Finding Release: Bible Verses About Forgiveness and Healing

There’s a lot of hurt in the world. One of the hardest things about life is that often the people that hurt us most are the people we most love. When your spouse, friend, colleague, sibling, or neighbor hurts you, it can damage the relationship irreparably. We also need to recognize that though people might hurt us, there are people we’ve hurt and relationships we’ve damaged and we need to receive forgiveness as much as we need to give it. In this article, we’ll look at several Bible verses about forgiveness to help you find healing and restoration in Christ.

While the pain we and others cause is real and isn’t forgotten easily, there’s hope. The hope we have for our relationships lies in the fact that forgiveness and healing are possible. The Bible presents us with a nuanced understanding of forgiveness, one that leads us toward greater empathy, compassion, and healing from past wounds.

Forgiving others creates space for healing in the relationship. We need to understand how closely tied we are to one another to understand the necessity of forgiveness, and why it’s so important for our healing.

Bible verses about forgiveness: Our interwoven lives

When He was asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus saw through the trap the Pharisees were laying for Him. There are 613 laws in what is called the Torah, the Law as it was given to Moses by God. For many years, teachers in Israel had been debating which laws were the most important, and they didn’t quite agree on the answer.

Asking Jesus to decide and make His position known on which law He considered the most important would align Him with one religious and political faction and alienate Him from others. In choosing one commandment as the most important, Jesus would condemn Himself by denigrating the rest of the Law.

Jesus’ response was masterful, because He refused to be boxed in, and because He answered indisputably. Jesus tied together the threads of what all the laws were aiming for, getting to their heart. Here’s how that conversation went:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22:34-40, NIV

Jesus highlights the love of God and the love of others as what God requires of us. The first part of the Ten Commandments is about what it means to love God above everything else. The second part is about loving people, and the rest of the Law simply elaborates on the different ways we can love God and others in daily life. Even the Lord’s prayer has got two basic parts – our understanding of and relationship with God, and how we relate to others.

John, Jesus’ disciple, picked up on this reality of our interwoven lives when he wrote:

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. – 1 John 4:19-21, NIV

Not only is love the key command, but loving God and loving other people are intertwined and interrelated realities.

Bible verses about forgiveness and healing

What do our interwoven lives have to do with forgiveness and healing? In Jesus’ prayer He teaches His disciples, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12, NIV)

Jesus goes on to add some commentary on this prayer in the following Bible verses about forgiveness, saying “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14-15 NIV)

Why is there a connection between forgiving others and God’s forgiveness? In much of the West, we have an individualistic way of understanding our lives. For many of us, we understand even our relationship with God as being about me and God, with other people on the periphery, if they are in the picture at all.

What the entirety of the Bible teaches us is that we are our brother’s keeper, and how we treat other people reflects the reality of our heart toward God. If I have truly experienced God’s forgiveness of my sins, then I should become a conduit of God’s forgiveness toward others in my life.

This idea that forgiven people must become conduits of forgiveness is highlighted in Jesus’ teaching and the rest of Scripture.

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells a parable about a servant who was forgiven much by his master. Later, that same servant found his fellow servant who owed him a paltry amount. Instead of showing that fellow servant mercy as the master had shown him, the first servant had his fellow servant thrown in jail.

When the master heard of this, the master called the first servant in and said to him, “‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’” (Matthew 18:32-33, NIV) The servant was then handed over to jailers “to be tortured, until he should pay back all that he owed.” (Matthew 18:34, NIV)

Jesus concludes, saying, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35, NIV)

Elsewhere, we read “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32, NIV) The point these various Bible passages makes is about us as people who have been forgiven much by God.

The transformation that ought to come from our forgiveness should flow to others who wrong us. This doesn’t mean that forgiveness is easy, but it means that forgiveness is a part of how we relate to others.

Forgiveness, healing, repentance, and consequences

When God forgives us of our sins, it heals our relationship with Him. Psalm 32 shows us how David was broken by his sin, and we learn in the Bible through Psalm 51 and 2 Samuel how his sins devastated many lives. He confessed his sins and sought God’s forgiveness. We read his prayer in Psalm 32:

Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit. – Psalms 32:1-2, NIV

Without forgiveness from God, and if we remain estranged from Him, it affects us spiritually, physically, and mentally. David goes on to say, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” (Psalm 32:3-4, NIV)

God through Jesus Christ has forgiven us our many sins. When we participate in what Jesus did for us and accept that forgiveness, it restores the joy that David talks about in Psalms 32 and 51.

Similarly, when we forgive others, we heal our relationships with them, bringing healing and joy to our hearts as well. Forgiving someone does not mean what they did was okay. If it was okay, there would be nothing to forgive.

Forgiveness also doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for our actions. Though he was forgiven, David’s sin had repercussions for his entire family. This included a civil war. Our sin is forgiven, but it is at the cost of Jesus’ life, who willingly took our shame and sin into Himself on the cross.

When you forgive someone, you release them from your antipathy toward them and the desire to get even with them. However, that doesn’t mean that trust is automatically restored, or that the relationship is reset to its previous state. It can take time and many deliberate acts of the will to forgive someone.

Forgiveness is hard

Forgiving someone, particularly if they hurt you deeply, is difficult. For Christians, with the help of the Holy Spirit, they can release thoughts and feelings of vengeance as they grow in imitating Jesus. Forgiveness from the heart is not about feeling warm toward the other person, but it is about deciding to let your anger toward them go.

Being a forgiving person does not make you naïve, nor does it mean you are a pushover. God is neither of those things, and He calls His people to lean into forgiveness as a way of life. When you release someone who has wounded you by forgiving them, you release yourself from the bondage of anger and allow yourself to rest in God’s peace.

You may be going through a difficult time forgiving someone that hurt you. That process is just that – a process, and often a long journey. If you’re looking for additional support beyond these Bible verses about forgiveness and need someone to journey with you, the counselors at Redlands Christian Counseling in California can help.

We can walk with you as you understand what it is and isn’t, as well as how you go about forgiving someone. Reach out today to speak with a Christian counselor in Redlands, California who can help you and walk alongside you.