Sometimes you already know what the Bible teaches about forgiveness in general. What you need right now is something to actually hold onto while you try to forgive a specific person, or ask forgiveness for something specific you did. This page is built for that moment, not for a theology lesson.
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
Ephesians 4:32 (KJV)
Paul asks believers to be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven them.
Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
Colossians 3:13 (KJV)
Forgiveness here is practical: bear with each other and let go of any quarrel, following the pattern Christ set.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Matthew 6:14-15 (KJV)
Jesus closely links our forgiving others with receiving the Father’s forgiveness for ourselves.
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
Matthew 18:21-22 (KJV)
When Peter asks how many times to forgive, Jesus answers seventy times seven, meaning we should stop keeping count.
And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Mark 11:25 (KJV)
A reminder to release any grudge whenever we stand to pray, so nothing blocks our fellowship with God.
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
Luke 6:37 (KJV)
Jesus warns against judging and condemning and promises that those who forgive will be forgiven.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9 (KJV)
For anyone seeking pardon, this promise is plain: confess your sins and God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse.
He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalms 103:10-12 (KJV)
David rejoices that God does not repay us as our sins deserve but removes them as far as the east is from the west.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
Psalms 51:1-2 (KJV)
David’s own plea for mercy after serious failure gives words to anyone asking God to wash them clean.
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)
God invites His people to reason with Him and promises that sins red as scarlet can be made white as snow.
Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.
Micah 7:18-19 (KJV)
The prophet marvels at a God who delights in mercy and casts all our sins into the depths of the sea.
Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.
Luke 23:34 (KJV)
From the cross Jesus prays for those crucifying Him, the clearest picture of forgiving people who have not asked for it.
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:19-21 (KJV)
Rather than taking revenge, Paul says to leave judgment with God and overcome evil with good.
He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.
Proverbs 17:9 (KJV)
Covering an offence builds love, while repeating it again and again drives close friends apart.
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
Acts 3:19 (KJV)
Peter calls his hearers to repent and turn to God so that their sins may be blotted out.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Hebrews 8:12 (KJV)
God promises to be merciful toward our wrongs and to remember our sins no more.
For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee.
Psalms 86:5 (KJV)
God is described as good and ready to forgive, plenteous in mercy to all who call on him.
To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him;
Daniel 9:9 (KJV)
Daniel’s prayer rests on God’s mercies and forgivenesses, even after rebellion.
In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
Ephesians 1:7 (KJV)
Forgiveness of sins comes through Christ’s redemption, according to the riches of his grace.
Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.
Luke 17:3 (KJV)
Jesus teaches honest correction followed by ready forgiveness when a brother repents.
This idea surfaces more than once across Bible Verses For Forgiveness.
If you are about to talk to someone who hurt you, or someone you hurt, Colossians 3:13 is worth reading first: “forbearing one another, and forgiving one another… even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” Praying this verse before the conversation, rather than only after, can change how you walk into the room.
Forgiving yourself often feels harder than forgiving someone else. 1 John 1:9 is written specifically for this: “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The verse does not ask you to feel differently first; it simply states what happens when you confess honestly.
If you want to let someone know, in writing, that you have chosen to forgive them, Ephesians 4:32 works well as a short message on its own: kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiving one another, “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” It says what you mean without requiring you to explain everything all at once.
Some situations are severe enough that forgiveness feels genuinely out of reach in the moment. Mark 11:25 does not ask for a feeling; it asks for a choice, made in prayer, even before the feeling catches up. Praying “I choose to forgive, even though I do not feel it yet” is itself a legitimate use of this verse.
If old bitterness keeps resurfacing even after you thought you had dealt with it, Hebrews 12:15 warns about a “root of bitterness springing up” that troubles many. Praying this verse by name over a specific person or situation, repeated as often as the bitterness returns, is a practical and entirely biblical way to keep addressing it.
For the fuller biblical teaching behind these verses, Bible Verses About Forgiveness covers the theology in more depth. And since forgiveness and family relationships often intersect, Bible Verses About Family may also be relevant.
Long before the Bible verses for forgiveness in the New Testament were written, the story of Joseph in Genesis showed what forgiving a real betrayal looks like. His brothers threw him into a pit, sold him to traders, and let their father believe he was dead. Joseph spent years as a slave and then as a prisoner in Egypt for things he did not do. When those same brothers finally stood before him during a famine, he held the power to repay every wrong.
