Forgiveness: Stop Keeping Score And Start Losing Count
Forgiveness: Stop Keeping Score and Start Losing Count
There is a question that has echoed through human hearts for as long as people have been capable of hurting one another: how many times am I supposed to forgive someone who keeps wronging me? It is one of the most honest questions a person can ask, and it cuts right to the heart of what it means to live a life of genuine faith.
When Peter approached Jesus with this very question in Matthew 18:21-22, he thought he was being generous. Seven times. Surely that was more than enough. Most people would have stopped at three. But Jesus answered in a way that reframed the entire conversation: not seven times, but seventy times seven. Four hundred and ninety times. The point was not to hand people a calculator and tell them to start counting. The point was the exact opposite. Stop keeping score altogether.
That is a hard word to receive. And it is an even harder word to live.
We Are All Keeping Score
If we are honest with ourselves, most of us have a mental spreadsheet. We know the year, the month, sometimes even the precise time of day when someone wounded us. We remember the words that were said, the trust that was broken, the moment everything changed. We can recall offenses from decades ago with a clarity that escapes us when we try to remember something good that happened last week.
That kind of memory is not just a quirk of human psychology. It is a symptom of something deeper. It is what unforgiveness does when it takes up permanent residence in the heart. It catalogues every wrong. It rehearses every hurt. And over time, it begins to shape the way we see people, the way we move through the world, and the way we relate to God.
Getting hurt is a reality. That much is unavoidable. But getting and staying bitter is a reaction, and reactions are choices. Even when those choices feel completely out of our control, they are still ours to make.
The Unpardonable Sin Nobody Talks About
Most people are familiar with the concept of blaspheming the Holy Spirit as described in Matthew 12:31-32, widely understood to be an unpardonable sin. But there is another passage that deserves far more attention than it typically receives.
In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus makes a statement that is both simple and staggering. He says that if we forgive others their offenses, God will forgive ours. But if we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. The implication is unmistakable: unforgiveness is not just a personal struggle or an emotional burden. It is a spiritual barrier that stands between us and the forgiveness of God.
That is not a comfortable truth. But it is a necessary one.
The Parable That Puts It All in Perspective
To drive this home, Jesus told a parable in Matthew 18:23-35 that is almost uncomfortable in how precisely it mirrors human behavior.
A king decides to settle accounts with his servants. One servant owes an amount equivalent to millions of dollars today, a debt so enormous it could never be repaid in several lifetimes. The servant falls on his knees and begs for mercy. The king, moved with compassion, forgives the entire debt. The slate is wiped completely clean.
The servant walks out of the palace free. Then he runs into a fellow servant who owes him a fraction of what he himself had just been forgiven. And instead of extending the same mercy he had just received, he grabs the man by the throat and demands repayment. When the man begs for grace, the servant refuses and has him thrown into prison.
When the king hears what happened, he is furious. He calls the first servant back and delivers a verdict that should stop every reader cold. He says that because the servant refused to show mercy after receiving it so abundantly, the king would now hand him over to the tormentors until every last debt was paid.
Jesus closes the parable with a direct application in Matthew 18:35. The heavenly Father will treat us the same way if we refuse to forgive from the heart.
Forgiveness Is a Process, Not a Moment
One of the most freeing and practical insights on this subject is that forgiveness does not always happen all at once. Sometimes it comes slowly. And that is not failure. That is the process.
Think about a glass bottle of ketchup. You turn it upside down and nothing comes out. You tap the bottom and still nothing. But if you find the right spot and keep tapping, eventually it begins to flow. It may start slow, but it starts. Forgiveness works the same way.
If you say you have forgiven someone but your heart still races when you see their name on your phone, if the memory still makes your hands shake or your mood collapse, that does not mean you are a hypocrite. It may simply mean you have more tapping to do. And that is okay. The answer is not to give up. The answer is to keep praying, keep forgiving, keep asking God to do in your heart what you cannot do on your own.
Jesus said it plainly in Matthew 7:7-8. Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. The promise attached to that instruction is that the door will be opened.
The Freedom That Waits on the Other Side
Here is the truth that makes all of this worth the effort: forgiveness is not primarily a gift you give to the person who hurt you. It is a gift you give to yourself. Unforgiveness does not punish the offender. It imprisons the offended. It dictates your moods, shapes your future, and quietly erodes the joy that was meant to be yours.
The opposition that has come against you does not have to take you down. Like a plane that lifts higher because it flies into the headwind, the very resistance you are facing can become the thing that carries you to a higher place, if you respond with prayer instead of bitterness.
So here is the invitation: bring whatever you are carrying to God. Name the hurt. Name the person. And then, one tap at a time, begin to let it go. Not because they deserve it. But because you were forgiven far more than you will ever be asked to forgive.
