When my eldest son began high school I began to worry that he was growing away from me. Soon he would be driving and going who knows where, with who knows whom? I felt a surge of responsibility to cultivate his sense that he could uphold his Christian witness among his friends in a society where being an active Christian was less and less “cool.” I took a risk.

“Hey, Elisha, how about if you get five or six of your school friends, and we can have breakfast at Eat ’n Park at 6:00 a.m. and study the Bible together?” As I write, this sounds pretty bold and risky. It seemed so at the time, too. I assumed he might say, “Really, Dad? What made you think of that?”

To my surprise, Elisha’s extroverted personality teamed up with a budding Christian faith to elicit this response: “Cool, Dad. I could invite . . .”

And so began a Wednesday morning Bible study and joke-telling breakfast during the school year that lasted for about six years. Both of our boys invited friends from their school crowd: mostly from the basketball, track, and soccer teams, with a few from the football teams. As I remember it, we read the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as well as the book of Colossians (and much more). We also told jokes. And I invited them to tell a weekly funny story or two from school, as long as it was not X-rated and was not demeaning. We laughed, wrestled with important decisions in life, and celebrated achievements.

“Hey, Mr. Sunquist, I am on the waiting list at West Point. They say I will get in probably after a year!”

“Mr. Sunquist, thanks for coming to the track meet and watching me break the school record.”

Not all the young men were Chrisitian when they started, but most claimed to be by the time they graduated from high school. At least one was baptized in his first year in college.

Most came to the breakfast voluntarily, but one rather recalcitrant and very large football lineman named Ed came because his mother gave him an ultimatum: “You can either go to Sunday School on Sundays, or you can go to the Breakfast Club on Wednesdays.” Ed chose the Breakfast Club.

One year the numbers increased to about 14, and we had our devoted waitress, Sally, put two tables together. Sally always had our cold waters ready and the table set when we’d arrive and, at times, she stayed for the jokes. Sometimes we were a little wild and left a mess, including spilled drinks and crusts. Sally smiled and forgave us.

This brings me to the topic of forgiveness.

One lesson I will never forget: we had read Matthew 6 and spent some time on the Lord’s prayer. About half of them knew it well, and others were learning it for the first time. There was some concern about the importance I gave to the little sentence: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” It seems to be the most important section of this teaching because Jesus finishes his lesson on prayer saying, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you” (Matthew 6:12,14, NIV).

I asked the young men, “What is the hardest thing you will ever have to do?”

One said, “Break the high school 100-meter record!” (One of them did that!)

Another said, “I don’t know, what?”

“Forgive someone. There will be people who will do terrible things that hurt you and may even hurt your reputation. Yet Jesus tells us to forgive them.”

As they continued to mull over this lesson, we talked frequently about all the nasty things others had done to them. (It was a pretty miserable list.)

This same Breakfast Club lesson from 1998 came back to my memory one recent morning as I was driving to the airport. Much has happened in my life over the past decades, but as I sat at Gate A4, I could affirm that what I told those boys back then I was correct: To forgive remains the most formidable and most important action we will have to face in this life. For we cannot have functioning and healthy families, churches, schools, or any other communities if we do not forgive.

But it is exceedingly hard because all the people who anger us or offend us are sinners, and they may hurt us again.

“Mr. Sunquist, if they hurt me again, do I have to forgive them again? That doesn’t seem right or just. That seems unfair.”

Jesus is unrelenting in his insistence that we are not only to be just but to be mercifully just. His justice is tempered with mercy, and so should ours be.

“Then came Peter to him, and said, ‘Lord, how often should I forgive my brother who sins against me, and I forgive him? Seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I say to you, not seven times: but seventy times seven’” (Matthew 18:21, 22).

The lesson from the Breakfast Club is still true. The hardest thing I will have to do is to forgive and then to forgive again.

On the other hand, I am grateful that others have forgiven me. Because, like my brothers and sisters, I sin again and again.

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.