How Many Times Do I Forgive Someone?

Peter asked Jesus a question one day. He asked, “How many times do I need to forgive someone? Pick a number. How about seven? Would seven time be enough?” What Peter wanted was a number which is a legalistic approach to forgiveness. Jesus would not play the game. Ask a foolish question, get a foolish answer. He told Peter, seven is not enough, seventy is not enough, so let’s say seventy times seven should cover it. What’s the point. Forgiveness is not a matter of counting up the times and keeping score.

A wife approaches her counselor and tells him/her that she is being beaten up by her husband on a regular basis. He gets a few drinks in him, beats on her, then feels remorse and begs her forgiveness. She forgives him. Then he drinks and beats her up again followed by his asking forgiveness and again she does. Now after a long time of this treatment she is asking how many times do I have to forgive him?

To get rid of the “how often” question we need to review some fundamental facts about forgiveness:

1. Forgiveness is not an obligation. It is something good we do for ourselves. How can we put a number on doing something good for us?
2. Forgiveness is not about letting people get away with something. We do not have to tolerate being beaten up (or anything else).
3. Forgiveness is not about staying with people who are hurting us. The husband who is abusive needs to leave. The husband who is abusing his children has to be out of the house now. You can forgive (later on) but it does not mean he should stay.

Limits or boundaries need to be set, but not on forgiveness. We set limits on abuse and hurt. Often question is asked about how often to forgive is really asking how much does the victim have to put up with. What Jesus had to say about seventy times seven had nothing to do with tolerating abuse or hurts for a certain amount of time. He was telling us not to make forgiveness a matter of numbers. He was talking about healing our memories of wounds that someone’s wrong etched in our cemented past. First the abuse has to stop then we can begin to think about forgiveness. It may be some time before we can come to the point of forgiveness and then it is only once not over and over again.

Forgiveness is a gift not a duty.

A good principle to keep in mind about forgiveness is that the deeper the wound the longer it takes to forgive. Forgiveness is always a process that takes time. Religious people seem to think that since God forgives quickly and completely so we should be able to do the same. Not so. Good for God that He can do that. But they think that if they ask for God’s help in forgiving it should be quickly over with. Again, we say, not so.