AP

Luke 17:3-4  “So watch yourselves.  If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.  Even if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

This is one of Jesus’ ‘hard’ sayings – not hard to undrstand (its meaning could hardly be clearer!), but hard to live out in pracitice.  

We may not be able to have the offender among our closest friends, but Jesus says we must keep on forgiving him!  We might try to get out of doing what Jesus requires on the pretext that if he keeps on comitting the same or similar sin against us he is not really repenting after each offence.  But Jesus is not asking us to make this judgement; all that is required is that he says: “I repent”.

I think it really all boils down to what Jesus taught us to say when the disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray”.  Among other things were the words: “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.  And lead us not into temptation.” (Luke 11:4)  These words can easily, and often, flow off our tongues without our realising the personal implications of what we are saying.  We are saying to our holy, righteous God: “If I do anything to offend you by acting contrary to your revealed truth, please only forgive me inasmuch as I am prepared to forgive anyone who offends me.  And if, in my weakness and innate helplessness, I keep on sinning, please only keep on forgiving me inasmuch as I am prepared to keep on forgiving my brother who continues to offend me.”  And Matthew (18:23-25) reports a parable of Jesus that applies this same principle and shows us that our debt to God (which, out of his great love, compassion and mercy, he is prepared to forgive) is infinitely greater than anything that an offending brother might owe to us, pointing out also the eternal consequences of our failing to forgive him.

I think I need to do some heart-searching to expose any instance of grudge-holding I might find there.  I note also Jesus’ words that introduce this instruction,  He warns his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come.  It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.  So watch yourselves.”  It is not clear whether the words ‘So watch yourselves’ apply to the saying that precedes them (about causing little ones to stumble – verses 1-2 – the view taken by the scholars who published the NIV in 1984 according to their paragraphing), or to what follows in today’s verses, (the view taken by the scholar, Robert (Stephanus) Estienne, who inserted the verse numbers in 1551), but we can safely assume that in both cases the issue is so important that we need to ‘watch ourselves’!  Let us be diligent – it  is also no wonder Jesus follows, in his model prayer, the request for forgeness with the request; ‘lead us not into temptation’!

– Bruce Christian