Joseph did not rush. He tested his brothers first to see whether they had changed, and he wept more than once before he told them who he was (Genesis 45). Forgiveness did not mean pretending nothing had happened. It meant refusing to use his power to punish. That distinction helps anyone who confuses forgiving with trusting again right away. Trust can be rebuilt slowly; forgiveness can be given now.
The key line comes after their father Jacob dies, when the brothers fear Joseph will finally take revenge. He answers, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20), and then promises to nourish them and their little ones. Joseph named the evil honestly and still left judgment with God, the same pattern Romans 12:19 teaches centuries later.
His life adds three lessons worth carrying into your own situation:
Reading the same few lines on a hurried day rarely goes deep. This plan spreads Bible verses for forgiveness across one week, with a short passage and a single question for each day. Read slowly, then write one honest sentence in response.
If a day’s question stirs up more than you expected, stay with that passage for another day rather than pushing ahead. The plan is a guide, not a race, and the Bible verses for forgiveness will still be there tomorrow.
Some people find it easier to pray when they have words to lean on. The prayer below draws on several Bible verses for forgiveness from this collection, and it leaves room for you to name a person or a situation. Pray it aloud if you can, pausing after each line.
“Father, thank You that You have not dealt with me after my sins, and that You have removed my transgressions as far as the east is from the west. I confess ___ to You now, trusting that You are faithful and just to forgive. Wash me and make me clean. I bring ___ before You. I release my right to get even and leave judgment in Your hands. When the hurt returns, give me grace to choose this again. Teach me to be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving as You have forgiven me in Christ. Amen.”
If the harm involved abuse or ongoing danger, forgiving does not require staying in harm’s way. A trusted pastor or a qualified counselor can help you think through safety and boundaries alongside prayer.
Short lines work best. Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me,” is brief enough to pray while driving or lying awake. Shorter still is the tax collector’s cry in Luke 18:13, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” and Jesus said that man went home justified.
Whether you meet with a small group or write alone, good questions help move these passages from memory into daily life. Choose two or three rather than rushing through them all.
For groups, agree beforehand that personal stories shared in the circle stay there. If you want to explore how forgiveness shapes the way we talk to God, read Bible verses for prayer and forgiveness, and for the link between mercy and love, see verses on forgiveness and love.
It is a pattern worth noticing throughout Bible Verses For Forgiveness.
Consider writing down whichever verse from this page matches your current situation and keeping it somewhere visible — a note on your phone, a card in a wallet, a sticky note by a mirror. Forgiveness rarely resolves in one sitting, and having the specific verse ready for the moments it resurfaces tends to help more than searching for it again each time.
Some of the hardest forgiveness situations involve a person who never acknowledges what they did. Romans 12:19’s instruction to leave vengeance to God, rather than take it into your own hands, is specifically written for exactly this kind of unresolved situation, where you may never receive the apology you are owed.
Bible Verses For Peace and Bible Verses About Eternal Life are good companions to this page.
Scripture quotations follow the King James Version; Blue Letter Bible lets you read each one alongside its chapter.
For a related angle, see Bible Verses For Angels and Protection or Bible Verses For God's Grace.
Two nearby collections worth opening next are Bible Verses For Spiritual Growth and Bible Verses For Friendship and Loyalty.
If you want to keep reading, Bible Verses For Healing Sickness and Bible Verses For God's Timing sit close to this topic.
This connects to a thread found elsewhere in Bible Verses For Forgiveness.
Comparing translations can help, and Bible Gateway does that for free.
To trace a verse through the rest of Scripture, the cross-references on Bible Hub are useful.
Whichever specific situation brought you here, these verses are meant to be used, not just read once. Return to whichever one fits your exact circumstance, as many times as you need to.
These verses were never meant to sit on a page as decoration \u2014 they’re meant to shape how you actually respond the next time you’re the one who needs to be forgiven and can’t seem to forgive yourself.
You don’t need polished or formal language for it \u2014 an honest, plainly worded sentence is enough, something as simple as telling God directly to receive the same mercy you’d extend to anyone else.
When Paul writes in Ephesians 4:32 that we should be “forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you,” the Greek verb underneath is charizomai. It grows out of the word for grace. So the picture is not a judge quietly dropping charges. It is someone handing over a gift they were under no obligation to give. That changes the feel of the command. You are not being asked to pretend the injury never happened. You are being asked to give something away, and the something is your claim to collect.
