The Long Game of Forgiveness: Releasing People Who Haven’t Apologised

There is a wound you have been carrying for a long time. You are having a hard time forgiving someone who has hurt you.

Maybe you know exactly when it happened. Maybe it was one moment — a betrayal, a cruelty, a word spoken or withheld that changed everything. Maybe it was accumulated — years of small wounds that together became something much larger, something that reshaped how you see yourself and how you trust other people.

And they haven’t apologised. Maybe they never will. Maybe they don’t even know the damage they caused. Maybe they know and don’t care. Maybe they have a version of events so different from yours that the apology will never come because, in their telling, there is nothing to apologise for.

You are left holding the weight of something they put down and walked away from. And somewhere along the way, someone told you that you need to forgive them. And that instruction, however well-meaning, has felt like a second injustice on top of the first.

Because how do you forgive someone who hasn’t asked?

This post is about what the Bible actually teaches about forgiveness — what it is, what it is not, and why the forgiveness God calls you to has very little to do with the other person and everything to do with your own freedom before Him.

What Forgiveness Is Not — Clearing the Ground First

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Reconciliation is the restoration of a relationship. It requires two parties — both the one who was wronged and the one who caused the harm. Reconciliation may or may not follow forgiveness. But forgiveness can happen without it. The internal release of the offence before God can happen regardless of what the other person does.

Forgiveness is not saying what happened was acceptable. The act of forgiving someone does not minimise the wrong they did. It does not excuse it, justify it, or pretend it did not happen. Joseph forgave his brothers — and he had named clearly what they did: “You intended to harm me.” (Genesis 50:20) He did not rewrite history to make their actions acceptable. He released them. The two are not the same.

Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is not the absence of pain. It is not waking up one day and feeling no hurt at all. Forgiveness is a choice — a deliberate act of the will, made before God, to release the debt the other person owes you. The feeling often follows, over time. But the choice comes first, and the choice is the forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Wisdom about who a person is, healthy caution about what they are capable of, appropriate boundaries around future access — none of these are incompatible with forgiveness. You can forgive and still be wise.

What Forgiveness Actually Is — the Biblical Definition

At its heart, Biblical forgiveness is the release of a debt. When someone wrongs you, they incur a debt to you. Unforgiveness is the decision to hold onto that debt, to keep an account, to remain owed something. Forgiveness is the decision to cancel it — not because it was not real, not because it did not cost you, but because you are choosing to release the claim.

Matthew 18:21–35 — the parable of the unmerciful servant — grounds this definition with striking force. A servant is forgiven an enormous debt by a king. He immediately demands repayment of a much smaller debt from a fellow servant. Jesus uses this parable to show that the person who has received God’s forgiveness is called to extend that same mercy to others.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”  — Ephesians 4:32

Just as in Christ God forgave you. God’s forgiveness of you did not wait for your comprehensive repentance to be in place before it was extended.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  — Romans 5:8

While we were still sinners. The forgiveness preceded the repentance. The love extended before the apology came. You are being called to extend to others what you have already received from God — a forgiveness that is not contingent on the other person’s response, because God’s forgiveness of you was not contingent on yours.

Why Holding Unforgiveness Harms You — Not Them

When you hold unforgiveness, the person who wronged you is free. They have moved on. They are living their life. The debt you are keeping account of is a weight they are not carrying. You are.

“See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”  — Hebrews 12:15

A bitter root. The image is agricultural — a root that, once established in the soil of the heart, grows and spreads and defiles everything it touches. Bitterness that begins in one wound contaminates the heart’s soil for everything that grows there — your joy, your faith, your capacity for love, your relationships with people who have nothing to do with the original wound.

The unforgiveness does not punish the person who hurt you. It punishes you. Acts 8:23 describes someone bound in bitterness as being in “the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.” Bond. Captivity. The one who refuses to forgive is not free. They are bound — to the person who hurt them, to the wound, to the past, to an account that keeps needing to be settled and never can be.

Forgiveness is not a gift you give to the person who hurt you. It is a gift you receive — the gift of your own freedom, released from the bondage of an account that was never truly yours to keep.

What Scripture Says About Forgiving the Unrepentant

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”  — Colossians 3:13

As the Lord forgave you. Not as the Lord forgave you once you had sufficiently repented. As the Lord forgave you — which is to say, while you were still in your sin, before your repentance was complete, before you had fully turned. The standard of forgiveness Scripture sets is not contingent on the other person’s response.

