How Do I Forgive Someone Who Really Hurt Me?

The short answer: Forgiving someone means letting go of your right to pay them back and handing the case to God. It doesn’t mean pretending it was OK, trusting them straight away, or staying somewhere unsafe. It’s often slow and hard, and God helps you do what you can’t do on your own.

Someone hurt you, and not in a small way. Maybe a friend betrayed you, a parent let you down, or someone bullied you for years. Then a Christian says, “You need to forgive them,” and it feels like being hurt all over again. Isn’t that just letting them off?

What forgiveness is not

A lot of the pain around forgiveness comes from misunderstanding it. So let’s clear some ground.

• It isn’t pretending it was OK. Forgiveness only makes sense if something was really wrong. You can’t forgive what didn’t matter.
• It isn’t forgetting. You may remember for the rest of your life. Forgiving is about what you do with the memory.
• It isn’t trusting them again straight away. Trust is earned back over time, if at all. Jesus said, “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him” (Luke 17:3). Truth comes first.
• It isn’t staying somewhere unsafe. “The prudent see danger and take cover” (Proverbs 22:3). You can forgive someone from a distance.
• It isn’t keeping quiet. If someone is hurting you or anyone else, especially if it’s abuse, tell a trusted adult. If the person is a parent or a church leader, tell another trusted adult, such as a teacher, a school counsellor or a relative. Forgiving never means keeping abuse secret, and if it was done to you, it is not your fault.

What forgiveness is

At its heart, forgiveness is a decision to stop trying to make someone pay. Paul writes, “Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for God’s wrath” (Romans 12:19). God says He will repay, so you don’t have to.

That’s important. Forgiveness isn’t saying justice doesn’t matter. It’s trusting that God will deal with it better than you can. You hand the case to the only perfect Judge. Sometimes that includes going to the police or the school, and those are part of justice, not the opposite of forgiveness.

Why forgive at all?

Because we’ve been forgiven. “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Jesus taught us to pray, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). And on the cross, while people were mocking Him, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

And because bitterness slowly poisons the person who carries it. The Bible warns about a “root of bitterness” that springs up “to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:15). Holding on to a grudge can feel like holding a rope that keeps the other person tied to you. Forgiveness lets go of the rope.

Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. Years later, with all the power in his hands, he told them, “what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good” (Genesis 50:20). He didn’t pretend it was fine. He called it evil. But he refused to let it have the last word.

How do you actually do it?

You may not feel ready, and that’s honest. Forgiveness often starts as a choice before it becomes a feeling. You might pray something like, “God, I don’t feel like forgiving them. But I don’t want to carry this forever. Help me.”

Often you’ll need to forgive the same thing again and again, as the memory comes back. When Peter asked how many times to forgive, Jesus answered, “not just seven times, but seventy-seven times!” (Matthew 18:22). That doesn’t only mean seventy-seven different wrongs. Sometimes it’s one big wrong you have to let go of seventy-seven times.

It also helps to tell your story to someone safe: a parent, a youth leader, a counsellor. Big hurts need talking through, not just praying through.

Think about it: Which part of forgiveness do you find hardest to believe: that you can do it without pretending, or that God will handle the justice?

Go deeper: Corrie ten Boom (For Teens) — this chapter tells, honestly and carefully, Corrie’s own account of meeting a former guard from Ravensbrück who asked for her forgiveness, how she could not feel it and asked Jesus for His love instead, and how she found that forgiveness had to be given again and again. Start with chapter 13, “The Hand Held Out”.