When Forgiveness Feels Impossible: Why Jesus’ Words Still Shock Us

There’s a question at the heart of Matthew 18 that has rattled every honest follower of Jesus: How many times am I supposed to forgive someone who keeps hurting me? Peter asks it for all of us. And his answer — “Seven times?” — makes him look incredibly spiritual.

But Jesus shocks him. “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Or, in some translations, “seventy times seven.” Either way, the point isn’t a number. The point is that forgiveness in Jesus’ kingdom is endless.

But Jesus isn’t just pulling a big number out of thin air. He’s doing something brilliant — and unsettling — that takes us all the way back to the first pages of the Bible. In Genesis 4, after Cain kills his brother Abel, the story spirals. Cain’s descendants become worse. And then we meet Lamech, a man who brags to his wives that if Cain is avenged seven times, he will be avenged seventy-seven times. Lamech is violent, boastful, and proud to keep the spiral of revenge going forever.

So when Jesus tells Peter “seventy-seven times,” he’s deliberately flipping Lamech’s vow of unending vengeance into a call for unending mercy. In other words: If the old way is limitless revenge, my kingdom is limitless forgiveness.

This is more than a spiritual idea. It’s a confrontation with human nature. Look at Genesis 4 — Cain kills out of jealousy. Lamech kills for a bruise. Hurt spirals into more hurt, generation after generation. That’s what we do, left to ourselves. Someone wrongs us, so we wrong them back. They hurt us, so we find a way to get even. Families, friendships, communities — all torn apart by the same cycle Lamech bragged about.

Jesus offers something different. A community where the cycle stops. But to live in that kind of kingdom, we have to understand what forgiveness really is — and what it’s not.

Too often, Christians think forgiveness means pretending something never happened. But that’s not biblical. Jesus doesn’t say, “If someone sins against you, ignore it.” He actually says, “Go talk to them. Bring someone else if you need to. Name the wrong. Call it out.” Forgiveness is not about condoning evil or tolerating ongoing harm.

Nor is forgiveness about being a doormat. Some of us grew up hearing that if we forgive, we must keep letting a harmful person back in again and again — even if they never change. But Jesus doesn’t demand that. He knows some people won’t listen, won’t repent, won’t own what they’ve done. In Matthew 18, he tells his followers that reconciliation is conditional — it requires the other person to change. Forgiveness does not.

Forgiveness is not reconciliation. It’s not forgetting. It’s not excusing. It’s not removing all consequences. In some situations, the most loving thing is for justice to run its course. Sometimes forgiving someone means letting the law hold them accountable.

So what is forgiveness then? It’s two deeply counter-cultural acts.

First, forgiveness is giving up my right to get revenge. It’s refusing to play Lamech’s game. It’s saying: The spiral stops with me. I will not repay evil for evil. I won’t keep score. I won’t choke my debtor by the throat demanding repayment.

Second, forgiveness is changing the posture of my heart toward the one who hurt me. Instead of hatred, I begin to wish them well. Instead of wishing for payback, I remember that God forgave me. I rediscover their humanity.

This is not easy. Sometimes it feels impossible. Sometimes it has to happen over and over, seventy-seven times, because the wound still stings tomorrow. Sometimes forgiveness feels like a death — letting go of what I think I’m owed.

And yet, there is freedom here. Jesus’ parable makes this clear: the servant who refused to forgive ended up in prison himself. Unforgiveness keeps us chained to the people who wronged us. It holds us hostage to the past. Forgiveness, imperfect and messy as it is, sets us free.

Forgiveness doesn’t erase grief or cancel consequences. It doesn’t mean reconciliation will always happen — sometimes it won’t. But it does mean we choose to step out of the cycle that Cain and Lamech started and live in the new humanity that Jesus offers: a people marked by radical, shocking mercy.

This is not natural. But it is the way of the kingdom — the way of the King who, from a cross, prayed, “Father, forgive them.”