How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You

You prayed about it in the spring. You said the words, and you meant them. Then in September their name came up at dinner, and your stomach tightened the way it did the week it happened. Now there are two things to carry: the hurt, and the worry that you never really forgave them at all.

You probably did. Forgiveness in the Gospels looks much more like a practice than a single moment, and the research on it says the same thing. This guide covers what forgiveness is and is not, what Jesus actually said in Matthew 18, a process you can walk through, and when it is time to ask for help.

What forgiveness is not

Most people who feel stuck are not stuck on forgiveness. They are stuck on something else that got bundled in with it. So start by setting four things side by side.

Only the first row is the thing you are being asked to do. If you have been trying to feel that it was fine, or to wipe the memory, or to make yourself trust them again, you have been attempting three jobs that forgiveness does not include. Our list of Bible verses about forgiveness walks through more of the passages and what they do not require.

Seventy-seven times: reading Matthew 18 in context

The best-known line on forgiveness is an answer to a question about arithmetic. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answers, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22, NIV).

Peter wanted to know when he could stop. Jesus gives him a number too large to keep track of. That only makes sense if forgiving is something you keep doing, not something you finish.

Then Jesus tells a story. A servant owes his king ten thousand bags of gold, a sum he could never repay. He begs for time, and the king does more than give him time: he cancels the whole debt. On his way out, the same servant finds a fellow servant who owes him a hundred silver coins, grabs him by the throat, and has him thrown into prison. When the king hears, he asks, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” (verse 33).

Three things in the story are easy to miss when only verse 22 gets quoted.

• The small debt is still a debt. A hundred silver coins was real money. Jesus does not say the second servant owed nothing. What was done to you counts.
• The order matters. The servant is forgiven first, and only then asked to forgive. The parable starts from mercy already received.
• The last line says “from your heart” (verse 35). That is a serious line, and it is also why this takes time. Hearts move slower than decisions.

The BibleProject’s guide to the Lord’s Prayer describes Jesus’ teaching this way: forgiveness begins with naming the wrongdoing, and then not seeking vengeance. Naming it comes first. You cannot release a debt you are pretending was never owed.

How Christians read the hard ending of this parable differs somewhat by tradition, and it is a good question to bring to your own pastor or priest.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things

This is the distinction that frees most people. Forgiveness is yours to give. Reconciliation is a relationship being rebuilt, and that needs the other person to tell the truth about what happened and to change.

Paul holds both ideas in one passage. “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone,” he writes, and then: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:18-19, NIV).

Notice the two phrases. “If it is possible” admits that sometimes peace with a person is not possible. “As far as it depends on you” admits that part of it does not. And handing vengeance to God is not the same as saying justice does not matter. It is saying justice is in better hands than yours.

So you can forgive someone and still keep your distance. You can forgive someone and still report what they did. You can forgive someone who never says sorry. A Focus on the Family article on how to forgive makes the same point from the other side: the only person you can control is yourself, and you can choose to forgive whether or not the other person acknowledges it.

A process you can walk through, and what the research says it takes

“Just forgive them” is not a method. Here is one that has been tested.

The psychologist Everett Worthington built a model called REACH, and in 2024 a team including researchers at Harvard published the largest trial of it so far. The International REACH Forgiveness trial, in BMJ Public Health, enrolled 4,598 adults in Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Africa and Ukraine, each of whom had been hurt by someone. Half were given a self-guided workbook right away. The other half waited two weeks.

After those two weeks, the group that had the workbook reported lower unforgiveness than the group still waiting, and lower depression and anxiety symptoms as well. The effect on unforgiveness was moderate in size; the effects on depression and anxiety were smaller. The follow-up was two weeks, so the trial cannot say how long the change lasts.

The five steps, as the paper lists them:

1. R: Recall the hurt. Name what happened, plainly, without making it smaller or larger than it was.
2. E: Empathise with the offender. Try to see the person who did it as a person. This is not excusing. It is refusing to turn them into only the worst thing they did.
3. A: Give an altruistic gift. The paper calls forgiveness an “undeserved gift.” For a Christian this is the centre of it: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13, NIV).
4. C: Commit. Make the forgiveness concrete. Write it down, say it aloud in prayer, or tell one trusted person.
5. H: Hold on. When the feeling returns, go back to what you committed to. You are not starting over.

