Ask · The Church & Christian Life

How do I forgive someone who has hurt me badly?

The short answer

Forgiveness, in the Bible, means releasing the debt and the right to revenge to God, as God in Christ forgave you; it does not mean calling the wrong right, and it does not automatically restore trust or the old relationship. Jesus commands forgiving from the heart and illustrates it with a forgiven servant who refused to forgive. Trust is rebuilt by repentance and time; reconciliation needs both parties. Forgiveness can begin with one.

The fuller answer

Define the words first, because mixing them up causes much of the pain around this question. Forgiveness releases the offender from your personal right to settle the score, and hands justice to God, who sees all of it. Trust is different: it is confidence in a person's present character, and after serious harm it can only be rebuilt slowly, by repentance shown in changed behaviour over time. Reconciliation, a restored relationship, needs both sides to want it and work for it. Scripture commands the first of these of every Christian. It does not command you to pretend the second and third have already happened when they have not.

Jesus' teaching here is deliberately severe, and it is severe in a specific direction. He answers Peter's question about limits by removing limits, and tells of a servant forgiven an unpayable debt who then throttled a fellow servant over a small one. The point pressed on the hearer is the size of what we ourselves have been forgiven. Paul writes the same logic to the Colossians: bearing with one another and forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Presenting forgiveness this way does not minimise real wounds. It locates the power to release them in a debt already cancelled at incalculable cost.

Practically, forgiveness is usually a decision renewed rather than a feeling achieved. Many people forgive truthfully by praying the release in plain words, by name, and then praying it again when the memory returns with its sting, treating each return as the wound healing rather than the forgiveness failing. It helps to do this with a pastor or trusted believer beside you, especially where the harm was grave, and where safety is concerned, forgiveness changes nothing about distance, boundaries or reporting what the law requires. Feelings often follow obedience slowly, like warmth returning to a limb. Begin with the release God asks for; let him handle the sequence after that.

Jesus attaches forgiveness to the prayer he taught, which means he expects it to be revisited as often as the prayer itself: forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, followed by the solemn explanation that if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Placed there, forgiveness is not an achievement for the strong but a daily practice for the forgiven, renewed at the same frequency as our own need of mercy. Some days the renewal is a sentence prayed through clenched teeth. God receives it as what it is: obedience beginning, with the heart following behind.

Sources

• Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

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