When Peter approaches Jesus with the prospect of forgiving someone “as many as seven times,” he probably thought he was being generous. After all, most of us have at least a vague idea of how much we are putting into a relationship versus how much we are getting out of it, and frankly, not many of us are willing to continue pursuing relationships that incur a steep negative balance.

That may be a crass way of putting it, but we all know it’s true. If someone hurts us once—well, then shame on them … but if we allow them to hurt us over and over and over again, then we either enjoy being victimized or we’re just plain foolish. Surely, there must be some limits to forgiveness.

“Isn’t seven times enough?” asks Peter. “Wouldn’t it be fair to call it quits on the relationship at that point?”

So imagine his surprise—and ours too—when Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.”

Forgive someone 490 times? Is Jesus kidding? You’d have to carry a calculator around just to keep track! And maybe that’s the point. “Stop keeping track,” says Jesus. “Forgive others as freely as God has forgiven you.”

As challenging as this teaching is, I have to admit that when I put myself in touch with the experience of receiving forgiveness, I find it much easier to pass it along to others.

In other words, when I think of how many times God has forgiven me, even when I didn’t deserve it, and often when I’ve made the same stubborn mistake over and over again … I feel rather petty at wanting to withhold forgiveness from someone else.

When I think of the enormous debt I owe God—a debt I could never repay with my meager credit rating—and of how much it cost God to absorb that debt … I feel rather stingy clinging to the one or two IOUs that I have from others.

As far as I can tell, God doesn’t keep track of how often I need to be forgiven. So maybe I should stop keeping track of how often I need to forgive.