Keep on forgiving…
Passage (NIV): Matthew 18:21-35
Preacher: Mark Kingston
A different way to respond to hurt
On Remembrance Sunday 1987, Gordon Wilson and his daughter Marie were caught in the Enniskillen bombing. Buried beneath the rubble, Gordon held Marie’s hand. She later died from her injuries. That evening, speaking on TV news about those who had planted the bomb, Gordon said: “I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge.”
It was an extraordinary thing to say, especially in Northern Ireland at that time. For years, violence had produced more violence. Hurt was answered with greater hurt, and the cycle kept going. But Gordon chose a different response: forgiveness.
That is also where Jesus takes us at the end of Matthew 18. Peter asks him how many times he should forgive someone. Seven times? You can almost hear the question underneath it: How long do I have to keep doing this before I’ve done enough? Jesus answers: “Seventy-seven times.”
That number echoes an old story from Genesis. Lamech boasts that his revenge will be seventy-seven times over. His way is basically: I'll not stop avenging. You hurt me, and I’ll make you pay even more. Jesus takes that number and turns it around: Don't stop forgiving! Hurt does not have to keep producing more hurt. Forgiveness does not keep count.
To explain why, Jesus tells a story.
A servant owes a king an impossible amount of money. There is no chance he can repay it. Yet the king simply cancels the debt and lets him go free. Almost immediately, the servant finds someone who owes him far less, grabs him and demands: “Pay what you owe me!”
Suddenly the story comes very close to home. When someone hurts us, that feeling can rise quickly: You owe me. An apology. An explanation. Some recognition of what you did. The hurt may be very real. Jesus does not ask us to pretend otherwise. As we saw last week, sometimes love means going to someone, naming the hurt honestly and hoping for repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.
We are the forgiven
But Jesus’ story asks us to remember something even more basic about ourselves: If we follow Jesus, we are "the forgiven".
The servant did not earn his freedom or pay the king back. His debt was simply cancelled. It was a gift. That is where forgiveness begins. Not with a weary, “God forgave me, so I suppose I have to forgive you.” It begins with the wonder of what we have received. Look how much I have been forgiven! Look how freely it was given! When God's forgiveness begins to define us, it changes how we carry the debts of other people. Before I am the person who is owed, I am first the person who has received God's mercy.
We are the forgivers
Gordon Wilson kept living that way. In the years after Marie’s death, he crossed lines that divided his country. Despite being a protestant, he attended a Catholic memorial service. He met people connected with both loyalist paramilitary groups and the IRA, calling them to peace. He kept reaching towards people he might easily have chosen to hate.
Forgiveness did not make Marie’s death less terrible. It did not mean justice no longer mattered. But Gordon chose to let forgiveness and not pain shape what kind of man he would become.
That’s the heart of this passage: not so much an instruction as a new identity: people who follow Jesus are called to be "the forgiven who keep forgiving".
Reflection Questions
Two responses
Lamech’s answer to hurt is to make the other person pay even more - seventy-seven times over. Jesus takes his “seventy-seven” and turns it towards forgiveness instead. What difference do you see between those two ways of responding to hurt? Where have you seen hurt simply create more hurt?Who are we?
In Jesus’ story, the servant walks away with an enormous debt freely cancelled, but immediately starts collecting someone else’s debt. Why do you think Jesus tells the story that way? What changes when we remember that, before we are people who are owed something, we are people who have been forgiven?What does being forgiven feel like?
When you think about how much God has forgiven you, what do you actually feel? Gratitude? Relief? Wonder? Or not very much at all? If God’s forgiveness feels more like an idea you believe than a gift you have received, what might help it become more real to you?What would forgiveness look like?
Think of someone who has hurt you. What would it mean, in that real relationship, to forgive them without pretending the hurt did not matter? What might you need to let go of, and what might still need to be named, rebuilt, or faced?What happens next?
Gordon Wilson could not change what had happened to Marie, but he could choose what happened next. What strikes you about the way he kept crossing old lines and reaching towards people he might easily have hated? What might it mean for us to live as “the forgiven who keep forgiving”?