Jesus, on the cross, praying for the very people who were crucifying Him, said: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) Those people had not apologised. They were in the middle of the act. And Jesus extended forgiveness — not because they deserved it, not because they had asked, but because that is the nature of the God who was hanging on the cross.

You are not being asked to do this in your own strength. The forgiveness Scripture calls you to is a supernatural act, enabled by the grace of the same God who forgave you while you were yet a sinner. The call to forgive the unrepentant is inseparable from the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the one who is forgiving.

“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”  — Romans 12:19

Leave room for God’s wrath. The justice you are releasing is not being abandoned — it is being transferred. You are handing the account to the One who sees completely, who judges rightly, and who will repay according to what was done. Your forgiveness is not a declaration that the wrong didn’t matter. It is a declaration that you are no longer the one who needs to make it matter. God holds that.

What the Long Game of Forgiveness Actually Looks Like

Forgiveness is often not a single decision. It is a long game — a repeated, daily, sometimes moment-by-moment choosing to release what keeps being picked back up. The returning of bitterness, the resurfacing of the wound, the need to forgive again what you thought you had already released — this is the nature of forgiving deep wounds. Each time the bitterness surfaces, you bring it back to God. Each time the wound is re-opened, you release it again. This is not starting over. This is the long game of a forgiveness that is real, that is growing, and that — over time — produces the freedom it promises.

1. Name What Happened Honestly Before God

“Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”  — Psalm 62:8

Forgiveness begins with honesty. You cannot release what you have not named. Tell God specifically what was done, what it cost you, what you are still carrying. Do not minimise it. Do not spiritualise it prematurely. Bring the real wound — in all its weight — to the God who can hold it.

2. Make the Choice — Not as a Feeling, as an Act of Will

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  — Matthew 6:12

Forgiveness in Scripture is consistently framed as an action — something you do, not something that happens to you. Make the choice specifically, verbally, before God: Lord, I choose to forgive [person] for [specific act]. I release the debt. I am no longer keeping account. This is the act of your will aligning with what your spirit is choosing — the tangible expression of a decision made before the One who hears.

3. Release the Justice to God

Romans 12:19 — it is mine to avenge, says the Lord. As you forgive, specifically release the claim for justice into God’s hands. Lord, I am releasing [person] from what they did to me. I am not pretending it was not wrong. I am handing the account to You. You are the righteous Judge. I trust You with what was done. This is the act that makes forgiveness of the unrepentant possible — the transfer of the case from your own hands to God’s. You are not dropping the charges. You are filing them with the only Judge who can truly adjudicate them.

4. Return to the Choice When the Wound Resurfaces

“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’”  — Matthew 18:21–22

Not a limit. A posture. A willingness to forgive as many times as the wound resurfaces. When the bitterness comes back — and it will — return to the choice. You do not begin again from the beginning. You revisit the decision already made. Lord, I have already released this. I release it again now. I am choosing, again, not to hold this account.

5. Pray for the Person Who Wronged You

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  — Matthew 5:44

Pray for those who persecute you. Not to perform spirituality. But because the act of praying for someone — genuinely, specifically — shifts something in the heart that nothing else can. It is almost impossible to sustain bitterness toward someone you are genuinely praying for. Not because the prayer changes them — it may or may not. But because the prayer changes you. It moves your heart toward the posture of the Father who sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike.

The Bottom Line — Forgiveness Is Your Freedom

The person who wronged you may never apologise. They may never know the full extent of the damage they caused. Your forgiveness does not depend on any of that.

The call to forgive is not about them. It is about you — about the freedom that is available to the one who releases the account, who transfers the justice to God, who chooses the long game of releasing what was done rather than keeping it alive in the soil of their heart.

“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.”  — Colossians 3:15

The peace of Christ ruling in your heart is not compatible with a bitter root that keeps spreading. The freedom Christ died to give you is not available to a heart that is in bondage to unforgiveness.

Forgive. Not because they deserve it. Not because it was fair. Not because they asked. But because you have been forgiven far more than you will ever forgive — and because the freedom on the other side of the release is worth more than the account you have been keeping.

Leave it at the cross. That is where the debt was always going to have to go.