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You have played it out in your head more times than you want to admit. The apology. The moment they finally understand what they did. Maybe you have even written the reply you would give, the calm one, the one that shows you have grown.
It has not come. It might never come. And you are still carrying the whole thing around like a bag you cannot set down, wondering how to forgive someone who isn’t sorry when they have not handed you the one thing that seems to start the process.
So I went looking at the texts people quote in this situation, expecting the usual. What I found was stranger and more useful than that. The most famous act of forgiveness in the Bible was not spoken after an apology. It was spoken out loud while the offense was still in progress.
The Most Famous Forgiveness Was Spoken Mid-Offense
Luke puts it in one short line, in the middle of the worst hour of Jesus’s life:
“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)
Read that verse again, all the way to the end. Most of us stop at the comma. But Luke keeps the sentence going, and what he puts next is not a pause, or a change of heart, or a single soldier looking up. It is the soldiers going through Jesus’s clothes and gambling over them.
The forgiveness and the offense are in the same verse. Nobody had stopped. Nobody had said sorry. Nobody had even noticed. Jesus forgave people who were, in that exact moment, still taking things from him.
And the early church clearly understood it that way, because one of them did the same thing. When Stephen was being stoned to death, Luke records his last words: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). Mid-offense again. Stones still coming. No apology on the way.
That is a very different picture from the one most of us carry, where forgiveness is a receipt you hand someone once they have paid.
But Jesus Also Said “If He Repent, Forgive Him”
Here is the part I did not expect, and I think it is the part that actually helps.
The same writer, Luke, records Jesus saying something that sounds like the opposite:
“Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” (Luke 17:3, KJV)
Rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. The next verse doubles down: seven times in a day, and seven times he turns back saying “I repent,” and seven times you forgive (Luke 17:4).
So which is it? Forgive people who are still swinging, or forgive people who come back and say the words?
They are not the same act, and noticing that is what unlocks this whole thing. Luke 23 is Jesus letting go of what was owed to him, out loud, without any input from the people who owed it. Luke 17 is about a brother who keeps coming back to you, and what you owe him when he does. One is about your grip. The other is about their return.
Most articles about forgiveness quietly blend those two into one blurry instruction, and that is exactly why the advice never lands. You cannot do the Luke 17 version alone. You can always do the Luke 23 version alone. That is the whole point of it.
Joseph’s Brothers Sent a Messenger, Not Themselves
The other story people reach for is Joseph, and it is usually told as the happy ending where the brothers finally apologise. Go back and read what actually happens after their father dies.
“And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil.” (Genesis 50:16-17, KJV)
Three things sit in that sentence that most retellings walk straight past.
They sent a messenger. They did not come. The men who sold their brother into slavery handled their apology the way you handle a difficult email, by getting someone else to deliver it.
They put the words in their dead father’s mouth. “Thy father did command before he died.” Genesis never records Jacob saying that. Not once, anywhere in the book. It may have happened off the page and simply gone unwritten. It may not have. The text does not tell us, and it is worth being honest about that rather than tidying it up in either direction. What we can say for certain is that the only person who could confirm it had just been buried.
And they only did it after the funeral. Genesis says plainly what they were afraid of: that with Jacob gone, Joseph would finally take his revenge. This is not remorse arriving. This is risk management.
Then comes the line that undoes me every time. “And Joseph wept when they spake unto him” (Genesis 50:17). Not because it was beautiful. Because after all those years, this was the best they could manage. A note, through a third party, quoting a man who could no longer be asked.
Only after that do they show up in person and fall on their faces (Genesis 50:18). And notice what Joseph says back. He never says “I forgive you.” He says:
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Genesis 50:20, KJV)
He names it. Ye thought evil. He does not soften it, does not say it was fine, does not pretend the years in the pit and the prison were a misunderstanding. He just no longer holds the outcome of his life in their hands. He had stopped waiting on them a long time before they ever sent that messenger.
Forgiving Someone Is Not the Same as Trusting Them Again
This is the part that matters most, and it is the part this kind of article usually blurs.
Letting go of what someone owes you is not the same as giving them access to you again. Joseph forgave his brothers. He also spent years being extremely careful with them, testing them, watching what they did before he ever revealed who he was. Forgiveness did not mean pretending nothing had happened.
If you are reading this about someone who hurt you badly, and some part of you has been bracing because you assumed the conclusion would be “so go back,” it is not. Nothing in these texts requires you to hand yourself back to someone who is still dangerous. Scripture holds honour and distance together more often than we admit, and the question of whether going no contact can be biblical is worth sitting with on its own.
Two different doors. One of them, the one about your own grip, you can open today, by yourself, with nobody’s cooperation.
