who is really in the prison of bitterness is not the one who sinned against us, but the one who refuses to forgive.
