The Meaning of Forgiveness

Christ and the Woman Caught in Adultery

 

 THE MEANING OF FORGIVENESS

The imperative to forgive our neighbor is in Scripture. It is mandatory and explicit.

Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight.

The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail.

Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.

Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?

Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins?

If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?

Remember your last days, set enmity aside; remember death and decay, and cease from sin!

Think of the commandments, hate not your neighbor; remember the Most High’s covenant, and overlook faults.

—Sirach 27:30-28:7

Unforgiveness at some point probably amounts to a mortal sin, based on Jesus’ admonition that unforgiveness precludes God’s forgiveness of the sinner.

The sinner who refuses to forgive remains unforgiven by God, and unforgiveness is among the attributes that define the irreversible condition of damnation.

“If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

It behooves us to ask what forgiveness genuinely means. In what does forgiveness consist, essentially?

We misunderstand forgiveness if we equate it to the perfect erasure of our memory or our entirely absent reaction every time we recall the injury. To forgive does not mean to forget, except possibly when the Almighty dispenses his infinite mercy.

I will forgive their iniquity and no longer remember their sin. (Jeremiah 31:34)

Father Mike Schmitz offers us the beginning of a list of popular misconceptions about what defines forgiveness. See 0:58:

First thing, forgiveness doesn’t mean you’re no longer hurt. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you have to be friends with this person again and forgiveness doesn’t mean that you trust them.

Sometimes, people think that forgiveness means like, “Okay, I mean, it’s okay. I don’t feel bad anymore.” or “I’m not angry anymore” or “I FEEL like I’ve forgiven them.”

You don’t have to feel like you’ve forgiven anyone at any point because forgiveness is not a matter of feeling, it’s a decision.

You don’t have to not be hurt anymore because, a lot of times, man, the stuff that people have done against us really, really hurts us, and so you don’t have to be past that hurt in order to be able to forgive or else we’d be stuck, you know, while we’re still hurting.

And thirdly, you don’t have to trust the person again in order to know that you’ve forgiven them, because sometimes if someone’s hurt you, they’ve kind of demonstrated that you shouldn’t trust them. And so, to trust them again would more be foolish than it would be forgiveness.

https://youtu.be/ZoyoFEmk3Vk?si=Z8Ve-YEmJ_5ys_dJ

—Ascension Presents, “Forgiveness,” YouTube video, 4:42 minutes, July 9, 2015

Anger is a wholly natural human response to perceived injustice or offensive acts of violence.

Moreover, the effects of trauma remain, at least for a time, because they instinctively operate as memories by which we learn how to survive, cope, and adapt in a dangerous world.

Robert Enright in Psychology Today astutely recognizes at least nine misconstructions of the meaning of forgiveness.

Forgiveness as Moving on

Forgiveness as Excusing

Forgiveness as Forgetting

Forgiveness as Calming Down

Forgiveness as Reconciliation

Forgiveness as an Abandonment of Justice

Forgiveness as Only Saying, “I Forgive You”

Forgiveness as a Depletion of One’s Emotional Energy

Forgiveness of Situations

He concludes, “If you are feeling ambivalent about forgiveness, try first to ascertain if you have been making an error in defining what it is. …You should not feel forced into forgiveness but instead drawn toward it because you see its value. Forgiveness is your choice when you are ready, and with the proper understanding of what it is and is not.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/the-forgiving-life/202608/what-forgiveness-is-not-and-why

—Robert Enright, Ph.D., “What Forgiveness Is Not and Why,” Psychology Today (August 20, 2026)

What is forgiveness, according to Father Mike? See 1:52:

I think we can only understand forgiveness in terms of justice, which means this: Justice is what I owe another person or what another person owes me.

And so, when it comes to forgiveness, it’s essentially saying, “I’m not going to make you pay me back what you owe me.” We go back to the gospel.

…[There] are…two different perspectives: One is “Pay me back what you owe me,” grabbing [the fellow servant] by the throat.

The other is, “I release you from your debt.”

…I release you from your debt. That is what forgiveness is, and it has to be coupled with justice.

Justice means, “I know what they owe me.” I know what they owe me. And if you’ve been hurt by someone or many people, incredibly, I think one step is, in a healthy place, if you could write down “What does someone owe you?” What does that person owe you?

…It’s then looking at this list and then saying, “Okay, with God’s grace, I set you free. With God’s grace, I’m not gonna make you pay me back.”

—Op. cit.

We agree with Father Mike that forgiveness is fundamentally an act of the will by which we surrender the justice that we rightly seek, to the judgment of God and his action thereby, for we recognize that he is perfect in all things.

Vengeance is mine and recompense. Surely, the Lord will do justice for his people. (Deuteronomy 32:35-36)

Deuteronomy 32:35 is memorably cited by Saint Paul in Romans 12:19:

Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

We submit that the first and most efficacious step on our journey to forgiveness is to pray for those who have offended us, because, indeed, whenever we pray for the offender, we are assured by Jesus that we have already begun to forgive, which is to show the mercy of God.

“But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful.” (Luke 6:27-28, 36)

God’s blessing, grace, and the peace to all.