Forgiveness is often preached as though it were easy and felt as though it were impossible. These passages were chosen because none of them pretends the wrong was small.
If you are the one who needs to apologise rather than to forgive, the last two are the place to start.
Worth saying plainly: forgiving someone is not the same as trusting them again, and nothing here requires you to pretend it is. Reconciliation needs two people. Forgiveness is the part that can begin with one.
Colossians 3 : 13
Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
It assumes the quarrel is real and that you may well be in the right. Forgiveness here is not a verdict on who was wrong; it is what you do after that is settled.
Ephesians 4 : 32
And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.
Tenderhearted sits oddly next to forgiving, and deliberately so. It rules out the version of forgiveness that is really just a colder kind of distance.
Matthew 6 : 14
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
The most uncomfortable verse in this set, because it ties the two directions together. It is included for that reason rather than in spite of it.
Psalm 103 : 12
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
A measurement chosen because it has no midpoint. East and west do not meet, which is the point being made about what has been removed.
Micah 7 : 18
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.
Written as astonishment rather than doctrine. If you are carrying something you believe is beyond pardon, this is the verse that was written for you.
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