How to Forgive Someone Who Has Wronged You

If you hang out with someone long enough, odds are at some point you’ll both do or say something that will offend the other person. Two imperfect people rubbing shoulders for any length of time may have misunderstandings, mismatched expectations, words spoken thoughtlessly, and sensitivities that may get violated inadvertently or otherwise. This is why learning how to forgive is so important.

It’s not always that people purposely say or do things to aggravate others and cause friction within relationships, but that’s just how things often shake out in life. What matters for the health and the longevity of relationships is whether and how willing the people within them are to grow and to move past each other’s mistakes.

In committed long-term relationships such as marriage, lifelong friendships, siblings, or parents and their children, the ability to apologize and overcome foibles, along with the capacity to forgive wrongs go a long way to promoting the health of that relationship.

However, it’s not always easy to forgive. It may be that they’ve hurt you deeply, or they have hurt you one too many times and haven’t shown remorse for what they did. Whatever the reason may be, forgiving the other person and setting the table for potential reconciliation may seem off the cards. How then do you move toward forgiveness of the person that’s wronged you? Below are a few pointers that may help you on your journey.

Don’t confuse excusing and forgiving

For one thing, we can struggle with forgiving someone because we’re misunderstanding what forgiveness means. To forgive someone is not to declare that we were not offended or hurt by what the other person said or did. Nor is it saying that their behavior is welcome and above board. Excusing someone is letting them off the hook for what they did because the circumstances make their behavior both understandable and acceptable.

Forgiveness happens when there is nothing acceptable in the other person’s behavior; it isn’t about letting them off the hook or giving them a pass. It’s possible to forgive a thief while dialing 911 and letting the law take its course. It’s possible to forgive a friend for lying to you even as you end the friendship because they’ve broken your trust.

Forgiveness means deciding that you won’t resent that person or hold ill will toward them. You are foregoing the desire for vengeance or “getting them back” for what they did to you. Forgiveness is not the erasure of consequences. Even David, when he had escaped King Saul who was trying to kill him, still didn’t lower his guard when the king said he was sorry for pursuing David unjustly.

Just because he had forgiven Saul for unjustly pursuing him and seeking his life didn’t mean that David had to trust Saul; David didn’t trust Saul’s change of heart because trust is something that must be earned once broken.

Forgiveness is for you, not just for them

Forgiveness is for your own good. You can forgive the other person without them necessarily benefiting from it, and that’s because at its heart forgiveness is something you do within yourself. You can forgive the person who cuts you off in traffic without even knowing their name or ever seeing them again in your life.

You can also forgive your spouse for a thoughtless comment they make without ever communicating that you were offended. You can forgive your parents or an ex for things they did to you in the past, and that can be welcome news especially if the person who wronged us is out of reach for whatever reason, including that they’ve passed.

Forgiving others makes for a healthier and happier life, with less physical, emotional, and mental distress than what you would have if you decided to hold onto unforgiveness.

Learning how to forgive one day at a time

Forgiving someone isn’t always a once-off thing. In the example above of the spouse that makes a thoughtless comment, if it happens just once, it’s possible to forgive them and let it go. However, if it is deeply offensive, or perhaps part of a pattern of behavior, for one thing, it is important to speak out and make yourconcerns known so that they are addressed. It is possible to forgive a person even in the absence of that conversation, but it goes down easier having had that talk.

On the other hand, forgiving someone for the pain they’ve inflicted upon us can take time. how much time is not something that can be determined beforehand, as we are all wired differently. Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself struggling to keep feelings of resentment at bay; just keep walking away from those feelings of resentment every day.

How to forgive by exercising empathy

We all make a hash of things and need to apologize and be forgiven. In the ‘Our Father’, the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, the line “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12, ESV) reminds us that there is a close connection between God’s forgiveness of our sins and our forgiveness of others.

If we truly understand what God has forgiven us, we will gain the empathy we need to forgive others for what they have done to us. Can the debts others owe us ever be larger than the debt God has forgiven us of? This lesson is repeated again and again throughout the Bible. Being shown grace, mercy, and forgiveness by God ought to result in us becoming a conduit of those same things toward others.

Draw strength from the Lord and trust God to deal with it

Exercising empathy and forgiving people of the pain they inflict is not an easy or painless exercise. Letting go of the desire for vengeance or the enjoyment of our resentments isn’t easy. Sometimes we might feel like we can’t trust God to handle things the “right way,” and we feel like we need to take matters into our own hands.

Forgiveness of others requires a deep trust that God will do what is right and deal with the situation justly. This can be true of everything from the daily slights we endure from the people around us to the heinous injustices that are inflicted upon us in extraordinary circumstances such as when we or our loved ones are the victims of crime.

It’s hard to let go of resentment or the desire to deliver our own brand of justice, even when forgiveness will do us a world of good. We may not have the strength to let things go, but we can ask the Lord for that strength and for the capacity to trust him. It is a huge exercise of faith to walk in life as the apostle Paul says when he writes,

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:19-21, ESV

Pray to the Lord for the strength you need to forgive the person/people that wronged you and to leave them in the hands of the Lord. The example of people like Corrie Ten Boom, Marguerite (Maggy) Barankitse, and Gordon Wilson who were able to forgive others against overwhelming odds by relying on God’s strength can remind us of the obstacles that God can overcome.

With that, it also reminds us that there is nothing so big that it can’t be forgiven. It may take time to forgive, it may be hard to forgive, but it is possible. We often forget that there is another side to the remarkable biblical story of Saul meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus in Acts 9. He persecuted Christians and had them killed, but when he met Jesus and began following him as Messiah, Saul was welcomed by the Christians into fellowship.

Of course, they didn’t trust him at first, and it took time for them to be certain that this wasn’t some elaborate ruse to make them lower their guard, but when they were certain that Saul (now known as Paul) was a truly changed man, they embraced him with open arms into the fellowship of believers.

To forgive and welcome a person they were once afraid of and who had persecuted and had a hand in the death of fellow believers was something exceptionally difficult, but through God’s strength, the believers were able to overcome their fear.

Seek help

If you find that you’re struggling to forgive someone and it’s getting in the way of having a productive relationship with that person or with others, you can seek the help of a counselor who can journey with you toward forgiveness and healing. Forgiveness is hard, but it is possible to embrace and overcome hard things.