To err is human; to forgive, divine.
To forgive is not easy. It is difficult but it is a very special feature of Christian life. Jesus teaches us to forgive one another because we are all loved and forgiven by God. God’s mercy is always given, but the problem is we cannot experience His mercy when we become unmerciful like the debtor in the Lord’s parable. The person we forgave becomes at times only more deceitful and more refined in his methods instead of reforming. Or he made already several promises that it would be the last time that such an incident would happen. We are afraid that people will see our willingness to forgive as a sign of weakness or as an encouragement to go on, but with greater caution.
Forgiveness does not mean we forget. Some wounds are so deep that they leave permanent scars. As long as we have a mind, our memory will be operational too. Matthew wants to impress on our minds that we are in no position to disregard Jesus’ command to forgive always. That is why he attaches a parable to explain this. It is about the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom of peace. Peace can never be achieved through wars, but only through a tremendous amount of forgiveness. A peace pact works only after people have decided to forgive whatever went wrong in the past.
