How to Forgive Well: The Ultimate Guide for the Scrupulous 

There’s a difference between knowing how to forgive and knowing how to forgive well. 

“I know I have to forgive my father,” said one of my clients. She was stuck in a web of various struggles—scrupulosity, daddy issues, and sexual trauma. Her scrupulous mind told her that in order to be healed from sexual sin and shame, she first had to forgive her father for his failings. Didn’t Jesus teach us, “forgive and you will be forgiven?” 

In her desire to be obedient to Jesus’ teachings, she had tried to forgive quickly. So quickly, in fact, that what really happened was that she bottled up all her emotions, swept everything under the rug, and declared him to be forgiven. But it was still oozing out from under the rug years later, reminding her that maybe her forgiveness had been quick but not thorough. 

In this post I would like to deal very thoroughly with the topic of how to forgive others, specifically slanted towards people with religious OCD. 

What Forgiveness Is Not

I used to have the idea that forgiveness is just a mental/emotional decision which roughly translates as, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

A cessation of angry feelings is certainly the fruit of forgiveness but it is not the heart of it. If we interpret forgiveness as “cessation of angry feelings,” we are opening ourselves to a scenario where we feel the need to stuff down and repress our emotions. That is never healthy. Such anger will always come back in the long run because we haven’t dealt with it sufficiently. 

What if I told you that in a deep, thorough process of forgiveness, you don’t need to overtly do anythingwith your feelings? If you do the deep work well, your feelings will line up like obedient little ducklings in a row. You won’t need to “try” forcing your emotions at all. You’ll naturally love and release that person without any veins popping out on your neck, without clenching your knuckles so tightly that they turn white. 

So forgiveness is first of all not a change in your emotional stance towards the person. A change in your emotions is only the fruit of true forgiveness. 

Implications of Not Letting the Sun Go Down on Your Anger

Remember the old fable about the tortoise and the hare? “Slow and steady wins the race,” said the steady tortoise as he crossed the finish line ahead of the distractible hare. It’s a story illustrating that “faster” isn’t always better. Sometimes the best quality things come out of a slow and steady process. 

Forgiveness is like that. We want to look for depth of quality rather than speed. 

But you might have stumbled into the speed trap from verses like Ephesians 4:26: 

“Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.”

What does this verse mean? Does it mean you have to deal with 100% of your angry emotions down to their very depths before the sun goes down? I think this verse is making a point that we shouldn’t delay dealing with anger and conflicts, but probably isn’t meant to be interpreted literalistically.

Let me give you an extreme example to make my point. Where I live, the sun is currently setting around 6:45 pm each night. Let’s say you come to visit my town, and horror of horrors, you get assaulted and raped at 6:05 pm. If we interpret Ephesians 4:26 in an overly literalistic way, it means you have a mere 40 minutes to forgive your attacker or else YOU are sinning.  

Clearly, this model doesn’t work. We know  from common sense, observations, psychology, and maybe even personal experience that for something as huge as sexual assault, you can’t even process WHAT JUST HAPPENED in 40 minutes, much less even think about forgiveness and other spiritual implications. 

Now, most issues in life are not so tragic and dramatic, and it might be entirely appropriate for you to apply Ephesians 4:26 to your day as an encouragement to not let things fester. But for bigger, darker issues like my client’s daddy issues and repeated sexual assault by a religious leader, it seems more realistic to say that it is sufficient for one day to merely say, “I’m willing to be made willing to forgive.” This puts us on the forgiveness train, which will take us on its slow and thorough journey, and if you’re the train (even if you’re hanging on the back of the caboose with your little finger), it’s safe to let the sun go down. You are working on how to forgive well the person who hurt you, and God sees that you’ve begun the process. 

What IS Forgiveness?

True forgiveness is the release of one’s debt to you. Jesus taught us to pray,

“Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors.”

His use of the word “debtors” is an important term that sometimes gets lost in various Bible translations. Jesus is not assuming we are all bankers engaged in the business of financial lending. We don’t have financial debtors. But we do have people who “owe us” things that they haven’t paid. When resolution doesn’t work (see Matthew 18), our job is to release them from their debt. 

Let’s go back to our original case study. This dear lady had been repeatedly raped by a religious leader, and she had been neglected and chronically criticized by her father. 

What was owed to whom?

Well, first of all, her father owed her care and love and protection by virtue of being her father. Parents are commanded to “love” their children (Titus 2:4), to not exasperate them to anger (Ephesians 6:4), to “teach” them about God and His ways (Deuteronomy 11:19), to “provide” for their physical needs (1 Timothy 5:8), and to “correct” and “discipline” them (Proverbs 29:17). It is assumed that parents will have a natural depth of attachment and protectiveness over their offspring, as we can see many parallels are made to “natural” human affection (see Psalm 103:13, Luke 11:11-13, Isaiah 49:15, etc.) We are also commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves—how much more our own relatives?

She was also wronged by the pastor who had a responsibility to love and care for the sheep in the flock. Sexual assault is the complete opposite of this, and is so self-evident as a sin that I don’t even spend the time trying to convince you that he failed massively. 

