You thought you were over it.
And then you saw their name pop up on your phone. Or someone mentioned them in conversation. Or you drove past that place — you know the one — and suddenly it's all right there again. The anger. The hurt. The memory of exactly what they did and how it felt.
I used to think I was pretty good at forgiveness. I'm a pastor after all. I've preached on it. I've quoted the right verses from the Bible and looked very sincere doing it. But it turns out there's a significant gap between knowing what the Bible says about forgiveness and actually doing it when it's your turn.
I learnt this the hard way.
My mum walked out when I was four years old. I spent the next thirteen years not knowing where she was, what she looked like, or why she left. When I finally tracked her down at seventeen, I wanted it to work more than I'd wanted anything. We wrote to each other and we eventually met. For a while, it felt like something broken was starting to heal.
It didn't last.
One day she said something that set me off. All those years of stored-up hurt and anger — the missed birthdays, the questions I never got answered, being alone without my mum, these all found an easy target. I sat down and wrote her a letter spewing all of that pain onto paper and threw it straight at her.
We didn't speak again for the next ten years. She wasn't at my wedding. She missed the births of her grandkids. One letter. One moment I couldn't ever take back.
Hurt people hurt people.
Here's what I've figured out though and, I don't think anyone really explains this properly, forgiveness isn't a feelings problem. It's a debt problem.
When someone wrongs you, your gut tells you something is owed. We even talk like that without thinking about it. “They need to pay for what they did.” “Someone has to answer for this.” That instinct isn't wrong. Something is owed. A real wrong creates a real debt.
Proverbs says: “An offended friend is harder to win back than a fortified city. Arguments separate friends like a gate locked with bars.” (Proverbs 18:19, NLT)
I used to skim past that one. Now I think the writer of Proverbs probably had a very specific person in mind when he wrote it.
So what do you actually do with the debt?
Here's the bit nobody likes. You've got two choices. You make them pay — or you absorb it yourself. That's it. I've looked for another way out of this for years but it doesn't exist.
Making them pay looks different for different people. For some it's the cold shoulder, the story you keep telling yourself, the relationship you quietly tank. For others it's a bitterness that's been running at a low hum in your life for so long that you've stopped noticing it's even there. You're not angry anymore. You're just… careful. You call it wisdom.
It isn't always wisdom.
The Apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus writes: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behaviour. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32, NLT)
He gets that you're in pain. But he's saying the bitterness is doing more damage to you than it ever will to them. You're the one still paying for it.
Absorbing the debt means you stop holding out. You're not saying what happened was okay. You're not saying you trust them. You're not obligated to go for coffee with them. You're just releasing the claim. Deciding to stop waiting for payment that probably isn't coming from someone who may not even know they owe you.
I'll be honest, doing this on your own is close to impossible. Which is where the cross comes in, and I mean that as a real answer, not a Sunday school one.
Jesus absorbed a debt he had no part in creating. The most innocent life ever lived chose to carry what everyone else owed. And the grace extended to us – full cancellation, no repayment plan, no conditions – is what gives us any actual capacity to do the same for someone else. You can't give away what you haven't received.
“Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” (Colossians 3:13-14, NLT)
That's it. That's the whole thing.
We forgive because we've been forgiven.
One last thing and this matters more than people realise.
Forgiveness isn't the same as reconciliation. Two completely different things. You can release the debt without going back to the relationship. You can forgive someone who will never say sorry. You can forgive someone who is no longer alive. It doesn't require their participation. That part happens between you and God — quietly, privately, sometimes more than once for the same wound on the same person you thought you'd already dealt with.
I felt God prompting me for years to go back to my mum. It took a long time to find the courage and humility to actually do it. When I finally did, we were at my grandfather's funeral. I found her sitting alone under a tree outside the church. I walked over and got down on one knee. I took her hand and apologised. She grabbed me. We hugged, cried and she didn't let go.
I'm so grateful God gave me that moment.
We lost her to cancer a few years later. I think about that moment often. About what it would have cost me if I'd waited any longer.
The wounds don't disappear overnight. But at some point, if you let them, they stop bleeding. And somewhere along the way you realise something you didn't see coming.
The person locked in the prison of your unforgiveness this whole time?
It was never them.
It was you.
Want to stop letting the past hold you hostage?
This idea — the debt of unforgiveness, why releasing it feels impossible, and what actually makes it work — is what Vijay Krishnan unpacked in this week's message, Why Forgiveness Feels Impossible (And What Actually Makes It Work). Watch it here.
Then continue the conversation as Jeff, Dom Russo and Vijay Krishnan unpack it further in this week's bonus podcast.
