18:21,22
We now come to Jesus talking about forgiveness, and this is initiated by Peter asking a question about how many times he should forgive someone. Peter suggests seven times, but Jesus tells him it should be seventy seven times. Now we should not attach importance to the numerical values here, thinking “that’s the seventy fifth time I’ve forgiven him, only two times to go then I can stop”! Seven was the perfect number in Jewish thinking, so Jesus is telling Peter that he must be perfection squared. Some manuscripts have seventy times seven. We are not to look on forgiveness as a burden, it is part of kingdom life.
18:23-27
Jesus then tells another parable. A servant owed the king a vast amount of money, something he could never pay off, so the king ordered for the man and his family to be sold for slaves. The man begged the king to have mercy on him, promising to pay off the debt. The king knew that the man could never pay off the debt, but took pity on him and cancelled the debt.
No comments:
Post a Comment