What Does Forgiveness Actually Mean According to the Bible?

It does not mean what culture told you it means. And if you have been trying to do culture's version of forgiveness and failing, that is not a faith problem. That is a definition problem. Let's fix the definition.

We left off yesterday with Eric, a pastor whose wife and unborn child were killed in a car crash caused by another driver. His nineteen-year-old daughter survived. We asked whether Eric should forgive the driver. And we looked at Stephen, who forgave the people stoning him to death while he was dying, with no apology offered and no closure given.

Today I want to get into the thing that is keeping so many of us stuck. Not whether to forgive, but what we think forgiveness actually requires of us. Because culture has layered so much onto this word that the version most of us are trying to do is not what Scripture is asking for.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Let me walk through these one by one, because any one of them might be the thing that has been keeping you from moving.

Forgiveness is not your agreement with what happened. Eric forgiving the driver does not mean Eric agrees that killing his wife and unborn child was okay. It was not okay. He can hold both of those things at once. Your forgiveness of someone does not mean you are signing off on what they did.

Forgiveness is not permission for them to do it again. Releasing someone from an offense is not the same as saying the door is open for a repeat. You can forgive someone and still decide the relationship looks different going forward. Those are two separate decisions.

Forgiveness is not a mandate to forget. I need you to hear this one clearly because the enemy uses it constantly. There is no sea of forgetfulness in the Bible. If you look for it, you will not find it. You may have heard the phrase, but it is not in Scripture. Eric forgiving the driver does not mean he is required to somehow magically forget that his wife and unborn child are gone. God does not ask that of him. God does not ask that of you either.

Forgiveness does not release you from using wisdom. If you were in a situation where someone repeatedly betrayed your trust, you can forgive them and still use wisdom about how much access they have to your life going forward. Forgiveness is not the same as recklessness. Wisdom and forgiveness coexist.

Forgiveness is not contingent on someone asking for it. Eric can forgive the driver without ever having a single conversation with him. The driver does not have to ask. He does not have to know. Forgiveness is something you can give whether the other person participates or not.

Forgiveness is not contingent on a closure conversation. We have been taught that we need closure before we can forgive, that there needs to be a conversation, an explanation, some kind of resolution. But there is nothing in Scripture that makes forgiveness conditional on that conversation happening. You can forgive without it.

Forgiving others is not contingent on someone forgiving you first. Some of us are carrying around things we did, waiting for the person we wronged to forgive us before we will forgive ourselves. That is not the requirement. Forgiving yourself is not locked behind someone else's choice.

Forgiveness is not a cure for grief, hurt, or loss. Eric forgiving the driver does not mean he will stop grieving his wife. He will still feel the pain. He will still feel the loss. Forgiveness does not erase what happened. It does not fast forward the healing process. Pain and forgiveness can exist in the same heart at the same time.

And forgiveness has not happened if you are still holding the offense over the offender's head. If you say you have forgiven someone but keep bringing it up, keep putting them on blast, keep using it against them every time there is a conflict, that is not forgiveness yet. True forgiveness means you are no longer holding it over them. Not because what they did was not wrong. Because you chose to release it.

How Did Stephen Do It?

We looked at Stephen yesterday, forgiving while actively being murdered, but I want to point out something from his story that directly applies here. Acts 7:60 (NKJV) says, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin." He called it sin. He was not agreeing with what they were doing. He was not pretending it was fine or minimizing what was happening to his body. He named it accurately. And he still released them.

That is the model. You can call something wrong, feel the full weight of how wrong it is, and still choose to release the people responsible for it. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

What Forgiveness Actually Is

Here is what forgiveness is, at its core. It means I am no longer going to hold this over your head. That is it. Not that I agree with what you did. Not that it didn't hurt. Not that I trust you the same way. Not that I forget. Just that I am releasing the debt. I am choosing not to keep you on the hook for it.

That is what God is asking. And it is still hard. But it is much more doable than the version culture handed you.

Work your openness to think about forgiveness differently. Work your permission to call it hard while you do it anyway. And work your awareness that a lot of the myths you have been carrying about forgiveness came from culture, not from God's Word.

Take this to the Word yourself. Acts 7:54-60, Matthew 6:12-15, Matthew 18:21-35.

What This Means for You

Which one of those myths about forgiveness has been keeping you stuck? And what changes if you let that one go?

This continues the Why You Mad series. Last time, we looked at why forgiveness is so heavy and what Stephen's story shows us. Next, we are going to get into the one that trips a lot of people up. Forgiving someone does not mean letting them get away with it. And that particular myth needs to go.

I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, "Why You Mad," is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.