David at Jollyblogger has a very good post about the difficulty of forgiveness entitled “Forgiving the Unrepentant.” He specifically treats the problem of what to do when those who offend us fail to repent or – and here’s the rub – fail to repent sufficiently or to our satisfaction.

His discussion (go there and read it for yourself) brought to mind the two types of forgiveness discussed in the New Testament. The first, which David covers in his post, is that to which Paul refers in his letters to the churches at Ephesus and Colossae:

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you (Eph 4:32).

bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you (Col 3:13)

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How has Christ forgiven us, i.e., how has He forgiven Christians? At the very least, He has done so at the first hint of repentance; more, He has forgiven us even when we fail to ask or are unaware of having sinned against Him. His grace extends beyond our conscience and our consciousness.

In the same manner, Paul says, we are to forgive one another. We are not, as David points out, to require sufficient suffering on the part of the offender before we extend forgiveness to them. We are to forgive: we are to release the person and no longer hold the offense against them.

Jesus, however, talks about a different kind of forgiveness. Our Lord says,

Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, “I repent,” forgive him (Lk 17.3-4).

Forgiveness here is conditional: it hinges on the repentance of the other person. Whereas Paul is talking about forgiving someone as an act of love, Jesus is talking about restoring a relationship with the brother who sins. Before the relationship can be restored, repentance is required.


In practice, the two types of forgiveness might look something like this: a brother in Christ sins but refuses to repent, even after church discipline has been implemented and applied. Following Paul, we would not hold this sin against the person but, following Jesus, we would not restore the relationship without repentance. Love impels us to forgive him in an eternal sense, but love also compels us to not restore the relationship in a temporal sense.

The struggle in forgiveness, however, seems to lie in our own sense of justice and moral indignation. Offenses deserve punishment: this is a fundamental truth of the Bible and the gospel. If sins did not merit punishment, then Christ did not have to die. But sins do call for punishment and thus Jesus suffered in our place to satisfy the perfect justice of the Father.

Our desire for justice, then, seems to be a manifestation of the image of God within us. But Christ Jesus and Paul nevertheless tell us to forgive without our personal scales of justice being balanced. How can they expect us to do that?

Such forgiveness is a matter of perception and perspective. When we struggle to forgive, we are failing to grasp all the facts and thus are short-sighted.

A parable on forgiveness reveals the necessary perspective:

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Jesus *said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.
“When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.
“But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.
“So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’
“And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
“But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’
“So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’
“But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed.
“So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened.
“Then summoning him, his lord *said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
‘Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’
“And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.
“My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (Mt 18.21-35)

According to this parable, forgiveness should be easy for us if we keep things in perspective. The first slave was forgiven an enormous debt by his master; what was owed him by the other slave of the master was trivial. Turning the story just a bit, we see that the offense against the master by the slave was great and warranted punishment; grace spared him. The offense against the slave by his fellow was minor.

No one is going to hell because of how they have treated you or me. Frankly, we’re just not that important. Furthermore, since we are ourselves sinners, an argument can be made that we deserve to suffer: we are not innocent but contribute the sinful world in which we live. But whatever we suffer – justly or unjustly – is insignificant compared to that for which we have been forgiven by God.

Forgiveness from the heart – apart from repentance and restoration of relationships – is far easier when we remember who we are, what we have been forgiven, and what – as well as Who – is really important. It is not about us; it is about God. He forgave us at great expense to Himself; our forgiveness of another costs us nothing.


2 Cor 1:13