The other word you keep meeting in the Gospels is aphiemi, with its noun aphesis. Its plain sense is to send away or release, the way you would let a boat slip its mooring or cancel what a neighbor owes you. Ephesians 1:7 uses the noun when it speaks of “the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Once you hear the release behind the English, Mark 11:25 stops sounding abstract: “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any.” Picture yourself standing there with your hands open. Hard to hold a grudge and an open hand at the same time.
Neither word promises a warm feeling. Feelings usually straggle in weeks or months behind the decision, and Scripture seems comfortable with that delay. Both words describe a choice about a debt, made in the presence of God. The affection, if it ever returns, comes later and on its own schedule.
Peter asks how many times he has to forgive, Jesus answers with seventy times seven, and then he tells a story people remember mostly for its ending. A king settles accounts with a servant who owes ten thousand talents. A single talent was a very large sum, many years of a laborer’s wages, so ten thousand is a number built to be ridiculous. Nobody could ever pay it. The servant falls down and begs for time, and the king, moved with compassion, wipes the whole thing out (Matthew 18:23-27).
Then comes the sting. On his way out the forgiven man runs into a fellow servant who owes him a hundred pence, a few months’ pay, and he grabs him by the throat. When the king hears, the story closes with a sentence I have never been able to soften: “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his trespasses” (Matthew 18:35).
Read slowly, that line is not aimed at the person who is struggling. It is aimed at the one who was released from an enormous debt and then acts as though he never heard of mercy. A hundred pence is real money, and what happened to you is real too. But set beside what has been cancelled on your behalf, the arithmetic starts to shift. That shift is what the parable is for.
A lot of people have been told that forgiveness means going straight back to how things were. The Bible does not say that. Luke 17:3 reads, “Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” Notice the order. The wrong gets named out loud, and repentance has a seat at the table. That is a long way from swallowing the hurt and smiling across the next holiday dinner.
Forgiveness releases the debt. Trust is rebuilt separately, and it depends on changed behavior over time. Proverbs 17:9 says, “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.” Covering a wrong in love means you stop rehearsing it to everyone who will listen. It does not mean you hand the same person your house keys or your bank password the next morning.
One honest caution. If someone has been violent, controlling or abusive toward you, forgiving them in your heart does not require you to stay within their reach. Safety comes first, and a pastor or a trained counselor can help you sort out what forgiveness looks like from a distance. God sees the whole situation. He is not asking you to be a doormat.
Micah wrote to people who had run out of excuses. Yet near the end of his book he stops and asks, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity?” (Micah 7:18), and then he says God will “cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (7:19). Micah lived among dry hills. The sea was the place where things went and did not come back. Think of a fisherman on the shore, throwing something heavy as far out as he can and watching the water close over it.
Psalm 103:12 reaches for distance instead of depth: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” East and west never meet. Go north long enough and you eventually start heading south, but travel east and you simply keep going east. The psalmist picked the one direction pair with no turning point.
Both pictures describe God’s side of the ledger, and they offer a pattern for ours with one gentle adjustment. We are rarely able to forget. A memory can come up on an ordinary Tuesday while you are loading the dishwasher. When it does, you are not failing. You can quietly hand it over again, and tell God plainly that it still stings. Forgiving and never mentioning the wrong as a weapon is a goal a person can actually reach.
Other collections you may find useful: Bible Verses About Sin and Forgiveness, Bible Verses About Forgiveness and Love, Bible Verses For Forgiveness and Love, Bible Verses For Grace and Forgiveness and Bible Verses For Prayer and Forgiveness.
To study these verses in more depth, try Bible Gateway, Bible Hub and Bible Study Tools.
Mark 11:25 works well spoken simply: “forgive, if ye have ought against any.” Saying it as a short, repeated prayer, even before you feel ready, is a legitimate way to use this verse.
Matthew 5:23-24 is often used this way, since it instructs going directly to reconcile with someone before continuing on with worship, treating the relationship as urgent enough to address first.
That is common, and Scripture does not treat forgiveness as a one-time event that never needs revisiting. Returning to a verse like Colossians 3:13 as often as needed, rather than expecting to “finish” forgiving in a single moment, is a realistic and biblical approach.
