How to Forgive Someone Who Isn’t Actually Sorry
They may never apologize.
I know that is a hard sentence to read.
Maybe you have been waiting years for a conversation that still has not happened. You have imagined the moment when they finally understand what they did, finally acknowledge what it cost you, finally say the words you have needed to hear.
And every year, the phone does not ring.
There is a question I have asked people many times over the years, and it is worth sitting with before you read any further:
How long are you willing to let their silence set the terms of your healing?
Because waiting for an apology can quietly give the person who hurt you a second kind of power. They wounded you once, and now your recovery depends upon whether they ever decide to acknowledge it.
I have watched people spend years in that waiting room.
Some were waiting for a parent to admit what happened. Some for a former spouse. Some for a friend, a family member, a church member, or someone they once trusted completely.
The apology never came.
But healing still could.
That is the part I want you to see.
Forgiveness Is Not What Many People Think It Is
Sometimes people tell me, “I just can’t forgive them.” When we talk long enough, I often discover that what they are resisting is not actually forgiveness. It is something God never required of them in the first place.
Forgiveness does not mean saying the offense did not matter.
It mattered.
If someone betrayed you, abused your trust, damaged your reputation, abandoned you, lied to you, or took something from your life that cannot be returned, forgiveness does not require you to rename that wound as something small.
Minimizing an offense is not grace. Sometimes it is simply denial wearing religious clothes.
Forgiveness also does not mean trusting the person again.
Forgiveness can be given. Trust has to be rebuilt.
Those are different things.
A person can be forgiven and still remain unsafe. You can release resentment without reopening a relationship that continues to cause harm. Reconciliation requires something from both people. Forgiveness can begin in one heart.
That distinction has helped many people who thought God was asking them to walk back into the same situation that wounded them.
He is not asking you to become foolish in order to prove that you are forgiving.
Forgiveness is not pretending you feel differently than you do either.
You can forgive someone while tears are still on your face.
The feeling may take longer than the decision.
Sometimes much longer.
The Debt You Cannot Collect
For years I have thought of unforgiveness as carrying an unpaid debt.
You did not create the debt. The person who hurt you did.
Something was taken.
Maybe it was trust. Maybe it was part of your childhood. Maybe it was a marriage, a reputation, a relationship, years of peace, or simply the version of yourself that existed before the wound.
There is a part of us that naturally wants the account settled.
You owe me.
And sometimes that is absolutely true.
The trouble is that certain debts cannot be collected.
You can hold the account open for twenty years and the person who owes you may never pay it. They may never admit it. They may never understand it. They may even go on with their life while you continue carrying the evidence of what they did.
That is where bitterness becomes dangerous.
I have taught for years that bitterness can become a festering sickness of the soul because it forces us to keep revisiting the trespass. The event may have happened once, but resentment can make us relive it a thousand times.
Romans 12:19 says, “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”
Notice what God does not say.
He does not say the wrong was acceptable.
He does not say justice no longer matters.
He tells us that vengeance belongs somewhere other than our hands.
Forgiveness is not declaring the debt imaginary.
It is saying, I am no longer going to spend my life trying to collect it.
You hand the case to God.
And that changes something important, because the person who hurt you no longer gets to decide whether you are allowed to become free.
Before Anyone Said They Were Sorry
There is a scene at the cross that has always been difficult for me to get away from.
Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
No apology had been offered.
No one had stopped the crucifixion.
The soldiers were still there. The injustice was still happening.
Yet Jesus would not let the evil being done to Him determine what would live inside Him.
First Peter says of Christ that when He suffered, “he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23).
That word matters.
He committed the matter to His Father.
That is very different from pretending nothing happened.
Forgiveness does not require you to call evil good. It allows you to stop carrying the responsibility for making the offender pay.
You entrust justice to God.
That is why another person’s refusal to apologize does not have to keep you imprisoned. Their repentance matters deeply for their relationship with God and for any genuine reconciliation with you, but your decision to release vengeance does not have to wait for their cooperation.
Your freedom does not require their signature.
What Release Actually Looks Like
Forgiveness usually begins by becoming very honest about what happened.
Not vague. Not polished. Honest.
Name what was taken.
You may need to say before God, That cost me years. That destroyed my trust. That changed my family. That wounded something in me that still hurts.
You cannot truly release something you are still pretending did not matter.
Then bring the debt to God.
The prayer does not have to be eloquent. It may be as simple as, Lord, this person owes me something they may never give back. I cannot keep carrying this. I give the debt to You. I trust You with what happened to me.
That prayer may not be the end of forgiveness.
It may be the beginning.
One of the misconceptions about forgiveness is that if the memory hurts again, the forgiveness must not have been real.
I do not believe that.
A memory can return without becoming your master again. You may have to release the same wound more than once as different parts of it surface. That does not mean you failed. Healing often exposes layers.
You made the decision yesterday. You may need to make it again next Tuesday.
And each time, instead of feeding the old account, you hand it back to God.
Keep wise boundaries while you do it.
If someone remains manipulative, abusive, dishonest, or unsafe, forgiveness does not require you to give them unrestricted access to your life.
You can forgive someone from a distance.
You can pray for someone without placing yourself back in harm’s way.
Eventually, you may even find yourself able to pray for the person who hurt you.
That prayer may be very small at first.
God, I put them in Your hands.
Sometimes that is enough for today.
When the Apology Never Comes
There is something I have noticed after more than three decades of sitting with people who have been deeply hurt.
Bitterness never delivers what it promises.
It tells you that holding onto the offense will protect you. That remembering the debt will somehow honor what happened. That releasing it means the offender has won.
But bitterness does not punish the person who hurt you nearly as effectively as it punishes you.
It follows you into relationships the offender never entered. It appears in conversations they never heard. It steals peace from evenings they were not part of.
And sometimes the person you are still angry with does not even know you are carrying them.
That may be the cruelest part.
You can spend years locked in a cell that the offender does not even know exists.
Forgiveness opens the door.
It does not rewrite history.
It does not make the wound good.
It does not guarantee reconciliation.
It simply says that what happened to you will no longer be allowed to own what happens next.
Maybe they will apologize someday.
Maybe they never will.
But your healing was never supposed to live at their address.
You can place the debt in God’s hands and begin walking forward before they ever understand what they did.
And one day you may notice something you did not expect.
You remembered them without your stomach tightening.
You heard their name without reopening the entire wound.
You went through a whole day without replaying the conversation you wish had happened.
The past will still be part of your story.
It just will not be holding the pen anymore.
And by the grace of God, you will smile again, not because they finally gave you permission to heal, but because you discovered you never needed their permission in the first place.
This post is adapted from themes in You Will Smile Again: How God Restores Joy After Deep Pain and Heartbreak, releasing October 20, 2026. If unforgiveness has been the lock on your door, you don’t have to pick it alone. Start with my free five-morning devotional, When You Can’t See How: A 5-Day Strategy to Smile Again.
A gentle note: some wounds, abuse in particular, need more than a blog post. Forgiveness never requires returning to an unsafe person or place, and working through deep harm is best done with a trusted pastor and a qualified Christian counselor beside you. If you’re in danger, please seek help immediately.
