You will not find a single saying of Christ which has any approach to a maxim of morality, or which draws near to a limited opinion on the subjects which belong to religious life, or thought, or feeling. There is nothing He ever said which is to be taken literally, nothing which is not said within the region where the pure imagination is imperial master. Here is an instance in His talk with Peter. Peter wanted a literal statement as to the duty of forgiveness, its practice and its limits. Christ said, "Until seventy times seven." His answer meant there is no limit to forgiveness between man and man.
I. The text speaks of personal forgiveness, not of social or judicial forgiveness. Nor, again, does it tell us to make a man aware that we forgive a wrong done to ourselves unconditionally. There is a condition that is repentance. We should forgive, be in the loving temper of forgiveness, and that always, but we cannot, with any regard to justice, make that forgiveness known unless there is some sorrow for the wrong.
II. Peter's notion of personal forgiveness was that there was a certain time when we were to stop. It is a plausible view, but a tree is known by its fruits, and its results will tell us whether Peter's notion was right. (1) The first result is hardness of heart. When we cease to forgive, still more when we make it a duty to cease, the temper of forgiveness in us lessens, decays, and finally dies. (2) And the temper of forgiveness is the temper of mercy, pity, and love. With its loss, all these three beautiful sisters are also lost, die, and are buried in our heart. (3) When these three sisters are dead we have no guard against the evils which they oppose.
III. Try Christ's view, too, by its results. (1) We gain moral power in a beautiful thing, and inward joy in it. (2) Having, through this habit of forgiveness, brought love, mercy, and pity as living presences into the soul, they establish rule in it over the evil passions of hatred, envy, revenge, jealousy, and anger, and finally end by slaying them and burying them in the heart. (3) The soul that forgives first learns to love, and secondly spreads a spirit of love.
S. A. Brooke, The Spirit of the Christian Life,p. 67.
Reference: Matthew 18:21; Matthew 18:22. T. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,part ii., p. 320; A. J. Griffith, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 22.Matthew 18:21-35. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 213; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 421; R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables,p. 150.