Forgiving someone who hurt you

If someone is hurting you now, your safety comes first. In the United States, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.

If you are searching for how to forgive, someone has probably hurt you, and you may be carrying two burdens at once: the wound itself, and a fear that you are failing God because you cannot let it go. Jesus does call his followers to forgive. But the forgiveness Scripture describes is gentler and stronger than many people have been told. It does not ask you to pretend, to forget, or to stay where you are not safe, and God is patient with you while it grows.

What did Jesus teach about forgiveness?

Jesus made forgiveness central to the life of his followers. When Peter asked how many times he had to forgive, Jesus gave a famous answer:

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

Matthew 18:21–22, NRSVUE

The Greek can also be translated “seventy times seven,” as the King James Version has it. Either way, the number echoes Lamech, a descendant of Cain in Genesis who boasted that if Cain would be avenged seven times, “truly Lamech seventy-seven times” (Genesis 4:23–24). Jesus turns limitless revenge into limitless mercy.

Jesus also put forgiveness into the prayer he taught: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Christians pray a form of those words every Sunday in the Lord’s Prayer. Right after the prayer, Jesus adds a hard saying: “if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:15). The saying teaches that a heart closed to mercy cannot receive mercy. Read with the rest of Jesus’s teaching, it is a warning against hardening the heart. For people who are still hurting and still trying, the Lord who gave the warning is patient while mercy grows.

On the cross, Jesus prayed for the soldiers who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Some ancient manuscripts lack that sentence, but the church has treasured it from early times. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, prayed the same way as he died: “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:60).

What does it mean to forgive?

The Greek verb the Gospels use for forgiving, aphiēmi, has a basic meaning of “to send away” or “to let go.” To forgive a debt is to stop demanding payment. To forgive a person is to release your claim to make them suffer for what they did.

Paul explains what that means in practice:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.”

Romans 12:17–19, NRSVUE

Paul takes the wrong seriously, and he takes justice seriously. He places justice in God’s hands, so that you do not have to carry it yourself. Forgiveness hands the case to a better judge. The words “if it is possible” and “so far as it depends on you” are a mercy of their own, because Paul knows that peace with some people is not possible.

Does forgiveness mean forgetting or reconciling?

Many people hold back from forgiving because they fear it means pretending the wrong did not matter. Scripture asks no such thing. Jesus told his disciples, “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him” (Luke 17:3). In Matthew 18, the same chapter as “seventy-seven times,” Jesus lays out steps for confronting someone who has done wrong, first privately, then with witnesses, then before the church (Matthew 18:15–17). Naming a wrong is part of forgiving it, since you cannot release a debt you refuse to admit exists.

Forgiving does not require forgetting either. Memories and feelings are not under your command, and Scripture does not ask you to erase them. When God promises through Jeremiah, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34), the promise means that God will no longer hold the sin against the people; God does not lose track of the past. Forgiving someone works the same way. You stop holding the wrong against them, and over time your memory of it can be healed without being erased.

Reconciliation is a separate gift. Forgiveness is something you can do alone, before God, while reconciliation takes two people. In Luke 17, Jesus connects restored relationship to repentance: “If he repents, forgive him” (Luke 17:3). Someone who has not admitted the wrong or changed has not earned your trust, and Scripture does not ask you to give it.

Above all, forgiveness never requires staying in danger. Jesus himself walked away from people who wanted to kill him (Luke 4:28–30). He told his disciples, “when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next” (Matthew 10:23). Paul escaped a plot against his life by being lowered in a basket through an opening in the city wall (Acts 9:23–25). If a spouse, parent, partner, or anyone else is abusing you, leaving is no failure to forgive. Forgiveness never asks you to keep silent about abuse, to drop charges, or to put your children at risk. See also Is divorce a sin?

Is it a sin if I can’t forgive yet?

Forgiving a deep wound usually takes a long time, and feelings rarely follow on schedule. Wanting to forgive, or even wanting to want to, is already the beginning. The father in Mark 9 prayed, “I believe. Help my unbelief!” and you can pray something similar: “I want to forgive. Help me where I can’t.” For more on bringing hard feelings to God, see Is it wrong to question God?

Scripture makes room for anger at a real wrong. Paul wrote, “Be angry, and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). The danger is anger that settles into bitterness and a desire to destroy the other person. Paul’s hope for Christians is a heart that is “kind” and “tender hearted” (Ephesians 4:32), and he grounds it in the forgiveness they have already received: “forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you.”

How do I start forgiving someone?

Start by telling the truth, to God and to someone you trust, about what happened and how it hurt you. Grieve what you lost. Then, when you are able, pray for the person, even if all you can ask is that God would deal with them justly and mercifully. The Book of Common Prayer has a prayer “For our Enemies” that asks God to “deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge.” Notice that it prays for both sides.

Many people find help from a counselor, especially after abuse or betrayal. You can also ask a pastor or priest to hear your confession of any bitterness you carry and to pray with you, and Lutheran, Anglican, and Orthodox churches each keep a rite for it; see Do I have to confess my sins to a priest?

The story of Joseph shows how long forgiveness can take. His brothers sold him into slavery, and years later, when they were at his mercy, he told them, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Joseph did not pretend his brothers had done nothing wrong. He named their intent without softening it, and then he chose to provide for them.

What do the churches teach about forgiveness?

The Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, and Orthodox churches all teach that forgiveness is at the heart of the gospel, because God has first forgiven us in Christ, and all of them pray in the Lord’s Prayer to be forgiven as we forgive others. Forgiveness as Scripture describes it gives no church a reason to pressure a victim of abuse to stay with an abuser or to reconcile before it is safe.

The Orthodox churches act out forgiveness every year. On the Sunday evening before Lent begins, at a service called Forgiveness Vespers, each member of the congregation in turn bows before every other, asks forgiveness, and offers it, so that the whole church enters the season of repentance reconciled. For more on God’s forgiveness of you, see Will God forgive me?, and for the commandment that sums up the law, see What is the greatest commandment?

If you or your children are not safe, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

Forgiveness is finally a work of grace, something God begins in you and brings to completion in God’s own time. You can bring God the wound as it is, the anger along with the longing to be free of it, and trust Paul’s promise that “he who began a good work in you will complete it” (Philippians 1:6). On the hardest days, the whole prayer may be the one Jesus taught: forgive us, as we also forgive.