Matthew 18:22 Meaning Jesus Said to Him

The mind that counts its pardons has not forgiven at all, for it keeps a ledger of the wrongs it means one day to close, and a debt still recorded is a grievance held in trust. To forgive by number is to believe the injury was real and merely waived, so the ego stands ready to reopen the account the moment the count runs out.

A measureless forgiveness is offered here because only the limitless can undo what was never true. When a mind stops tallying, it discovers there was nothing to keep, and the brother it had watched so carefully is seen as innocent, never once in its debt.

Forgiveness here is not a moral bookkeeping, counting slights and deciding when to stop excusing them. To forgive a person is to let him go from the state you have fixed him in, to stop holding him as the offense and see him freed. Seventy times seven means without limit, over and over, until the old image no longer stands.

Inner release carries an outer result. As long as a man keeps another bound in his mind to the wrong done, he keeps that wrong alive between them and calls it back into his world. Repeated release dissolves the state at its root. The number is large on purpose. It takes many passes to unfasten a fixed picture. When a person is no longer imagined as the wound, both are set loose from it, and what is released in thought stops meeting the man in fact.

Release is not measured out in a fixed count and then withheld; the letting-go of what the lower self has done is meant to run past every limit a person would set on it. The number 7 is completeness, the full round of a cycle, and stopping there would make forgiveness a closed and finite thing.

70 times 7 lifts the release out of all counting into the boundless, the total dissolving of held offense that belongs to the higher life. In a person this is the unbroken clearing of the inner ledger, the refusal to hold any charge frozen against oneself or another, so that consciousness is never bound by what is past.

7: the number of completeness, the full round of a cycle that would close the count if release stopped there 70 times 7: the lifting of forgiveness out of all measure into the boundless clearing of the inner ledger

Vera: Enmity Vera is the feud you keep alive by counting wrongs. Stopping at seven keeps the tab open: each injury your brother does gets entered like a debt, and you wait for him to fill the page. Seventy times seven tears the tab up before a single line is written, since a heart that tallies has already chosen the feud over the brother. Where the wrongs go uncounted, there is nothing left to collect.

Anusaya: The dormant tendency Anusaya is the resentment that lies asleep under the surface, waiting to wake. You can force a pardon seven times by gritting your teeth, yet the grudge only naps and stirs again at the eighth wrong, so the number was never the trouble. Seventy times seven asks you to pull it up by the root instead of cutting it back at the surface, where it grows again by morning. A pardon that keeps the old ache warm underneath has let go of the deed and still holds the man.

Averā: Freedom from hatred Averā is meeting a wrong without adding one of your own. A grudge feeds on being met by another grudge, the way a fire burns only while someone keeps feeding it, so refuse the fuel and the flame dies down. Forgiving past seven, and past seventy, starves the feud at every turn, and your brother's next wrong finds no matching hatred to lock onto. The pardon comes from the heart rather than the teeth, since a heart with no enmity left has nothing to hand back.

Khanti: Patient forbearance Khanti is the trained strength to take a wrong and open the hand again. Reaching seventy times seven is heavy work: the four-hundred-ninetieth injury has to fall on a heart that has not turned to stone. Picture the ground, which takes whatever is dropped on it and stays the ground. A forgiveness this steady is the strongest thing in the room, and it is why the master could cancel a debt no servant could ever repay.

Mettā: Loving-kindness Mettā is boundless goodwill, the wish that even the one who wronged you be well. Seventy times seven is a way of saying without measure, and the heart stops counting because goodwill handed out by the tally is no goodwill at all. Held this way, it falls on your brother like sunlight, which never checks the record before warming a face. Forgive from the heart, and the small sum your fellow servant owes you shrinks to nothing beside the mountain already lifted off your own back.