Two details from the trial are worth keeping. First, the workbook took 2–3 hours, and the researchers note that the earlier version it was cut down from took seven. Forgiveness that takes you hours of honest work, spread over days, is going at the normal speed. Second, the workbook teaches two kinds of forgiveness: decisional (choosing not to seek payback) and emotional (the resentment actually easing). The decision can be made today. The emotion follows on its own schedule.

Steps one and four fit naturally into prayer. If you already look back over your day with the examen prayer, that is a ready-made place to name the hurt honestly. And if you do not have words for it yet, our guide on what to pray about when words run out can help you begin.

It is also worth being honest about what forgiveness does and does not do for you. A Harvard-led study of female nurses in the United States, using data from 54,703 women aged 43 to 64, found that those who reported more forgiveness of others later had more positive emotion and social connection and fewer depressive symptoms. It found little evidence of a link with physical health. That study is observational, so it shows an association and not a cause. Forgiveness is not a health hack. The authors themselves say it may be understood as a good in itself.

When the hurt comes back

It will. A song, a street, a photo, their name at dinner. The old anger arrives as if nothing had changed, and it is easy to conclude that the forgiveness was never real.

That is the moment “seventy-seven times” was said for. The count was always going to include the same person, and the same wound, more than once. The last step of REACH, hold on, exists because the researchers expected this as well. A returning feeling is not a cancelled decision. It is the next time.

What helps in that moment is small and repeatable. Say it again, briefly, to God: I have forgiven this. I am leaving it with You. Then do the next ordinary thing in front of you.

It also helps to return to the chapter. Matthew 18 is one chapter, and it reads differently on a calm morning than on a raw one. Read it this week, and again next week. A command you have read once tends to stay a command. A story you have lived in for a few mornings starts to become a habit of mind. This is the same idea behind grace days instead of streak resets: a hard day does not send you back to zero.

When to get help

Some hurts are too heavy to work through alone, and nothing in Scripture says you have to.

• If you are being harmed now, or might be, safety comes before anything in this guide. Forgiving someone does not mean staying within their reach. Tell someone you trust, and contact the authorities if you are in danger.
• If the hurt involved abuse, violence or betrayal by someone with power over you, a licensed counselor who works with trauma is the right companion for this, alongside prayer and not instead of it.
• If months have passed and the resentment is shaping your days, your sleep, your other relationships, talk with a pastor or priest. This is ordinary pastoral work, and they have walked other people through it.

If you do not have a church to turn to right now, our church finder lists churches in 54 US cities. We build an app; we are not pastors or counselors, and for a wound like this you deserve both.

Frequently asked questions

Does forgiving someone mean I have to trust them again?

No. Forgiveness is releasing the debt and your claim to get even, and you can do that on your own. Trust belongs to reconciliation, which is rebuilt over time and needs the other person to be honest and to change. Romans 12:18 says to live at peace with everyone if it is possible, as far as it depends on you.

What if I forgive someone and still feel angry?

That is common, and it does not mean the forgiveness was not real. The REACH forgiveness workbook separates decisional forgiveness, the choice not to seek payback, from emotional forgiveness, when the resentment itself eases. The decision can come first and the feelings can take much longer. When the anger returns, return to the decision.

Is it a sin not to forgive?

Jesus treats forgiveness very seriously. The parable of the unforgiving servant ends with a warning to forgive your brother or sister from your heart (Matthew 18:35). Scripture also shows forgiveness as something done many times, not once. If you are struggling to forgive, that struggle is worth bringing to a pastor or priest in your own tradition.

How do you forgive someone who is not sorry?

Forgiveness does not need the other person, so it does not need their apology. You name the wrong honestly, release your claim to pay it back, and leave justice with God, as Romans 12:19 describes. Reconciliation is different: without honesty and change from the other person, the relationship may stay at a distance.