Ask FGBC #23: Can you forgive someone who has not apologized or asked for forgiveness

Jim Butler

Can a Christian forgive someone who has never apologized or asked for forgiveness? Drawing on Mark 11:25 and the pattern of divine deliverance in Judges 13, the answer is yes — there is biblical warrant for unilateral forgiveness, and the alternative is bitterness, which is both spiritually harmful and sinful. An important distinction is pressed between interpersonal forgiveness, which Christians are called to extend regardless of the offender's response, and civic justice, which makes its own legitimate demands: forgiving a criminal does not suspend the civil magistrate's obligation to punish crime.