I am ready to make peace and the other person is not interested. How long do I keep reaching out before I let it go?

“And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.”

Jacob had cheated his brother out of a birthright and a blessing, then fled for twenty years. When he finally came home he had no guarantee of anything. He went ahead of his family and bowed to the ground seven times while Esau approached with four hundred men, and Esau ran and embraced him. Jacob controlled only his own approach. The outcome was never his to arrange, and it is not yours either.

“If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”

Paul writes to a church in Rome holding Jewish and Gentile believers who had real reasons to distrust one another. His phrasing is careful and usually skipped over: if it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all. Two conditions are built into the sentence. He assumes some situations will not be possible, and he limits your responsibility to your own half. That is permission as much as instruction.