The Savior is on our side, and he gives us as many second chances as we need.
Peter once asked Jesus how many times he was supposed to forgive his brother. Peter suggested seven as a reasonable answer. After all, forgiving someone seven times for the same mistake seems like a generous number. Christ’s response? “Until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22).
Photo by Ralph Kunze
In his general conference talk “Until Seventy Times Seven,” Elder Lynn G. Robbins says that the Savior wasn’t giving Peter a limit of 490 forgivenesses—rather, he was instructing Peter to forgive others more times than he thinks is fair. While this story serves as an applicable message to each of us about forgiving others, it also reflects the Savior’s own patient pattern of forgiveness.
Elder Robbins explains, “The Lord used the math of seventy times seven as a metaphor of His infinite Atonement, His boundless love, and His limitless grace.” There is no end to his willingness to forgive us. “No one is more on our side than our Savior,” Elder Robbins says. He is willing to give us “countless second chances in our day-to-day struggles with the natural man.”
The principle of infinite second chances means that we have infinite opportunities to repent and return to the straight and narrow path. We don’t need to be afraid of wearying the Lord with our pleas for forgiveness; he patiently and lovingly welcomes our efforts to return to him, even if they’re because of the same mistake we’ve made a hundred times before. Our Savior’s patience is limitless, and his love is endless.
Read the rest of Elder Lynn G. Robbins’s words in his talk “Until Seventy Times Seven.”
Source: General Conference
—Rachel Webb, Latter-day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY GORAN HORVAT
Find more insights
Read more about God’s patience in President Russell M. Nelson’s October 2022 Liahona article “The Everlasting Covenant.”
Take a look at Natasha Andersen’s “No Scars Remain,” a Latter-day Saint Insights article, to learn more about the all-encompassing power of Christ’s Atonement.