Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (NRSV)
For three years, thirteen men lived together. They lived together constantly, 24/7. The leader was, of course, the Lord Jesus who was perfect in every way. But the remainder were average men. These were men who would have, in any other normal course of life, not become friends, but who were now bound together by their agreement to become disciples of the Son of God. Men bound together for life by the three years of the teaching and experiences they would share.
Scripture doesn’t tell us much about the manner of their personalities, but we can glean something from the sparse accounts and perhaps infer not inaccurately about their personalities. There was Peter, a fisherman by trade. Likely he was more uneducated that the rest, though he probably could at least read the scriptures. He was bold and brash, unafraid to speak his mind. Very likely he spoke his mind (without thinking it through first) a lot.
Then there was Matthew, a former tax collector. Tax collectors were shunned by proper Jewish society because they were often crooks, taking more than they were supposed to. He may not have been trusted much by the others, at least as first. And it was from Matthew that we get the longest, most detailed gospel. Clearly Matthew was the kind of man who needed to have details explained and who attended to details daily.
There was Judas Iscariot who was trusted with the money of the group. By all accounts, his personality was more controlling. He wanted to have a say in every decision and to have his say seriously considered. He may have been greatly afraid of change and wanted the “Messiah” to be the Messiah of Jewish folklore, rather than the Savior that God had intended.
There was Thomas who refused to believe anything past his own nose. He demanded proof of things prior to throwing his support behind it. Likely he questioned many things and refused to be seen as gullible by anyone.
There was John, more likely a quiet thinker. John wrote the most esoteric of the gospels and was the disciple to whom the Lord Jesus entrusted His mother. He had strong emotions, committing himself fully to the Lord and eventually becoming the prophet God would entrust with the message of Revelation.
Just in these five, we see a widespread difference of personality, of likes and dislikes, of mannerisms and priorities. And it was twelve men—including these five—who lived with the Lord Jesus for three years. No vacations, not much time away. It’s no wonder that Peter asked how much he should forgive his brother. It was very likely that there were some heated arguments and disagreements among these twelve men as they jockeyed for position and tried to learn how to live together with one common goal, a goal that was far greater than any of their daily demands or needs.
Their experience, in fact, is very much like ours. We too need to learn how to live with those who daily offend us, even other Christians. In fact, it’s one thing to forgive the unbelievers around us. After all, they are simply acting according to their nature, being slaves to sin (Romans 6). It can be harder to forgive the Christians around us who are supposed to know how to behave, but who often don’t. (Isn’t it interesting how we want those around us to be kind, gentle, loving, and self-controlled when we don’t hold ourselves to the same standard?). But the Lord Jesus told Peter that he should forgive his brother (other Christians) seventy-seven times. (And actually, the KJV says seventy times seven which is 490!). It is a Jewish idiom that means continually or forever, a number without end. This kind of forgiveness is where being a Christian becomes very personal and practical. Our belief takes feet when we forgive. And it is where the world sees whether or not our belief has meaning.
A. W. Tozer talks about the romantic Christian: “The romantic habit of mind in religion is easy to identify. The romantic religionist thinks with his nerve ends, substitutes words for deeds, accepts the unreal with misty-eyed credulity, confuses wishing with believing and thinks that if a man feels virtuous he is so in fact” (Warfare of the Spirit, p. 74). This is, I believe, a good description of someone who reads, but fails to do. Who knows that she should forgive, but instead holds grudges because the pain of the offense hurts so.
And that’s it, isn’t it? When we are offended,
it hurts! And we want the other person to hurt as we have. We don’t want to forgive, but rather to seek vengeance upon the offender. The problem is that we are the offender more than the offended and the Person we have most offended is the Lord. We have no ground to stand upon. The offense done to us—as much as it hurts us—is like a splinter in a finger compared to the offenses that we have done to the Lord of Lords! But we want to, as Tozer so adroitly stated, “think with our nerve ends” rather than to face the reality of our own deeds. We want to focus on the offense done to us rather than to understand how deadly an offender we are ourselves. We are only effective as Christians when we understand the necessity of forgiveness and learn to forgive quickly.
If we ever intend for the American Church to have power and influence in our society, we must begin by learning how to forgive. It is the key to everything!
© 2012 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
