3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.
- What are you supposed to do when someone sins?
- What are you to do if someone wrongs you?
- How many times are you to do this?
- How sincere would you consider the repentance of this repeat offender?
- How does that change your response?
- What does the power of faith have to do with forgiveness?
It is bad enough that I have to forgive to be forgiven. Now I have to forgive obviously insincere people who just say that they have changed but really haven't. That is just not right. Oh, wait a minute. How many times have I told God I was going to stop a particular sin and turned around and did it again. Uh-oh. The same rule is in play: God is to imitate our forgiving. This is just inhuman! The Bible printers like to break up this passage with headings that seem to disconnect v. 5-6 from the forgiveness. As I read this Jesus states that you need miracle level faith to live this way. It take deep, profound trust in God's word and wisdom to live this differently from the world. And if we do the power is there to do it. Play by the rule today.
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