Matthew 18:21-22
Jesus Teaching Peter About Forgiveness
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Jesus commonly went around forgiving others...There is the greatness in the ability to forgive completely and quickly...Jesus taught His Disciples much about forgiveness...And we learn from this teaching to St. Peter that we are to forgive our neighbors over and over...There is this importance of forgiving others as we read the gospels...Forgiveness is very difficult, yet it is one of the basic doctrines of Jesus' teachings...We are to learn about forgiveness and to forgive...Forgiveness is a part of love, which is another one of the main foundations in Jesus' teachings...So forgiveness and love are two of the doctrines of Christian ethics...
Think how important the Doctrine of Forgiveness is...Do you think we can have love without forgiveness...
Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “THE CROWN OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS IS THE DOCTRINE OF forgiveness...In it the whole genius of prophetic religion is expressed...Love as forgiveness is the most difficult and impossible of moral achievements...Yet it is a possibility if the impossibility of love is recognized and the sin in the self is acknowledged...Therefore an ethic culminating in an impossible possibility produces its choicest fruit in terms of the doctrine of forgiveness, the demand that the evil in the other shall be borne without vindictiveness because the evil in the self is known.”...