I have a confession to make:

There is a person in my life I’m having a REALLY hard time forgiving.

I know all the Scriptures in my head.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).

“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:13).

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).

And on…and on…and on. The Bible may be full of mysterious, but God’s stance on forgiveness isn’t one of them. He calls us to forgive, just as He has forgiven us.

But, sometimes, it’s just so hard. Especially when the person we are called to forgive is unrepentant or, perhaps, doesn’t even care about the hurt he/she has caused. Maybe the behavior is a pattern this person doesn’t view as an issue. Worse, he/she might even view you as the problem and not themselves. Or maybe the hurt just goes so deep that it’s come to define much of your life, affecting every aspect, and it’s become impossible to disentangle the hurt and bitterness you feel towards this person from who you are at your core.

Whatever the case, forgiveness is hard. Full stop.

But it’s also true that nothing is more wearying than un-forgiveness. Nothing is more burdensome. When God calls us to forgive, He isn’t telling us to do it for the other person’s benefit, although there are certainly rewards for them too; He calls you and I to do it for us. And I’m not talking about the trite, speaking the right words with no change of heart kind of forgiveness. That kind of forgiveness does nothing for our healing and can, in fact, do more harm than good. No, I’m talking about real forgiveness. The kind that doesn’t deny the hurt or wrongs done to us, but does not let us linger on them either. It’s the kind of forgiveness that involves trusting God with this person, this circumstance, and this pain.

It’s the kind of forgiveness that takes time.

You see, I think we look at the Bible’s command to forgive and think it should be an instantaneous thing. Like, just gritting our teeth and saying the words–even when we don’t feel them–should be enough to satisfy God’s call to obedience. But we have to remember that God desires our heart above all else, and rote compliance does not hold the kind of benefits God has in store for us when He commands us to forgive. We get the feeling that we should be like the words of Hebrews 8:12: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

For God, forgiveness is that fast, that instantaneous. It is what He desires for us. But He also recognizes the limitations of our sinful hearts and our broken flesh.

“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 18:21-22).

I always assumed Jesus was talking about repeated sins against you here, that He was telling us to continue to forgive someone no matter how many times he/she sins against you. But what if He wasn’t? What if He was talking about just one sin—that one, huge hurt someone committed against you, the one you can’t get over–and He was telling us forgiveness needed to be a constant, almost daily surrender?

What if forgiveness wasn’t a one time act that didn’t quite reach into our heart, but a ceaseless relinquishing of the situation into God’s hands until it does?

The number seventy-seven isn’t an act science; it’s the number of completion. What if Jesus was telling us we needed to continue to forgive until it stuck, until we felt it?

Until God’s work on the subject matter inside our heart was complete?

So, no, I’m not quite at the place where I feel forgiveness towards this particular individual. I still struggle with bitterness, anger, and resentment. But, every day, I am committed to laying the situation at the feet of Jesus, asking for help forgiving, not necessarily for his/her sake but for my own.

So I can lay this burden down.

Not seven times. But seventy-seven.