Are Christians Commanded to Forgive Everyone, or Only Those Who Repent?
Modern evangelicalism often treats forgiveness like a therapeutic feeling—something we offer to everyone no matter what, as if it were simply a way to “let go” for our own emotional health. But the Bible does not present forgiveness as an internal therapy session. It presents it as a covenantal transaction, patterned after God’s own forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is never given apart from repentance, and ours is to mirror His.
Jesus is explicit: “If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him” (Luke 17:3–4). The condition is not hidden, it is plain. Forgiveness is not a vague, unconditional blanket we throw over sin; it is reconciliation in truth, granted when repentance is present.
Paul commands the same: “Forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:32; cf. Colossians 3:13). How has God forgiven us? Not by ignoring sin or brushing it aside, but through the repentance and faith that flows from His grace (Acts 3:19; 1 John 1:9). To forgive “as God forgives” means to forgive upon repentance, not before.
Loving our enemies (Matthew 5:44) is not the same as forgiving them. Love prays for their good, does not return evil for evil, and desires their repentance. Forgiveness, however, is reconciliation, and reconciliation requires agreement in truth (Amos 3:3). This is why church discipline in Matthew 18:15–17 follows a process: confrontation, witnesses, and only then—if repentance is refused—treating the person “as a Gentile and a tax collector.” If forgiveness were unconditional, this process would be meaningless. Likewise, 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15 commands that we “have nothing to do with” the disobedient so that they “may be put to shame,” while still admonishing them as a brother. This withholds reconciliation while maintaining readiness to forgive.
Psalm 86:5 says God is “ready to forgive,” and that is the pattern for us: our hearts are to be ready, willing, and eager to forgive the moment repentance comes. But “ready to forgive” is not the same as “premature forgiveness.” Premature forgiveness affirms sin, dulls the sting of conviction, and removes the very pressure God may be using to bring the sinner to repentance.
Even the historic Reformed witness understood this. John Calvin wrote, “Christ does not enjoin us to grant forgiveness to any but to those who repent.” The Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 194, teaches that in the Lord’s Prayer we are to forgive “those that wrong us, as we desire to be forgiven of God,” tying our forgiveness directly to the model of God’s own conditional pardon.
Forgiveness is not ours to redefine. God has shown us what it is: reconciliation through repentance. Anything else—no matter how kind it feels—pretends to be more merciful than God, and ends up being a counterfeit grace that leaves sin unchallenged and souls unhealed.
Semper Reformanda
One of the most common objections is, “But Jesus forgave them on the cross!” - a reference to Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” But Jesus was not granting blanket pardon to every unrepentant sinner in that moment. He was praying in accordance with His role as Mediator, interceding for those who would repent (Isaiah 53:12). This prayer was answered in part at Pentecost when many in that very crowd were “pierced to the heart” and cried, “What shall we do?”, and Peter told them, “Repent” (Acts 2:37–38). There is no biblical category of God forgiving the unrepentant in the sense of reconciliation; there is abundant biblical witness to His readiness to forgive the moment repentance is given.
Truth That Withstands
God does not forgive apart from repentance, and neither should we. To forgive as God forgives is to be ready, eager, and immediate in granting forgiveness upon repentance, while refusing to cheapen it by offering reconciliation without truth. Anything less is not grace, it is a false peace.
Shortlink: reformlet.com/forgiveness