I don’t know how much arithmetic Simon Peter knew. But if he did not understand the answer Jesus gave to his question about how many times a person should forgive one who has wronged him, it was not because he was deficient in mathematics, but because he was short on love.

In asking the question, Peter must have known that he was speaking for a lot of other people. Injuries of one kind or another are inflicted upon every person at times, and it is not unusual for one to experience injury at the hand of the same person more than once. The people of Peter’s day had long since progressed beyond the "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" program for dealing with offenders. One was to forgive three times - not four times, but three times! But Peter had listened too closely to Jesus’ teaching and had c…