On one side of the coin, love was owed to her but wasn’t paid by these two men in her life. 

On the other side of the coin, we could also say that it was God who was owed, God who was cheated. Children are given as “the heritage of the Lord” and thus belong to Him. Any wrongs done to a little child (or even a grown child) are as if done to Christ Himself.

“And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did [it] to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”

Matthew 25:40

He also warned,

“Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.“

Matthew 18:10

Roughly translated, we could say, “you better be good to little people, because God has an intense depth of care for them, and if you ain’t good their guardian angels are gonna tell on you.”

When a person is abused, neglected, or harmed in any way, there is a debt. Love was owed (both to this person and to God) but love was not paid. 

When Jesus taught us to pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” this is a twofold truth that highlights the horizontal and vertical indebtedness that occurs when sin breaks through into our lives.

But God has forgiven our debts through His Son Jesus Christ. The next part is for us to also forgive the debts on our account made by others when they sinned against us. 

Releasing the Debt

As I mentioned previously, there is room for mediation. Matthew 18 outlines a process by which we can go to someone who has sinned against us and ask for restitution and change. But this doesn’t always work. In these cases, I believe there is a twofold approach we must take. 

• Step One: We must fully recognize and grieve our loss. This is important in order to fully understand the debt we are releasing (this prevents stuffing).
• Step Two: We must make a choice (not a feeling) to release this debt and let that person go free of any emotional demands or grudges. 

Let’s talk first about the full recognition and grieving process. 

Grieving your losses allows you to release the debt easier and it gives you a better spiritual outcome. Let me explain. Let’s say you were abused by a parent. Instead of stuffing this down and ignoring the painful memories, you can go through the process of enumerating all the ways this has been a loss for you. Maybe it means you didn’t have a happy childhood. Loss. Maybe it means you never really had a father figure but only a cruel man who shares part of your DNA. Loss. Maybe it means you never had someone to walk you down the aisle or show up sober to your graduation or tell you he’s proud of you. Loss. 

We have to recognize the depth of the debt in order to forgive the debt. But here’s the best part, the part which keeps this from becoming a depressing, morbid activity. Paul said that he “suffered the loss of all things,” and counted them as rubbish in order for him to draw closer to Christ (see Philippians 3:8)! 

Recognizing there is a debt, an empty hole in your heart which should have been nurtured by your father is an opportunity to bring that brokenness to God and let Him be your Heavenly Father. 

But if we don’t recognize and grieve the depth of these debts, we won’t know where to invite God to come in and fill those empty spaces. 

And just for clarification, I’m not talking about retraumatizing yourself. Some issues are very complex and should be worked through with a wise counselor or spiritual mentor. I’m also not talking about sitting around morbidly replaying everything done against you or fantasizing vengeance scenarios. I don’t think this process needs to take forever! When we learn how to forgive well, I think we will become quicker than you might expect in future instances.

The second part of forgiveness, once you have a healthy recognition of the debt, is to release that debt. Let’s check in again with the classic “debt release” parable that Jesus told. 

Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.”

Matthew 18:21-35

Here we see two men who owe debts. One debt is a massive vertical debt to God (the king); the other is a minor horizontal debt from one man to another. The servant in this story is released from his own debt but refuses to release others from their indebtedness. 

Notice, though, that implied in this parable is the first step of the forgiveness process—recognizing and grieving the damages done. The master and the servant both take accounts. They know precisely what is owed to them when they make their decisions to either release from debt or demand payment. This step is crucial to help us avoid too-fast, low quality forgiveness. 

How Can I Release?

Humanly speaking, it is a simple thing to release someone’s debt against you. It is, very simply, a choice to let go. I choose to release:

• The expectation of an apology
• The desire for compensation or restitution
• The hope for changed behavior
• The need for closure from the other party
• The obligation to justify or defend your emotions
• The weight of carrying resentment or anger
• The need to reconcile the relationship
• The demand for others to acknowledge your pain
• The expectation that forgiveness will be easy

A release of debt means that the other party walks free, but I walk freer.

This choice to let go is simple but it is humanly impossible to choose to do this. In our own sinful, fallen natures, none of us can do this. So we can also view forgiveness as a divine miracle worked upon our hearts. Every time we make a little more progress on that train of how to forgive well, we can see it as nothing short of miraculous.

Yes, we have to choose to forgive, but the power juice and the inspiration for such an otherworldly idea comes from heaven.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Ephesians 4:31-32

How can I forgive well? In my own life, I have found that it can be easier to make the release of debt more “real” by acting it out in tangible ways. In one of my most difficult “forgiveness stories,” I remember writing down all my losses on a paper and burning it behind my house. Other ideas include:

• Putting your list of losses in a bottle and tossing it in the ocean
• Flushing your losses down the toilet or tossing them in the garbage
• Sitting under a starry night sky and opening your palms, then releasing all the anger in your heart
• Taking a forgiveness walk, with each step releasing the debts against you
• Lighting candles for each debt that you work through; when the candle has burned out, it means that “thing” is gone and you have to let it go
• Writing letters to the person who wronged you, informing them of the release (even if you never send the letters)

Remember that I told you that when you forgive well, cessation of angry emotions is a natural fruit that will come? As you go through the deep work of releasing the person who wronged you from the debt, the angry emotions WILL go away on their own. Angry emotions tell us two things.

