What Does the Bible Teach About Forgiveness?

“To err is human, to forgive divine,” wrote the English poet Alexander Pope. While the Christian religion certainly agrees with this assessment, it also takes it a step further: forgiveness is a grace which comes from God, but it’s a grace in which He invites us to share.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes forgiveness as “a high point of Christian prayer,” before noting that “only hearts attuned to God’s compassion can receive the gift of prayer” (§2844). Forgiveness is something we are all called to, but we can only practice it with God’s help.

In this article, we’ll examine what the Bible says about forgiveness, and what role it ought to play in our lives.

Forgiveness in the Bible

From a biblical perspective, practicing forgiveness toward our neighbor involves first appreciating the forgiveness which God has extended to us. Here the Bible speaks movingly about the lengths which God went to in order to restore sinful humanity to Himself:

• “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8)

• “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph 1:7)

• “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19)

These verses remind us that God’s forgiveness is entirely gratuitous; that is, it’s something which originates in the depths of divine love, and not because of anything which we have earned or merited.

Sacred Scripture makes it abundantly clear that our God is rich in mercy. He is a Father who longs for the salvation of all His children (see Ez 33:11; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pt 3:9), and He is always ready to forgive us when we go astray:

• “For thou, O Lord, art good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on thee” (Ps 86:5)

• “To [Christ] all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43)

• “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9)

Something we should notice about these three verses is that each of them sets a condition on God’s forgiveness becoming effective in our hearts. The first describes God’s forgiveness as coming to those who “call on thee.” The second connects forgiveness with the one who “believes in him;” and the third begins with the caveat “if we confess our sins.” In each case, we are reminded that forgiveness is not entirely unilateral; it comes as a result of God’s gratuitous gift, yes, but it still demands our free response and cooperation.

God’s Forgiveness is Dependent on Our Forgiveness

The most important way that we cooperate with God’s forgiveness is by learning to forgive those who have sinned against us. As we pray in the Our Father: “. . . and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (see Mt 6:12). The Catechism puts it this way:

Now—and this is daunting—this outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Love, like the Body of Christ, is indivisible; we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we do see. In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace. (§2840)

This sobering message—that our hearts will remain closed to God’s forgiveness unless we also forgive those who have trespassed against us—is emphasized time and again in the Scriptures, and it forms the basis for Our Lord’s parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:

• “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt 6:14-15)

• “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Mt 18:35)

• “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mk 11:25)

• “[A]s the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Col 3:13)

From a biblical standpoint, therefore, it is of paramount importance that we learn to “[b]e merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36; cf. Jas 2:13). We must never seek to repay evil with evil (see 1 Pt 3:9). Instead, we should imitate the merciful love of Christ, earnestly beseeching His grace to help us avoid becoming bitter in our hearts (see Heb 12:15).

Of course, none of this is possible without God’s grace. “We love, because he first loved us,” Scripture tells us (1 Jn 4:19). While it’s true that God’s forgiveness is tied to our own forgiveness, at a deeper level even our own acts of love and forgiveness are only made possible by the promptings of His divine grace.

Should We Forgive Someone if They Aren’t Repentant?

One further question which might arise from this discussion is whether we ought to forgive people who aren’t sorry for what they’ve done. Answering this question is more complicated than you might think!

On the one hand, there is a passage in Luke’s Gospel where Jesus seems to say quite clearly that we need only forgive our brother if he repents of his sin: “Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Lk 17:3-4).

This line of reasoning is supported by thinkers like St. John Paul II in his encyclical Dives in Misericordia:

Christ emphasizes so insistently the need to forgive others that when Peter asked Him how many times he should forgive his neighbor He answered with the symbolic number of ‘seventy times seven,’ [see Mt 18:22] meaning that he must be able to forgive everyone every time. It is obvious that such a generous requirement of forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirements of justice. Properly understood, justice constitutes, so to speak, the goal of forgiveness. In no passage of the Gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence towards evil, towards scandals, towards injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness. (#14, emphasis added)

John Paul clearly asserts that forgiveness requires a degree of moral cooperation on the part of the one who is forgiven.

On the other hand, there are a number of places in Scripture where forgiveness seems to be upheld as something laudatory even when the people being forgiven show no signs of repentance. Although different figures in the tradition interpret it in various ways, Jesus’s cry from the Cross is the most famous example of what seems to be a case of forgiveness-without-conditions: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Another example comes in the martyrdom of St. Stephen, who prays as he is being stoned to death: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

How can we make sense of all this? One way of clarifying some of the confusion is to see that forgiveness can mean a couple of different things. On one level, forgiveness means relinquishing feelings of ill will toward the person who has wronged us. Even if we still feel a righteous anger toward him, and even if we still desire justice, forgiveness means wanting what’s best for him.

In this basic sense, forgiveness is simply a putting-into-practice of Christ’s instruction to love our enemies (see Mt 5:44). It is the decision to not seek revenge (see Rom 12:19), and even to pray for the one who has hurt us. Here the Catechism offers a bold challenge:

It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession. (§2843)

Precisely because we have been forgiven in Christ, we can discover the grace to forgive those who have wronged us, at least in one sense of the word. And this decision brings its own kind of freedom, where we refuse to allow the other person’s act of betrayal to maintain a stranglehold on our heart: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:31-32).

But what about the other sense of forgiveness? Here we mean not just good will toward the one who has wronged us but also pardon and reconciliation. When we’re talking about forgiveness in this more complete sense, Our Lord’s words in Luke 17:3-4 surely apply: we must always be ready to pardon our brother if he returns to us in sorrow; but if he remains unrepentant, then pardoning him remains impossible because he is choosing to persist in his sin.

Further Reading

St. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (1980)