Bible verses about forgiveness

The line in the prayer people skip

Most people can say the Lord's Prayer from memory. Fewer notice the small word in the middle of it:

Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.Matthew 6:12 · World English Bible

As we also forgive our debtors. The petition asks God to apply the petitioner's own standard back to them. Then, two verses after the prayer ends, it is said again without the cushioning:

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.Matthew 6:14-15 · World English Bible

Both translations put it the same way, and there is no softening in either. This is the uncomfortable centre of the subject and the reason a forgiveness page cannot just be a list of reassuring verses.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation

If you are here because somebody hurt you badly, read this part before the list.

Nothing in these passages requires you to let that person back in. The text itself separates the two things, and it does so in the same chapter that gives us seventy times seven. Look at what Jesus actually instructs when someone wrongs you:

Be careful. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in the day, and seven times returns, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”Luke 17:3-4 · World English Bible

Note the order. Rebuke him comes first — naming the wrong is part of the instruction, not a failure of grace. And in this passage the forgiveness follows repentance: if he repents. That is in both translations, and it is not a marginal verse.

Then look at where the process in Matthew 18 ends when there is no repentance:

“If your brother sins against you, go, show him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained back your brother. But if he doesn’t listen, take one or two more with you, that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the assembly. If he refuses to hear the assembly also, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector.Matthew 18:15-17 · World English Bible

The final step is that the relationship is not restored. Scripture describes an outcome where somebody stays outside, and it describes it without embarrassment. Whatever forgiveness is in the New Testament, it is plainly not the same thing as restored access.

This is not a novel reading. The Church of England's own safeguarding guidance says forgiveness and reconciliation are not two ways of saying the same thing, that pressing someone to forgive quickly does real harm, and that safety comes before restoration. It also makes a point worth holding next to Luke 17:3: apparent repentance can itself be part of an abuse pattern, so the condition in that verse is not a box somebody else gets to tick on your behalf.

Plainly, then. If you have been abused, nothing on this page says you owe your abuser access to you, a relationship, or a timetable. Anyone who tells you Scripture requires that is adding to it. If what you are carrying is heavier than a page of verses, that is not a failure of faith — our verses for anxiety page links to real help, and verses for grief is written for loss that does not resolve.

Two passages that pull against each other

Set Matthew 6:15 beside Luke 17:3 and they do not obviously agree. One says forgive or you will not be forgiven, with no condition attached. The other says rebuke, and forgive if he repents.

Christians have read that tension in more than one way for a very long time — some hold that the heart's release is unconditional while restored relationship is not, others that the passages address different situations. This site does not adjudicate it. What is worth saying is what the existence of the tension rules out: nobody can tell you that Scripture plainly and settledly requires an unconditional forgiveness of an unrepentant person, because the text they would be citing has Luke 17:3 sitting next to it.

Seventy times seven, in its actual place

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I don’t tell you until seven times, but, until seventy times seven.Matthew 18:21-22 · World English Bible

The most quoted forgiveness verse in the Bible, and it lands immediately after the passage above — the one that ends with somebody outside. Same chapter, same conversation. Peter asks his question having just heard the procedure for a wrong that goes unaddressed.

Read there, seventy times seven is not a rule about tolerating anything indefinitely. It is an answer to a man trying to work out where the ceiling is, and the answer is that there isn't one worth counting to.

There is an older echo in it, too.

Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice. You wives of Lamech, listen to my speech, for I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for bruising me. If Cain will be avenged seven times, truly Lamech seventy-seven times.”Genesis 4:23-24 · World English Bible

Lamech, a descendant of Cain, boasts of killing a man for wounding him: if Cain is avenged seven times, Lamech seventy-seven — the King James has “seventy and sevenfold”. In the Greek Old Testament the early church read, Lamech’s number is the same two words Jesus uses in Matthew 18:22, hebdomekontakis hepta (Matthew’s Greek); Brenton’s 1851 English of the Septuagint renders Lamech’s line “seventy times seven”. Bengel says it outright: “Thus the LXX., in Genesis 4:24, use the same phrase regarding Lamech.”

That is also why the number is argued. Meyer and Bengel read the phrase as seventy-seven; the Expositor’s Greek Testament keeps seventy times seven; the Pulpit Commentary gives both (all at Bible Hub’s commentaries on Matthew 18:22). We are not settling 77 against 490. The echo does not depend on it: the number that once measured one man’s revenge is the number given for forgiveness.

If what you are carrying is a betrayal, our page on betrayal has Psalm 55 and the rest.

The most famous sentence about forgiveness is textually disputed

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Dividing his garments amongst them, they cast lots.Luke 23:34 · World English Bible

Said from the cross, and probably the best-known thing anyone has ever said about forgiving. It is also missing from some of the oldest manuscripts.

P75 — the earliest witness here — omits it, as do Vaticanus, the original hand of Codex Bezae and a second corrector of Sinaiticus. Over ninety per cent of Greek manuscripts include it, among them Sinaiticus's original hand and Alexandrinus. Modern critical editions print it in double brackets, the editorial signal for a passage the evidence does not settle, and Tyndale House sets out the case on both sides. The World English Bible and the King James both include it, which is why it is quoted above.

This is a question about what the Greek text says, unlike the differences on our Proverbs 3:5-6 page, which are choices about English. We are not in a position to settle it, and we would rather you knew it was there.

What the rest of the list is doing

The passages above are the hard ones. Most of the list is the other half of the subject: what being forgiven is described as. Psalm 103:12 and Micah 7:18-19 are both about distance and disposal rather than about a ledger being settled. Isaiah 43:25 gives the reason as God's own, not the offender's improvement. 1 John 1:9 is the plainest.

And 2 Corinthians 2:7-8 is the one nobody quotes: Paul telling a church that has disciplined somebody to forgive and comfort him now, before he is swallowed by his own grief. It is the only passage here written to the people doing the forgiving about the cost to the person being forgiven, and it is a useful corrective in the other direction.