For the last 47 years as a Christian I’ve noticed something. Whenever people talk about what God is doing, the numbers are almost always neat and round. A thousand leaders being raised. A hundred churches being planted. Ten thousand missionaries being sent. They sound complete, perfect, inspiring. But life doesn’t usually work in clean figures like that. You don’t often hear about 842 leaders or 89 churches. Yet grace - the kind God gives - is never bothered by the uneven, the messy, or the oddly specific.
That matters when we talk about forgiveness. Not just the first time you needed it. Not just the second. But the times when the same sin keeps coming back. You fall again. You confess again. You make the same promise again. And somewhere deep inside, you start to wonder, “Surely God must be tired of me by now.” It can feel like you are running through a field of treacle.
Peter once asked Jesus a question I think most of us have carried quietly. “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” In Peter’s mind, seven was generous - the perfect number, but Jesus’ response of, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” wasn’t giving Peter a new total to keep track of. He was showing him something bigger: God’s forgiveness has no stopping point. 490 is not the cut off point.
That doesn’t mean sin is harmless. The cross tells us exactly how deadly it is. But it also tells us the cost has already been paid - in full. The blood that cleansed me in 1978 is the same blood cleansing me now. Whether you’ve fallen for the same sin the fourth time or the four-thousand-and-sixty-seventh, His grace hasn’t changed.
The truth is, it’s not God’s patience that runs out. It’s ours. We get tired of coming back, not because His mercy is less, but because our pride whispers, “You should be past this by now.” Yet the gospel keeps pulling us to the same place - the foot of the cross - because there’s nowhere else to go. And there’s no graduating from needing it.
So if today you’re asking Him for forgiveness again - for the same thing you asked about yesterday - you’re not pushing Him to the edge of His mercy. You’re stepping once more into a fountain that never runs dry. He has already said, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” That promise doesn’t fade with repetition.
The accuser will tell you repeated failure means you’ve gone too far. But the fact you keep returning is proof His grace is still working in you. You don’t keep coming back because you take sin lightly. You keep coming back because you know where hope is found - and you know the One you come to is faithful.
So yes, it’s possible to be forgiven for the same sin, not just once, twice, or three times, but even 6,879 times, and still not reach the limit. God’s grace doesn’t live in tidy numbers. It lives in Christ. And Christ is without measure.
When the day comes that sin is finally gone, you won’t be counting how many times you were forgiven. You’ll be lost in the wonder that not once did He turn you away. Amazing grace indeed.