Initially, angry feelings inform us that A) injustice has taken place, or B) our pride has been hurt (in other words, angry emotions are not always an indicator that we are victims, but they might be. We might be victims of some great wrong, or we might just be proud.) In many cases, though, anger is a protective emotion that let us know “HEY! Something is wrong!”

After we have made a decision to forgive and release the debt, though, angry feelings inform us that the forgiveness train has not yet reached its final destination. And that’s okay. Depth of forgiveness can take time. Don’t rush yourself. Don’t focus on emotional suppression (stuffing!)–focus on release of debt. If you still feel angry at the person who wronged you, go back to the list at the beginning of this section. Are there ways you are still hoping for a repayment of the debt? Are you still holding expectations that God wants you to release?

It might take months or even years for the forgiveness train to reach the station. But you can be sure that if done correctly, you will not have suppressed anger oozing out on you later in life.

How to Forgive Well: Specifics for the Scrupulous

All Christians have to learn how to forgive well–but Christians with scrupulosity might find themselves particularly stuck on this point. Here are a few of the most common hangups I’ve noticed with scrupulous individuals:

• Pressure to forgive quickly and suppress all negative emotions (I spoke about this previously)
• Avoiding proper mediation procedures that could resolve the problem (people with scrupulosity generally tend to be conflict-avoidant, so Matthew 18 is a no-go for our temperaments even though it’s hugely important!)
• Feeling like there’s a major spiritual problem with yourself because you struggle to forgive immediately (you may worry about pride, stubbornness, rebellion, lack of a relationship with God, etc.)
• Obsessive replaying of situations (ruminating about “who was wrong,” doubting yourself, doubting the fact that you WERE wronged, thinking you may have imagined it, etc.)

I’m sure there are other caveats that I ought to make at this point, but if you have any serious forgiving to do, I’m sure you’ve already thought about them. Things like, “the release of former debt doesn’t mean you need to give them the keys to your bank account.” In complex cases of abuse or real trauma, sometimes it’s best to forgive from a distance and not re-engage. But these are probably common sense ideas that you’ve already thought about.

In the end, learning how to forgive well is a process that takes time, a journey through our own hearts as much as through the books of record, and an opportunity to share in the life of Christ.

Update: I failed to include this very important thought in my original article, but a commenter named “Joe” brought my attention to this HUGE oversight (thank you, Joe!). What do we do with major legal issues, crimes that have been committed against us and could be perpetrated against others as well? Highly conscientious people, especially those who have a lot of self-doubts and low confidence, might be the very last people who would go to the police over serious issues. It’s so easy to sweep things under the rug, allow ourselves to be gaslit and think it was all our fault anyways, or overspiritualize the issue and think that Christians should keep the dirty laundry inside the church and not involve the law.

I know there are some varied opinions on this, but my personal view is that when legal matters are involved, we ought to involve the powers that have been appointment by God. It will probably be a huge stretch to be confident enough to call the police, but there are issues when this is really necessary.

Do we have to forgive? Yes. But we call the police to protect others, to protect ourselves as precious children of God, and to allow justice to speak its redemptive language to the perpetrator.

Conclusion: The Long Journey of Forgiveness

One woman with scrupulosity described her own journey of forgiving her mother, someone who had deeply hurt her emotionally and abandoned her in crucial times. For years, she thought she had forgiven her mother because she had stopped thinking about the pain. But whenever they spoke, a flicker of resentment still burned in her heart.

She realized that she had boarded the “forgiveness train,” but hadn’t fully reached her destination. Each confrontation, every hurtful memory, was another station along the tracks, forcing her to stop and reflect on what forgiveness really looked like. It wasn’t until she allowed herself to feel the weight of her wounds, to grieve the things she lost, that the true work of forgiveness began.

The healing didn’t come overnight. Slowly and consistently, she prayed for God to soften her heart. She didn’t wake up one morning with a flood of affection for her mother, but over time, the anger drained away. She found herself having more and more compassion, realizing her mother had her own brokenness that had influenced her actions. It wasn’t an easy path, and there were setbacks along the way, but she stayed on the train, knowing that forgiveness wasn’t something she could rush.

One day, after many years, she realized she had reached the end of the line. Her relationship with her mother had transformed—not because her mother had changed, but because her heart had been freed. When she said the words, “I love you,” she truly meant them, feeling a sense of peace she hadn’t known before.

Forgiveness is a journey—a train that moves at its own pace. Sometimes we only have the strength to hang onto the back of the caboose, barely keeping our grip. But even then, we are still on the path to healing. It’s not about how fast you can forgive, but how deeply. Trust the process, grieve your losses, and allow God to heal your heart, one stop at a time.

Best wishes on the journey,