We wrote yesterday about Storming the Gates of Hell as presented powerfully in The Chosen, Season 4, Episode 2. I hope you’ve been watching from the beginning. I’ve found that the carefully crafted back stories enliven events in the life of Jesus, enhancing my understanding of stories I’ve heard my whole life.

The second half of Season 4, Episode 2, brings to life this simple exchange:

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-seven times.” (Matthew 18.21, ESV)

Peter has hated Matthew from the beginning. When Jesus called Matthew as presented in The Chosen, Season 1, Episode 7, we have this exchange:

Simon: “I don’t get it.”
Jesus: “You didn’t get it when I chose you either.”
Simon: “That was different. I’m not a tax collector.”
Jesus: “Get used to different.” (Text from The Chosen, Volume 1 by Jerry Jenkins, the novelized version of the video series)

Peter still carries resentment from Matthew’s days as a tax collector and Peter’s days as a fisherman trying to pay his taxes. Peter has made life difficult for Matthew, and therefore Matthew, in Season 4, Episode 2, is having a hard time accepting that Jesus might be elevating Peter to a position of responsibility: “The Rock.”

Jesus explains to Matthew that he must confess his specific actions against Peter in the past and ask for forgiveness. Matthew does, but Peter doesn’t want to forgive. Hence the conversation with Jesus. It’s not a hypothetical; it’s real. Matthew has sinned against Peter (in the past) at least seven times.

At the end of the episode, Peter embraces Matthew in front of everyone:

I forgive you. It’s over.

I’m reminded of someone who had offended me in our early days with The Navigators, back in 1969. Several years later, this guy has no idea I’m carrying this resentment. Another Navigator counseled me to forgive him, and I said, “I don’t even know what that means! He doesn’t know he offended me, and I’m not even around him anymore.” The answer:

It means you no longer hold him accountable.

Bingo. It’s what Peter had to do with Matthew’s past transgressions, and it’s what I had to do. In the text, following Peter’s “7 times?” question, Jesus tells the parable of the unforgiving servant (see Matthew 18.23 – 35) and ends it this way:

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. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18.33 – 35, ESV)