Sevenfold

I heard two insights recently that struck me as I continue to ponder the question of forgiveness.

We read in Matthew 18, the disciples asking how many times they need to forgive a brother or sister who sins against them, and Peter asks whether it's up to seven times, which Jesus rebuffs with "not sevenfold, but seventy times seven".

Commentators almost all rightly note that Jesus number isn't just a raising of the limit,  as if 70, or more likely 490x, is the number of times we should forgive. He is using hyperbole, of course.

But as I was listening to Volf's Exclusion and Embrace,  he made a connection that seems so obvious, but that I had never heard: Lamech (it's somewhere in chapter 3). To expand this out though, the narrative of Cain to Lamech expands exactly that dimension, sevenfold to seventy fold seven.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

Cain's murder of Abel isn't the first sin, but it is kind of a paradigmatic one - it's the first recorded sin of human against human, the typos of murder, the apex of "Exclusion", in Volf's work. And it is met with divine judgment, but also mercy - God protects Cain from retributive punishment by other humans, and in fact promises a sevenfold vengeance upon those who do not respect God's judgement and mercy, but arrogate vengeance to themselves.

In the patterning of Genesis 1-11 we see the progression of depravity, and so we come to Lamech, the 7th generation (counting from Adam and Heva). He inverts the divine admonition and turns it into a boast - seven times sevenfold vengeance,  and the implication that it is Lamech, not God, who will extract the penalty.

Jesus' words are part of the blessed inversion of the Kingdom. Where the human drive for justice is disordered as the pursuit of vengeance, and in our sin it is always at least partly disordered, we are trapped in a  cycle of ongoing and increasing vengeance which has no end but destruction. You or me. There is no human way to break this spiral. But God, in his mercy, has so intervened kn human history to extend divine forgiveness to us, in such a way that human forgiveness becomes possible, and we may end the cycle of Lamech.

Which brings me to the second insight I heard, which I also had not really considered. It's from Dr. Charlie Dates, a preacher I have come to appreciate this past year, and his sermon on this passage. (If you just want to pick it up at this point, it's 19:22 onwards)

He points out that the number of times you are willing to forgive is a reflection of the number of times you think God ought to forgive you:

(21:22)

You think that you gonna hit a number with somebody where you can write them off, and the question of this text becomes at what number do you want God to write you off at? Is there anybody here who wants God to have a special number of transgressions the he let you permit.

~ Oh, I give you 250."

“Oh thank you Lord, what number am I at?”

~ 237. You got another 13 and the jig is up.

No, no friends, we don't have the kind of God who keeps score with our sin. The Bible says that if God were to regard iniquity, nobody would stand. So what he's saying is in seventy times seven is Peter, I'm giving you a number you can't count. Because my forgiveness is unlimited, your forgiveness has to be unlimited to.

To put it otherwise, at what number do we want God to cut us off at? We don't want him to cut us off at any number. And yet the reflection of our limit-setting is Lamech-like - I'll repay you seventy-fold-sevenfold for the injury done to me. The reflection of divine grace reverses this, inverts this; for the injury done, God forgives seventy-fold-seven.

I think the same concept underlies Luke 6:37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; j forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put l into your lap. For with the measure you use" (ESV)

That's the heart of the way divine forgiveness enables and motivates human forgiveness, and it explains the flipside - when human forgiveness falters, it is primarily driven by our unresponsiveness to God's forgiveness of us. The greater, wider, deeper, we understand God's love and patience and mercy and 7x ,7x7x, indeed times upon times upon times of forgiving us, the greater our capacity becomes to reject the way of Lamech, and embrace the way of Jesus.