And because heaven depends on it.
There is a question that has echoed through human hearts for as long as people have been capable of hurting one another: how many times am I supposed to forgive someone who keeps wronging me? It is one of the most honest questions a person can ask, and it cuts right to the heart of what it means to live a life of genuine faith.
When Peter approached Jesus with this very question in Matthew 18:21-22, he thought he was being generous. Seven times. Surely that was more than enough. Most people would have stopped at three. But Jesus answered in a way that reframed the entire conversation: not seven times, but seventy times seven. Four hundred and ninety times. The point was not to hand people a calculator and tell them to start counting. The point was the exact opposite. Stop keeping score altogether.
That is a hard word to receive. And it is an even harder word to live.
We Are All Keeping Score
If we are honest with ourselves, most of us have a mental spreadsheet. We know the year, the month, sometimes even the precise time of day when someone wounded us. We remember the words that were said, the trust that was broken, the moment everything changed. We can recall offenses from decades ago with a clarity that escapes us when we try to remember something good that happened last week.
That kind of memory is not just a quirk of human psychology. It is a symptom of something deeper. It is what unforgiveness does when it takes up permanent residence in the heart. It catalogues every wrong. It rehearses every hurt. And over time, it begins to shape the way we see people, the way we move through the world, and the way we relate to God.
Getting hurt is a reality. That much is unavoidable. But getting and staying bitter is a reaction, and reactions are choices. Even when those choices feel completely out of our control, they are still ours to make.
The Unpardonable Sin Nobody Talks About
Most people are familiar with the concept of blaspheming the Holy Spirit as described in Matthew 12:31-32, widely understood to be an unpardonable sin. But there is another passage that deserves far more attention than it typically receives.
In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus makes a statement that is both simple and staggering. He says that if we forgive others their offenses, God will forgive ours. But if we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. The implication is unmistakable: unforgiveness is not just a personal struggle or an emotional burden. It is a spiritual barrier that stands between us and the forgiveness of God.
That is not a comfortable truth. But it is a necessary one.
The Parable That Puts It All in Perspective
To drive this home, Jesus told a parable in Matthew 18:23-35 that is almost uncomfortable in how precisely it mirrors human behavior.
A king decides to settle accounts with his servants. One servant owes an amount equivalent to millions of dollars today, a debt so enormous it could never be repaid in several lifetimes. The servant falls on his knees and begs for mercy. The king, moved with compassion, forgives the entire debt. The slate is wiped completely clean.
The servant walks out of the palace free. Then he runs into a fellow servant who owes him a fraction of what he himself had just been forgiven. And instead of extending the same mercy he had just received, he grabs the man by the throat and demands repayment. When the man begs for grace, the servant refuses and has him thrown into prison.
When the king hears what happened, he is furious. He calls the first servant back and delivers a verdict that should stop every reader cold. He says that because the servant refused to show mercy after receiving it so abundantly, the king would now hand him over to the tormentors until every last debt was paid.
Jesus closes the parable with a direct application in Matthew 18:35. The heavenly Father will treat us the same way if we refuse to forgive from the heart.
Forgiveness Is a Process, Not a Moment
One of the most freeing and practical insights on this subject is that forgiveness does not always happen all at once. Sometimes it comes slowly. And that is not failure. That is the process.
Think about a glass bottle of ketchup. You turn it upside down and nothing comes out. You tap the bottom and still nothing. But if you find the right spot and keep tapping, eventually it begins to flow. It may start slow, but it starts. Forgiveness works the same way.
If you say you have forgiven someone but your heart still races when you see their name on your phone, if the memory still makes your hands shake or your mood collapse, that does not mean you are a hypocrite. It may simply mean you have more tapping to do. And that is okay. The answer is not to give up. The answer is to keep praying, keep forgiving, keep asking God to do in your heart what you cannot do on your own.
Jesus said it plainly in Matthew 7:7-8. Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. The promise attached to that instruction is that the door will be opened.
The Freedom That Waits on the Other Side
Here is the truth that makes all of this worth the effort: forgiveness is not primarily a gift you give to the person who hurt you. It is a gift you give to yourself. Unforgiveness does not punish the offender. It imprisons the offended. It dictates your moods, shapes your future, and quietly erodes the joy that was meant to be yours.
The opposition that has come against you does not have to take you down. Like a plane that lifts higher because it flies into the headwind, the very resistance you are facing can become the thing that carries you to a higher place, if you respond with prayer instead of bitterness.
So here is the invitation: bring whatever you are carrying to God. Name the hurt. Name the person. And then, one tap at a time, begin to let it go. Not because they deserve it. But because you were forgiven far more than you will ever be asked to forgive.
And because heaven depends on it.
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