What does the Bible say about forgiveness?
Forgiveness is one of the New Testament's most insistent themes, and it is taught together with the question of limits. In Matthew's Gospel, Peter asks, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?" Jesus' answer — "seventy times seven"…
Forgiveness is one of the New Testament's most insistent themes, and it is taught together with the question of limits. In Matthew's Gospel, Peter asks, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?" Jesus' answer — "seventy times seven" — is not a ceiling but a way of saying the count is not kept. The parable that follows tells of a servant forgiven an enormous debt who then seizes another man by the throat over a small one; the source of forgiving is having been forgiven. The Lord's Prayer draws the same connection: "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." Paul's letters translate this posture into community life: "And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you." The Bible does not present forgiveness as minimizing the wrong; the one who forgives acknowledges the harm as real but relinquishes the claim to retaliation. Luke's Gospel records Jesus saying from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing" — the teaching exemplified at its outermost limit by its own teacher. And the father who runs to meet his son in the parable of the lost son pictures forgiveness not as a cold declaration of amnesty but as the repair of a relationship. The forgiveness theme is gathered on this site's topic page with its key chapters; the reference chips link straight to the text.