20 Bible Verses About Unforgiveness

Matthew 6:14-15

“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Reflection: Jesus adds these two sentences directly after the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. They take up one line of the prayer, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12), and state it both ways: forgiving others and refusing to.

Mark 11:25

“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

Reflection: The saying closes a short piece of teaching on prayer that begins “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22). Having told the disciples that whatever they ask in prayer, believing, will be theirs, Jesus adds a command for the one praying: forgive. The wording is wide, “anything against anyone,” and it says nothing about whether the other person has apologised.

Luke 6:37

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Reflection: In Luke’s Sermon on the Plain the command comes straight after “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Judging, condemning and forgiving are each paired with what comes back, and the next verse adds giving and states the rule: “with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Matthew 18:21-22

“Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”

Reflection: Peter asks whether seven times is enough. Jesus answers with seventy-seven, the same number that appears in Lamech’s boast of revenge in Genesis 4:24: “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.” The next verse begins “Therefore” and goes into the parable of the unforgiving servant.

Matthew 18:35

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Reflection: The last line of the parable. A king forgives a servant a debt of ten thousand talents; that servant then seizes a fellow servant who owes him a hundred denarii and has him put in prison. The king’s question in verse 33 carries the story, “should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?”, and Jesus applies it to his hearers with the words “from your heart.”

Luke 17:3-4

“Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

Reflection: Luke’s version of the saying includes two steps that Matthew 18:22 does not state: the one wronged rebukes, and the offender repents. It comes after a warning against causing “one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:2). The repentance can come seven times in a day, and each time the answer is to forgive.

Matthew 5:23-24

“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Reflection: Here the grievance runs the other way: the brother “has something against you.” Jesus has just widened the command against murder to take in anger and insult (Matthew 5:21-22), and he puts reconciliation ahead of the offering at the altar. Verse 25 adds, “Come to terms quickly with your accuser.”

2 Corinthians 2:10-11

“Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.”

Reflection: A member of the church at Corinth had caused pain and been punished “by the majority” (2 Corinthians 2:6). Paul tells them the punishment is enough and that they should “forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2:7). He joins his forgiveness to theirs, “so that we would not be outwitted by Satan.”

Hebrews 12:15

“See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”

Reflection: The verse follows “Strive for peace with everyone” (Hebrews 12:14). The ESV prints “root of bitterness” in quotation marks: it draws on Deuteronomy 29:18, which warns against “a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit” among people turning away from the Lord. The harm reaches past the bitter person, since “by it many become defiled.”

Ephesians 4:26-27

“Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”

Reflection: The command allows anger and sets a limit on it: it is to be dealt with before sunset. Anger kept longer gives “opportunity to the devil.” A few verses later Paul lists anger again among the things to be “put away” (Ephesians 4:31).

Ephesians 4:31

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”

Reflection: The list runs from bitterness and anger to what is said out loud, clamor and slander, and ends with malice. Just before it Paul writes, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). The next verse gives what is to take their place: kindness, tenderness and forgiveness.

Proverbs 10:12

“Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.”

Reflection: The proverb sets hatred and love against each other by what each does with a wrong. Hatred stirs up strife; love covers offenses, and the proverb says “all” of them.

Proverbs 19:11

“Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”

Reflection: Slowness to anger comes from “good sense,” and overlooking an offense is called a person’s glory. Psalm 103:8 says the same of the Lord, that he is “slow to anger.”

1 John 4:20

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Reflection: John will not let a claim to love God stand beside hatred of a brother, and argues from what is seen to what is not: the brother “whom he has seen,” God “whom he has not seen.” The next verse makes it a command: “whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Ephesians 4:32

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Reflection: The last verse of Ephesians 4 answers the list of bitterness, wrath and malice in verse 31 with kindness and forgiveness. The measure is what God has already done: “as God in Christ forgave you.”

Colossians 3:13

“Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Reflection: Paul lists what believers are to “put on”: compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience (Colossians 3:12). “If one has a complaint against another” assumes real grievances inside the church. The standard matches Ephesians 4:32, and verse 14 adds love, “which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Isaiah 43:25

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

Reflection: God speaks to Israel, whom he has just accused: “you have burdened me with your sins; you have wearied me with your iniquities” (Isaiah 43:24). The forgiveness is given “for my own sake,” and includes a decision about memory: “I will not remember your sins.”

Psalm 103:12

“…as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

Reflection: The psalm says of the Lord that “he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever” (Psalm 103:9) and that he does not “repay us according to our iniquities” (103:10). The distance from east to west is the measure of how far he removes transgressions.

Luke 23:34

“And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”

Reflection: Jesus prays this at the place called The Skull, where he is crucified between two criminals. He asks the Father to forgive those putting him to death and gives a reason, that they do not know what they are doing. The same verse goes on to the soldiers casting lots for his clothes, and the rulers scoff in the next.

Genesis 50:19-20

“But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.’”

Reflection: After their father’s death Joseph’s brothers were afraid he would “pay us back for all the evil that we did to him,” and sent a message asking him to forgive them (Genesis 50:15-17). Joseph wept. His answer does not use the word forgive: he calls what they did evil, refuses to take God’s place as judge, and goes on, “I will provide for you and your little ones” (50:21).