Why Forgiveness Should Be an Unlimited Resource in Your House

Peter thought seven times was a generous amount of times to forgive someone. Jesus didn’t correct the math — he obliterated the whole idea that forgiveness comes with a limit. Most families are running on some quiet version of Peter’s math when we need to reorient ourselves towards God’s view of forgiveness.

C.H.E.W. with Me

New here? What is CHEW? — a 30-second practice that grows into a day woven with God’s love.

C – Clarity: What Do You Do When Your Family Has a Forgiveness Budget?

Every family runs, often unspoken, on some kind of ceiling — “I’ve let that go three times, I’m not letting it go a fourth” — and once the ceiling’s hit, grudges start getting stored instead of released. Often, nobody announces the ceiling out loud. It just quietly governs how generous everyone in the house is willing to be by Thursday. Think of the same argument about chores or tone of voice resurfacing for the fifth time this month, except now with an edge, because everyone in the house is quietly keeping score.

H – Hear: Jesus Deletes the Scoreboard Peter Was Building

“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.'” (Matthew 18:21–22)

Peter had just heard Jesus teach on confronting sin and pursuing reconciliation (Matthew 18:15–20), and his question sounds generous — rabbinic teaching of the day considered three times sufficient, so seven was Peter stretching. Jesus’s answer, “seventy times seven,” deliberately echoes Lamech’s boast in Genesis 4:24 of seventy-sevenfold vengeance — the first great revenge math in Scripture — and flips it into forgiveness math instead. The implication is that Jesus didn’t give Peter a bigger number to count to. He told him to stop counting. Any number, even a generous one, is still a ledger, and a family that’s actually good at forgiveness has stopped running one. Jesus can tell Peter to erase his ledger because His own hasn’t got one — His love for you was never rationed out to a limit and then withdrawn once you hit it.

E – Exchange: Trading the Ledger for a Reflex

The ledger doesn’t usually form from one big betrayal — it builds one small, unaddressed thing at a time, which is exactly why it has to be dismantled the same way. What has to be exchanged is the quiet mental scoreboard — how many times has this happened, how many times have I already let it go — for forgiveness fast enough that it never has time to become a ledger entry in the first place. 

Because God’s love toward you was never counted out to a limit of wrongs and then cut you off, how does that change how quickly you forgive what a family member did today?

W – Walk: Name It, Forgive It, Say So — Before Bed

Before the day ends, name one small thing in the house today that’s still sitting on your ledger — a tone, a broken promise, an eye-roll — and say the words out loud to whoever it involves: “I forgive you for that,” or “I’m sorry, will you forgive me?” Don’t just decide internally to let it go. Say it.