PETER KNEW THAT there was something different about Jesus, something special. That’s why he was following him as a disciple. Day in and day out, he listened to Jesus teach and preach, and heard him denounce the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites. He knew that Jesus was calling him to a higher standard of righteousness. But how high did that standard go?

One day, Peter approached Jesus with a question: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Matt 18:21, NIV).

Where did Peter get the number seven? Some say that rabbinic wisdom pegged the number at three. Moreover, in Jewish ideology, the number seven symbolized completeness or perfection. If you wanted to swear an oath and show that you really meant it, you’d repeat it seven times. Indeed, in Hebrew, the verb meaning “to swear” stems from the word for the number seven and can be translated as “to seven oneself.” Peter, therefore, may have thought that promising to forgive someone seven times would show his commitment to being the kind of person Jesus wanted him to be. I imagine he expected Jesus to commend him for being such a good disciple.

Jesus’ answer, however, must have made Peter’s jaw drop: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (vs. 22); the number can also be translated as “seventy times seven.” But Jesus wasn’t telling Peter that his math was wrong, as if seventy-seven or even four-hundred-ninety, not seven, was the correct answer. He didn’t want Peter to count offenses, period. He wanted him to clear the books and forgive.

To make his point, Jesus told the well-known story of the Unmerciful or Unforgiving Servant. In it, a servant, who probably had some responsibility in handling the royal treasury, lost an enormous amount of the king’s money, a sum he could never repay. He did the only thing he could: he dropped to his knees and begged for mercy.

Unexpectedly, the king took pity on him, canceled the debt entirely, and let the servant go. Unfortunately, instead of being transformed by the undeserved mercy of the king, the man went out and tried to strong-arm a fellow servant into paying back the money that the second servant owed him, a tiny fraction of what he had just been forgiven.

News of this travesty quickly got back to the king, who had the wicked servant dragged back in before him. In anger, the king thundered, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (vs. 33). He ordered that the man be thrown into prison and tortured until he had paid back every penny he owed — which is to say, forever. Jesus ends the parable with this chilling statement: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (vs. 35).

I don’t know how well Peter took this lesson about forgiveness to heart when Jesus told the story; Matthew doesn’t say. But I imagine Peter remembering the parable after Jesus’ death and resurrection, when it took on new significance. He remembered how he had betrayed Jesus after his arrest, denying three times that he even knew him. He remembered breakfast on the beach with Jesus and the other disciples after the resurrection. He remembered the walk the two of them took together, when Jesus called him to feed and care for his sheep (John 21). He had been forgiven so much; how could he not forgive the comparatively small offenses others might commit against him?

The apostle Paul understood this too. He never forgot how he had persecuted Christians to death before he met the resurrected Christ on his way into Damascus. And still Jesus called him to be an apostle. He had been gloriously, graciously forgiven, and wanted the Colossians to know and embrace that same forgiveness. Remember what he told them in chapter 2 of his letter:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. (Col 2:13-14)

For Paul, that’s not an abstract theological statement; it’s autobiographical. And now it’s the Colossians’ story too. This then becomes the basis for what he later tells them to do in chapter 3:

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Col 3:13)

The Colossians are to understand themselves as a forgiven people. Their spiritual debt has been nailed to the cross and canceled. And like the servant in Jesus’ parable, once they grasp the mercy they’ve received, they are to offer that mercy to others in turn. They are to forgive as they have been forgiven.

This is yet another example of setting their hearts and minds on things above. It’s possible to hear a sermon on forgiveness and come away with a mere religious principle: Christians are supposed to forgive. So, begrudgingly, we try. We swallow our resentment and paste a shallow smile over gritted teeth. We say the right words in the hope that someday we might actually mean them.

But again, Paul has no interest in an outside-in kind of religion, not if it comes at the expense of an inside-out transformation. Yes, we might need to command ourselves to forgive when we don’t feel like it. But true transformation doesn’t come by trying to suppress anger and resentment. It comes by looking to Jesus, by contemplating the cross, by admitting and marveling at how great a debt we’ve been forgiven.

Paul’s not asking anyone to become best friends with their abuser. He continually calls the church to holiness, and disciplines those who persist in sin. But he does call us to be more like Jesus, who forgave his persecutors even as he suffered on the cross.

So think about it: who might God be calling you to forgive? And how might you begin by remembering how much you yourself have been forgiven?