Bible Verses About Forgiveness
Forgiveness is one of the hardest words in Scripture — for the person trying to give it, and for the person who cannot believe she has received it. These verses are for both.
Ephesians 4:32 sets the pattern — “forgiving one another, just as in Christ God forgave you” — and 1 John 1:9 promises that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.
Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.
Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins or repaid us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His loving devotion for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
I, yes I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake and remembers your sins no more.
Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion? He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped away,
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!
Forgiven, first
The order in Ephesians 4:32 is not decorative: forgive one another just as God forgave you. Every instruction Scripture gives about forgiving others stands downstream of something already received.
1 John 1:9 states the terms with unusual plainness: confess, and He is “faithful and just” to forgive and cleanse. Not reluctant. Not conditional on you feeling forgiven afterwards. Psalm 103:12 gives the distance — as far as the east is from the west, which in the psalm’s own image is a way of saying immeasurably far.
What forgiveness is not
It is not saying the thing was acceptable. It is not pretending it did not happen, or that it did not cost you. It is not necessarily reconciliation — Scripture treats those as separate, which is why Romans 12:18 adds “if it is possible, as far as it depends on you.”
And it is not the same as being unprotected. You can forgive someone and still keep a door locked. Nothing on this page asks you to return to somewhere unsafe, or to hand a person another opportunity to harm you.
Seventy times seven
Peter offered to forgive seven times, which was already generous by the standards of his day. Jesus answered “seventy-seven times” — or seventy times seven, depending on the manuscript (Matthew 18:22). Either way the number is chosen to be uncountable. He is refusing to let forgiveness be a ledger.
The parable He tells next is about a servant forgiven an impossible debt who then throttles a man over a small one. The point is proportion: what you are being asked to release is smaller than what you have been released from.
When you cannot do it yet
Some things take years, and Scripture does not put a clock on it. Forgiveness of a deep wound is usually not one decision but a hundred — the same choice made again each time the memory arrives.
If you are not there, the honest prayer is to ask for the willingness rather than to fake the article. God is not fooled by the performance and does not require it.
Forgiving yourself
Many women find this the harder direction. If God has said the debt is settled, continuing to charge yourself for it is not humility. Romans 8:1 is the sentence to keep: “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Now. Not eventually.
When there has been no apology
Most teaching on forgiveness quietly assumes a repentant person on the other side. A great deal of real life does not include one.
Scripture separates two things we tend to run together. Forgiveness is something you can do alone, before God, about what you are carrying. Reconciliation takes two, which is why Romans 12:18 arrives with two qualifiers: if it is possible, and as far as it depends on you.
That means you are not held hostage by another person’s refusal to be sorry. And it means you have not failed if the relationship never comes back.
A prayer about forgiveness
Lord, You know what was done, and You know I am still carrying it. I do not want to keep the account open, and I am not sure I can close it yet. Give me the willingness. Take the part I cannot put down. And where I have been the one who did the damage — thank You that You have already carried it as far as the east is from the west. Amen.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible. Tap any reference to compare all four translations.