NOTES for Mat 18:21-35
After reading the first two verses, the temptation arises to make a quick calculation: seven times seventy is four hundred ninety; this brother of mine has been sinning against me every day for two years, so the credit has long been exhausted and everything is in order; I no longer have to forgive.
It is clear that the Lord uses seven times seventy as a symbol: not simply of fullness, which the number seven signifies, but of a kind of infinite fullness. To forgive up to seven times seventy means here continually, always. Jesus unfolds this thought in the parable that follows this episode: if we do not show mercy to others, we thereby refuse God's mercy toward us as well. The words "So also My heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart" remind us that every attempt of ours to reshape the Bible in our own way, so that it becomes convenient and undemanding, can end in nothing good. Do you want the number of forgivable sins to be limited? Then you want that limitation not only for your neighbor, but also for yourself.