Forgiveness is something you do. It is not something they hand you.
How to Forgive Someone Who Isn’t Sorry, Starting Today
Waiting for an apology puts the timing of your own peace inside another person’s schedule. And if they are not sorry, that schedule is empty. There is no date on it. You are not waiting for a late train; you are standing on a platform where nothing is coming.
What Jesus did on that cross, and what Joseph had already done years before his brothers ever wrote, was take the release out of the other person’s hands entirely. Not because the offense was small. Because the waiting was costing them a life they were still living.
That is also why this is not the same thing as swallowing it. Joseph said “ye thought evil against me” out loud, to their faces. Naming the thing accurately is part of putting it down, not the opposite of it. If you have been sitting on this a long while, what the Bible actually says about holding a grudge is gentler than most people expect.
Three Things You Can Do Today
- Say the sentence out loud, alone. Not to them. In your kitchen, in the car, walking to work. “I am letting go of what you owe me.” It will feel false the first time. Say it anyway. Jesus said his out loud too, and nobody who needed to hear it was listening.
- Write down exactly what they took. Two lines, no more. Not what you wish they would say, but what was actually lost. Joseph could name it precisely, and naming it precisely is what let him set it down instead of carrying a vague heavy thing for another decade.
- Delete the reply you have been drafting. The one in your notes app, or the one you keep rehearsing in the shower. That draft is the receipt you are waiting to sign. As long as it exists, you are still expecting them to go first.
Journaling Prompts
- If the apology arrived tomorrow, word for word the way you have imagined it, what would actually change in your life by the end of that week? Be specific and be honest.
- Joseph’s brothers sent a messenger instead of coming themselves. Where have you accepted a smaller version of something from someone, and what did it cost you to accept it quietly?
- What are you afraid letting go of this would mean about what happened to you?
A Prayer You Can Pray Right Now
God, I have been waiting for an apology that is not coming, and I am tired. I do not want to pretend it did not happen, and I do not think you are asking me to. But I am done letting the person who hurt me decide when I get to breathe again. Help me set this down today, even if my hands do not want to open. And if I have to do it again tomorrow, help me do it again tomorrow.
If praying out loud is hard right now, our free Am I Ready to Forgive? assessment walks you through where you actually are with this, in about two minutes, with no right answers to perform.
Let’s Talk About It
Do you think forgiving someone without an apology lets them off the hook, or takes them off yours? Tell us in the comments.
Share This
- The most famous forgiveness in the Bible was spoken while the offense was still happening. Nobody had stopped. Nobody had said sorry. That changes everything about who has to go first.
- Joseph’s brothers sent a messenger with their apology, and quoted a command from a father who had just been buried. He forgave them anyway. He had stopped waiting on them long before.
- Forgiveness is something you do. It is not something they hand you.
Q&A
Do you have to forgive someone who isn’t sorry?
Forgiving someone who has not apologised is possible, and the Bible’s clearest example of it happens without any apology at all. In Luke 23:34, Jesus says “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” while he is being crucified, and the same verse goes on to describe the soldiers dividing his clothes. Nobody had stopped, and nobody had apologised. Forgiveness in that moment was an act he performed, not a response to something he received.
Is forgiving someone the same as trusting them again?
No. Releasing what someone owes you and giving them access to your life again are two separate decisions. Joseph forgave his brothers in Genesis 50, but he had spent a long time testing them carefully before revealing who he was, and he named their wrongdoing plainly to their faces rather than pretending it had not happened. A person can forgive fully and still keep distance, especially where there is ongoing danger.
Didn’t Jesus say to forgive only if someone repents?
Luke 17:3 does say “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” That passage is about what you owe someone who keeps returning to you and admitting fault, even seven times in one day. It sits alongside Luke 23:34, where Jesus releases people who had not repented at all. The two describe different situations: one concerns restored relationship after a person turns back, the other concerns letting go of a debt regardless of what the other person does.
Did Joseph’s brothers really apologise to him?
Genesis 50:16-17 records that Joseph’s brothers sent a messenger rather than coming themselves, and that the message claimed their father Jacob had commanded them before his death to ask Joseph’s forgiveness. Genesis never records Jacob giving that instruction anywhere in the book, though the text does not say whether it happened unrecorded. The brothers acted only after Jacob’s burial, because they feared Joseph would now take revenge. Joseph wept when he heard it, and forgave them anyway.
How long does it take to forgive someone who hurt you?
There is no fixed timeline, and treating forgiveness as a single completed event is often what makes people feel they have failed at it. It is more usefully understood as a decision that may need repeating, sometimes daily, as the memory returns. What changes first is usually not the feeling but the waiting: the moment a person stops making their own peace conditional on an apology that may never arrive.
