How Do I Forgive Someone Who Isn't Sorry? (What the Bible Says)

You forgave them. You said the words. You prayed the prayer. And then last Tuesday, the memory came back and you were furious all over again. If that is you right now, you are not broken.

You are not faithless. And you are not the only one. Let's open the Bible together and see what forgiveness actually is and what it isn't. Here is the question, the way people actually type it into Google and YouTube. How do I forgive someone who isn't sorry?

On Reddit alone, thousands of people are asking a version of that this week. One of them wrote, quote, "How can you forgive somebody who doesn't even care that they made that mistake? It's unfair." That is the honest form of the problem. And the honest form deserves an honest answer. Bara asked practicing Christians about this.

76% said they had offered unconditional forgiveness. Only 55% said they had received it. Roughly one in four had someone in their life they quote just can't forgive. And 2/3 of those Christians could also name a circumstance where they didn't even want to. The Mayo Clinic, a secular source, reports that people who hold on to grudges have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and blood pressure.

A 2016 study of 332 adults tracked over 5 weeks and found that when forgiveness went up, perceived stress went down, and mental health improved. So, this is not just a spiritual issue. It's a heart issue, a mind issue, and a body issue. And the Bible has been telling us that for 3,000 years. Before we open scripture, we have to clear away two lies that have hurt more Christians than almost anything in the modern church.

Lie one, forgiveness means forgetting. It doesn't. Joseph did not forget being sold into slavery. He looked his brothers in the eye and said, "You meant evil against me." The Mayo Clinic and every reputable Christian pastor agree. Forgiveness is not amnesia.

Lie too. Forgiveness means reconciliation. It doesn't. The Gospel Coalition puts it plainly. Forgiveness is always required by God, but it does not always lead to reconciliation.

Precept Austin puts it even more sharply. Forgiveness takes only one person, while reconciliation takes two. That distinction matters more than almost anything else in this video. If you are being abused right now physically, emotionally, sexually, spiritually, nothing in this video is asking you to go back. Forgiveness happens in your heart before God.

Reconciliation when it is safe and possible requires the offender's genuine repentance. Those are not the same act. Jesus said in Matthew 6:14, "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 your trespasses." Alone, that verse has crushed people. It sounds like God's forgiveness is a work you earn by being forgiving enough.

But Jesus doesn't leave us alone with those two verses. 12 chapters later in Matthew 18, he tells a parable that explains exactly what he meant. A king forgives a servant a debt of 10,000 talents, a debt so large it would take a laborer roughly 200,000 years to earn. The servant walks outside and grabs a fellow servant by the throat over a 100 daeneri about a 100 days wages. The king finds out and he is furious.

Not because the first servant failed to earn his release, but because his refusal to forgive proved he had never grasped what he had been given. That is what Matthew 6 means. Received forgiveness precedes required forgiveness. The person who has actually met the god of the cross cannot go on choking their brother in the courtyard. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

The Greek word Paul uses for forgive is charismi. It comes from chorus grace. It literally means to give freely to bestow as a gift of grace to remit a debt. Paul is not asking Christians to invent forgiveness out of thin air. He is asking them to pass along a forgiveness they already received.

Which means before we can talk about how to forgive someone else, we have to ask a harder question. Have you received the forgiveness of God? because that is the account you draw from. You cannot give what you have never held. Genesis 50.

Joseph's father, Jacob, has just died. Joseph's brothers, who sold him into slavery 20 years earlier, are terrified he will finally take revenge. They send a message pretending it's a dying wish from their father. Please forgive the trespasses of your brothers and their sin, for they did evil to you. Watch what Joseph does next.

Verse 17. And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. He is not stonefaced. Forgiveness is not the absence of pain. Verse 19.

Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God. Joseph refuses to be judged. Vengeance is not his job. That is the same principle Paul quotes in Romans 12. Vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord. Verse 20. But as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. He names the evil. He does not minimize it.

And then he names something greater. God's providence over what they meant for evil. Providence does not erase their sin. It overrules the outcome. Verse 21.

