Forgiveness is not an option but a requirement!
Many things happen to us in our lives on a daily basis. We are lied on, lied about, called names, to name just a few. But Jesus gave such a wonderful illustration in this chapter. In a nutshell, one individual owed another one some money, but the individual that owed the money could not pay his debt. So he begged the person he owed to forgive the debt, in which he did... As the story goes on, the person that was forgiven was owed money by another person, and he had that person put in jail instead of forgive the debt LIKE he was FORGIVEN initially. The whole point of that analogy is to forgive people and you shall be forgiven.. Jesus continues in this chapter talking about the innocence of a child and how we should be "child-like" in how we interact with Him, worship him etc... He stresses the beauty of children and how they should not be led astray. As the chapter goes on Jesus says "where 2 or 3" or gathered in my name i shall be in their midst. I view that as meaning that you don't have to belong to a large church for the holy spirit to dwell among you. Lastly, Peter asked Jesus, "how many times should i forgive my brother or am i forgiven"?? Jesus replied 7 times 70. Now, i don't take this part literally. I think Jesus was trying to illustrate to Peter that you must forgive an infinite amount of times in order for God to forgive you just as many times. I think that God does have a limit on how many times he will forgive us for doing the same things, but we as mere people will never know that number exactly... But what i can say is that i know God won't continue to forgive a person that does the exact same sinful things over and over again without any second thought or substantial effort to stop. It's true that some of us struggle for years dealing with the same issues/sins, and we do need that forgiveness... but at the same time we must show some sort of progress.
Created about 2 years ago
