January 16

Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? — Matt 18:21

The Christian way, if one has done us any injury, is to go to him in the spirit of love and talk the matter over with him. Perhaps it is all a misunderstanding, needing only a word of explanation. We are probably as much to blame as the other person is when things go wrong between us and a neighbor.

“There is so much bad in the best of us,
And so much good in the worst of us,
That it hardly behooves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.”

Our forgiving is to be unlimited. The rabbis taught that no one should forgive another more than three times. Peter thought he was making the limit great enough when he suggested that the Master’s followers should forgive seven times. But Jesus swept away all counting of times, and said a Christian should forgive seventy times seven times.