Articles
Mercy Magnified
Mercy Magnified
None of us like to forgive. It goes against our most base desire for revenge and justice. We feel often that people get what they deserve and this is how life should work. We see a disobedient child and we hope for their discipline. We avoid a rowdy driver and then want to watch the police pull them over. In movies, we root for the unloving husband to be divorced or the unfaithful wife to be shamed. We want people to get what they deserve.
We see this type of thinking in Peter’s question to Jesus (story is found in Matthew 18.21-22). The Jewish tradition demanded that a person be forgiven three times. They observed a pattern in Amos 1-2 that God would forgive each of the nations three times, and then on the fourth transgression, God would not revoke their punishment. If forgiveness was offered only three times by God, then three times was good enough for them (ignoring the hundreds of times God had forgiven them in the past).
So Peter asks the Lord, “How often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” How generous! Peter was willing to double the Jewish tradition, and then add one more for good measure. Peter was not being stingy with his mercy, but rather generous by Jewish standard. Likely, Peter had already noticed a forgiving spirit in the character of Jesus and was recognizing that Jesus’ standard would be much higher than the tradition of the Jews.
Jesus’ response was even more merciful. “Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Some verse say seventy-seven times. The real idea is that Peter asks if forgiveness should be sevenfold, and Jesus responds with seventy-sevenfold. This amount of mercy is beyond generous, beyond measure, and beyond human nature.
Human nature demands the opposite. We seek justice against others and mercy for ourselves. This is illustrated in another story of the Bible. When God banishes Cain in the garden, Cain pleads with God for mercy and God says that any who would harm Cain would be punished sevenfold (Gen 4.15). A mark is placed on Cain and God protects him from injustice. There is much discussion as to what this mark was, or whether God ever exercised this protection. At this point, Cain’s story ends and we know nothing else about his punishment and protection.
We do see the error of human nature later in Genesis 4. Lamech, Cain’s descendant, was a violent and worldly man without God. He says that he killed a young man for wounding him and “If Cain's revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold” (Gen 4.24). Cain kills out of jealousy while Lamech kills out of revenge. God, in an act of mercy, enacted Cain’s revenge while Lamech’s revenge was a personal act of selfishness. What an increase in the ungodliness of the human condition!
There are only two places in the Bible where sevenfold is magnified into seventy-sevenfold. One is a story of our fallen human natures while the other displays Christ’s godly nature. Human nature states that revenge should be magnified. God’s nature magnifies mercy. We have a choice in life. We can be like Lamech and pursue human justice, seeking revenge; or we can be like God who is willing to forgive, forget, and move forward in pursuit of a loving and fulfilling relationship. If we are going to be like God, we can place no boundaries on our mercy because He has placed none on His willingness to forgive you and me.
“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3.4-7).
