March 5, 2024
Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. Mt_18:21-35
Jesus constantly spoke about the virtue of mercy over revenge. In this instance with Peter, He presented a parable about man who begged forgiveness of his master, to whom was owed a great debt. And after he was forgiven the debt, the man proceeded to chastise and punish someone who owed to him a much smaller debt. The point being, that God is constantly forgiving us for a multitude of transgressions that we make every day against Him and one another. So who are we not to forgive those who transgress against us? Thus we have Jesus’ prayer “forgive us our trespasses AS WE FORGIVE those who trespass against us!”
Contrary to the theme of most of our movies and games and innate human nature, we really do not have the right or privilege or even common sense to throw stones at the transgressor on the other side of the glass bubbles that we’re living in. For in the process, we’ll be rained upon by the very glass we’ve broken by our own volition.
The Bible is just chock full of examples of unjust harm, unsuccessful revenge and God’s bountiful mercy: Cain and Abel, Jonah and Nineveh, Satan and Job, Absalom and David, David and Uriah, the Prophets and unfaithful Israelites, John the Baptist and Herod, and Jesus himself. You see, revenge never pays in a way that we’d actually like in the end, or even benefit from. For justice never comes from anything we, sinners, invoke, but from the very mercy we extend and the mercy we receive from the ONLY just judge – God Himself. And the battle that we fight is not one of flesh against flesh, but a spiritual one that only Jesus can and did win for us. All we need do is stand behind Him within the bubbles of our own mercy!
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Whispers to the Wind 