“When the Lord said that we should forgive our brother or sister not until seven times, but until seventy times seven it means that we should forgive as many times as they sin, so that the forgiving should be without end, or should be eternal, which is holy.” – Secrets of Heaven 433 by Emanuel Swedenborg

“Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” – C.S. Lewis

It is inevitable that other people will sin, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 18:7. And at times their sin affects our life. This automatically triggers a thought such as: You should pay for this. We become resentful and think that the other person needs to do something to relieve us of our pain. We might think that we would feel better if the other person apologized or suffered the same kind of pain we endured from them. We can hold on to unforgivingness hoping that the other person will suffer something, or do something to help us get rid of it. This can go on for years and the other person may not even know that they hurt us. This means that we are carrying an unnecessary and unhelpful burden.
    One of the most important uses of forgiving others is the way it unloads this burden of unforgivingness from our own heart.
    But a voice in our head says: we can’t let people get away with stuff like that. It is almost as if we feel that holding unforgivingness in our heart somehow punishes the other person.
    The whole point of doing spiritual work is that it improves our own state of mind. It is not about the other person. Yet there are times when we are so deeply affected by the evil actions of another, that it seems impossible to not feel resentful. It feels impossible to forgive them.
    So Jesus tells us to forgive, not just once, but endlessly (70 times 7 – Matthew 18:22). He also tells us to look at our own faults before attempting to judge others. These are hard things to do. Indeed, you might even say that we cannot forgive without real help from above. Our lower self does not understand forgiveness. It just meditates revenge. But God, working through our higher self, can do the miracle of removing the resentment, and empowering us to let go of our tendency to condemn others.
    Of course, there are times when we are the ones who need to be forgiven for hurting other people, but that is another task.