What Jesus said about forgiveness
Seventy times seven — and why the number is the point.
Forgiveness is the teaching people quote most and practise least, usually because it has been flattened into "let it go". That is not what he said, and the difference matters a great deal when the thing you are being asked to forgive was serious.
Here is the shape of his teaching on it, and one exchange opened properly.
Where he taught it
- Matthew 18:21–22Peter asks how many times; the answer refuses to count
- Matthew 6:14–15Forgiving and being forgiven, tied to each other
- Matthew 18:23–35The servant forgiven a fortune who would not forgive a little
- Matthew 5:23–24Repair the relationship before you finish the offering
- Luke 17:3–4The same person, the same day, seven times over
- Luke 23:34From the cross, about the people putting him on it
One of them, with the room around it
I don't tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven.
Peter had asked whether seven times was enough, and he was being generous — the rabbinic guidance of the time suggested three. Jesus does not answer with a larger allowance. Four hundred and ninety is not a ceiling; it is a joke about ceilings, and the joke is that Peter was still counting.
What runs through them
In his teaching, forgiveness is never described as a feeling that arrives, and never as pretending the thing did not happen. It is closer to a decision about what you are going to keep carrying — which is why he can command it at all, since nobody can be commanded to feel differently.
It is also, almost everywhere he raises it, tied to having been forgiven yourself. The unforgiving servant is not punished for a lack of warmth. He is punished for taking something he would not give.
The whole collection, one day at a time
Walking with Jesus: Devotional has a collection called Jesus on Forgiveness that walks these teachings one a day — each with the passage around it, a short reflection, a prayer and one thing to carry into the day.
It is a one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning, and it never asks you to catch up.
Questions people ask
- How many times did Jesus say to forgive?
- When Peter asked whether seven times was enough, Jesus answered "until seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22). The point is not a larger number but the refusal to keep a count at all.
- Did Jesus say to forgive someone who has not apologised?
- Both things are in the Gospels and they are worth holding together rather than flattening. In Luke 17:3 he ties forgiveness to the other person repenting; from the cross, in Luke 23:34, he asks forgiveness for people who were in the middle of killing him and had not asked for anything.
- What is the parable of the unforgiving servant about?
- In Matthew 18:23–35 a servant is released from an unpayable debt, then seizes a fellow servant over a small one. It follows immediately after the exchange with Peter, and it reframes forgiveness as something you pass on rather than something you dispense.