A Video From President Nelson About Forgiveness “The Prince of Peace will bring you peace,” President Nelson said. Christ's meaning is, that a man should be all the days, and every day of his life, forgiving those that sin against him, as often as they repent and acknowledge their fault and that no time is to be set for the exercise of the grace of forgiveness but as often as there are objects and occasions, though ever so many and frequent, it should be used and which he illustrates by the following parable.President Nelson invited all “to remember the principle of seventy times seven and extend forgiveness to someone who has wronged you.”Īnd as people do this, Jesus Christ will relieve them of anger, resentment and pain. Which is as if he had said, observe what I am about to say, I do not agree to what thou sayest to fix the number, 'until seven times only', butĪ certain number for an uncertain, see ( Genesis 4:24 ). 'Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee' So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.' (Matthew 18:21-35) Bible Commentary on 'Seventy times Seven' And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 'Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. When God calls upon us to forgive 490 times, he's calling upon us to do to other people exactly what he's doing for us as Christians. Then what happens? He goes on for giving us day after day after day, 7 times 70, and 70 times, 70 more throughout our lives.

All right? When God saves us, what does he do? He comes to us, calls us to repentance, we repent, he forgives us. In other words, what my thesis is here is that we have to forgive people like God forgives people, that God is the great example of forgiveness. Our practice of forgiveness has to be based on the gospel.

I think that's a good way of defining forgiveness.

They will form no bar to his relationship of love and grace toward us. The great paradigm example of forgiveness is God himself, who says in Jeremiah 31 that, 'I will remember their sins and iniquities no more.' What that means is not that God is going to forfeit his omniscience, but that God will not hold our sins against this. Read the transcript of the video above by Sam Waldron explaining the meaning of Matthew 18:įorgiveness is not holding someone's sins against them in terms of creating distance or enmity in my relationship with them.

Forgive seventy times seven