I will provide for you and your little ones. Real forgiveness includes a settled decision to do the offender good. Notice what Joseph did not do. He did not say, "It wasn't that bad." He did not say, "Let's just move on." He did not say, "I never think about it." He said, "You meant evil against me." And then he handed the judgment to God. Let's define it clearly based on the whole council of scripture.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not pretending it didn't hurt. Forgiveness is not the end of your longing for justice. Forgiveness is not making it easy for the offender to hurt you again. Forgiveness is not a single dramatic event.

Forgiveness is a decision to revoke revenge. Forgiveness is a decision to release the debt. Forgiveness is a decision to entrust the case to God the judge. Forgiveness is a decision to want good for the person even from a safe distance. Forgiveness is a decision you may need to make many times about the same wound.

Someone will ask, "Isn't this just a way for the church to silence victims?" It is a fair question and it must be answered honestly. The answer is no, because the Bible never confuses forgiveness with reconciliation. If you're being abused, nothing in scripture is asking you to go back into that danger. Reconciliation is conditioned on the offender's genuine repentance and sometimes on real safety. When those are absent, forgiveness can still happen in your heart before God.

While the relationship stays where it is or ends entirely. The demand of the gospel is not that the victim be their abuser's judge. The demand is that the victim not be their abuser's god. Because vengeance belongs to a judge who cannot be bribed and who sees everything you couldn't. That is not silencing you.

That is releasing you. Here is what to do this week. Not a formula, a starting place. First, name the wrong on paper. Do not soften it.

Joseph didn't. Write what happened. Read it back once. Second, pray Romans 12:1 19 out loud over that piece of paper. Vengeance is mine.

I will repay, says the Lord. Hand the case to God, not because the case is small, but because the judge is bigger than you are. Third, take one action toward the person's good, even a small one. Pray for them by name. If reconciliation is safe and wise, take one honest step, a message, a conversation, a professional mediator.

If reconciliation is not safe, keep the distance without keeping the resentment. Fourth, when the memory comes back, and it will pray this, Lord, I remember again what they did to me and I feel angry. Help me. You have not failed. You were doing the work of a lifetime of forgiveness.

A friend tells you, "I could never forgive what they did to me. I don't want to." Do not preach. Ask. Ask, "What do you mean by forgive?" Because most of the time they mean reconciliation and they are right to refuse that. Ask, "What would it cost you to keep carrying this the way you have been?" Let them answer honestly.

Then say, "Would you mind if I showed you what Joseph said to the brothers who sold him into slavery?" Read Genesis 50:20 together. Point out that Joseph named the evil first. Point out that he handed the judgment to God, not to himself. Tell them that biblical forgiveness never asks them to say the wrong wasn't a wrong. Then if the door is open, tell them the story of the God who did not merely command forgiveness from a distance, but forgave from a cross.

Everything we have said only works because of what Jesus said on a Roman cross of the people who put him there, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." He did not wait for their repentance. He did not minimize the injustice. He did not stop the crucifixion. He did what only God could do. He absorbed the wrong in himself and canceled the debt from the inside.

If you have never received that forgiveness, the 10,000 talent kind, that is the account you draw from when you try to forgive anyone else. And it is not earned. It is offered freely because of what Jesus already did. If today you want to receive it, you can say something like this. God, I know I have sinned against you and against people made in your image.

I believe Jesus died and rose for me. I turn from my sin. I trust you. Forgive me and begin the work of forgiveness in me. That prayer sincerely prayed is where forgiveness begins in a life both received and eventually given.

Father, you know the person watching this right now. You know exactly what was done to them, exactly by whom, exactly how deep it goes. You have not looked away. Give them courage to name the wrong honestly without softening it. Give them freedom to lay down the burden of being judged.

A burden that was never theirs to carry. Where reconciliation is safe and wise, guide it. Where it is not, give peace without demanding return. And Lord, for every person who has never received your forgiveness, come near right now. Show them the cross.

Give them faith and begin in them the deep, slow, real work of forgiving because they have been forgiven in Jesus name. Amen. If somebody you love is trying to figure out how to forgive right now, send this to them. Subscribe as we keep walking through the questions people are actually facing and open the Bible together and leave a comment. What is the question you would want us to examine next?

Transcript from the video's captions on YouTube.