The family meeting was held in the parlour of Kenneth’s elder brother in Ikeja, on a Sunday afternoon after church. Two uncles sat on the long sofa. An aunt had come from Abeokuta. Kenneth sat by the window in his agbada, looking tired and a little wounded. Toyin sat on a dining chair that someone had dragged in from the next room, with her handbag on her knees and her sister beside her.
She had left the house three weeks earlier. The final incident had happened on a Friday night. Kenneth had come home late, found that dinner had not been kept warm, and said the kind of things he had been saying for years, only louder. When she answered back, he snatched her phone from her hand and flung it against the wall. The screen shattered. Their two children were standing in the corridor. That night Toyin packed a bag and took the children to her sister’s flat in Gbagada.
It was not the first time. For most of their eleven years together Kenneth had mocked her in front of guests, mimicked her accent at his office parties and told his friends, laughing, that his wife “could not think beyond the market.” There had been apologies, many of them. There had been gifts after the worst nights. There had been tearful promises at the altar during a marriage seminar. Then the pattern had returned, each time a little harsher.
The senior uncle cleared his throat and spoke for the family. “Toyin, my daughter, we have heard everything. Kenneth has said he is sorry. You are a Christian woman. The Bible says forgive seventy times seven. A good wife does not run to her sister’s house and expose her husband. Go home this evening and let this matter die.”
Kenneth nodded slowly. “I have apologised,” he said. “What more does she want from me?”
PunchlineToyin looked at her hands. She did not know how to answer. She wanted to forgive. She had been forgiving for years. But something in her knew that going home that evening, on those terms, would not be forgiveness at all. It would simply be the next round.
Many Christian marriages have sat in that parlour. Some of you are sitting there now.
Forgiveness looks at a real wrong
The first thing to say about forgiveness is that it is always about something. You cannot forgive a wrong you refuse to name. If nothing happened, there is nothing to forgive. If something did happen, then forgiveness must begin by looking at it honestly.
Paul writes to the Colossians about the life of people who have been raised with Christ:
Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
Notice the phrase “if any man have a quarrel against any.” The Greek word translated quarrel is momphē, a complaint or a charge of blame. Paul assumes that believers living close together will sometimes have genuine grounds for complaint against one another. He does not tell the Colossians to pretend those grounds do not exist. He tells them what to do with them.
He also gives two words that are related but different. Forbearing means bearing with one another, putting up with the irritations, quirks and weaknesses that come with living near other sinners. A great deal of married life runs on forbearance. He snores. She is always ten minutes late. He leaves his shoes in the passage. She talks through every film. You do not need a formal act of forgiveness for most of these things. You need patience, humour and a bit of humility.
Forgiving is something more. The word is charizomai, which shares its root with charis, grace. It means to give freely, to release a debt as a gift. Forgiveness is needed when there has been an actual wrong, a real injury, something that created a debt between you. To treat a serious wrong as though it were merely a quirk to be tolerated is a confusion. It leaves the injured person trying to forbear what ought to be faced.
Then Paul gives the pattern: “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.” How did Christ forgive us? Not by pretending our sin was small. The cross is the most honest assessment of human sin ever made. God did not wave our wrongs away. He named them, judged them, and bore them in His Son. Christ’s forgiveness takes sin with total seriousness and then releases the sinner from its debt at His own cost.
That is the shape of Christian forgiveness. It does not begin with “It was nothing.” It begins with “This was real, it hurt, and I choose to release you from the debt you owe me.” Toyin’s uncle wanted her to skip straight to the release without anyone looking at the debt. That is why something in her resisted.
NuggetForgiveness never begins by calling a wrong small. It looks squarely at the injury and then, by grace, releases the debt.
What forgiveness releases
If forgiveness is a release, we need to be clear about what exactly is being released. Paul answers that in Romans 12, at the close of a long section on love in the Christian community:
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
“Avenge not yourselves.” That is the heart of it. To forgive is to give up the right to pay someone back personally. It is to lay down the desire to make him suffer as you have suffered, to stop rehearsing the speech you will one day make, to refuse the quiet revenge of coldness, sabotage or humiliation. In a marriage, revenge rarely looks dramatic. It looks like withholding warmth for months. It looks like reminding him of his failure in front of the children. It looks like keeping a ledger that is opened in every argument.
Forgiveness closes the ledger of personal vengeance. And Paul tells us why we can afford to close it: “give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” To give place to wrath means to step back and leave room for God’s judgement. You are not declaring that the wrong does not matter. You are handing it to the only Judge who sees perfectly and repays justly. Forgiveness is an act of trust in God’s justice, not a denial that justice matters.
Now read on into the next chapter, because Paul did not write in chapter divisions. Immediately after “avenge not yourselves” he speaks of the governing authority, which “beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Romans 13:4). The God who forbids private revenge has also appointed public justice. So when a spouse forgives, she gives up her own right to retaliate. She has not thereby cancelled every consequence that the wrongdoer may face. Consequences and revenge are different things. Revenge is personal payback. Consequences are the natural and lawful results of a person’s conduct.
This matters a great deal. A wife can forgive her husband for violence and still report it to the police. A husband can forgive his wife for emptying their joint account and still decide that the account will be managed differently from now on. A spouse can forgive and still say, “I will not stay in the same house while this behaviour continues.” None of these is vengeance. Each one leaves room for truth, protection and repair.
Look also at the opening words: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” Paul is realistic. Peace is not always possible, and it does not depend on you alone. Your part is what lies in you: a heart free of revenge, a readiness to do good, an openness to restored relationship if the other person makes it possible. The rest is not yours to manufacture.
Then comes the remarkable instruction about feeding a hungry enemy. Paul borrows it from Proverbs 25:21-22. The coals of fire have been understood in more than one way, but the most likely sense is that undeserved kindness produces a burning shame that may lead to repentance. Whatever the image, the aim is clear: “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” The great danger for an injured person is not only what the other person did. It is what the injury can turn you into. Bitterness can overcome you long after the offender has moved on. Forgiveness protects your own soul from being conquered by the evil done to you.
Rebuke, repentance and the seven times
Toyin’s uncle quoted Jesus’ words about seventy times seven. It is worth reading those words in full, along with a closely related saying in Luke. First Matthew:
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
And then Luke, where the same teaching appears with an important frame around it:
Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.
Jesus begins with “Take heed to yourselves.” This is serious. Just before these verses He has warned that offences will come, and that it would be better for a man to have a millstone hung around his neck than to cause one of the little ones to stumble. The Lord who commands repeated forgiveness is not casual about the harm people do. He opens with a warning against causing it.
Then notice the order. “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” The word rebuke, epitimaō, means to address the wrong directly and seriously. Jesus does not tell the injured person to keep quiet. He tells her to name the trespass. A marriage in which wrongs may never be spoken aloud is not a peaceful marriage. It is a silent one, and silence often protects the stronger party.
Then comes “if he repent.” The word means a change of mind that turns a person around. Repentance is more than regret about the consequences. It is a turning away from the behaviour. When Jesus speaks of a brother who sins seven times in a day and seven times turns back saying “I repent,” He is teaching that we must not set a limit on how many times we are willing to release a repentant person from the debt of a wrong. He is not teaching that a person who keeps doing the same harm must be given unlimited access to keep doing it.
There is a real distinction here, and believers often blur it. In one sense, forgiveness is something you can do in your own heart whether or not the other person repents. Jesus says elsewhere, “when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any” (Mark 11:25). You can stand before God and release your claim to revenge, even if the person who hurt you never apologises and never changes. That inner release is always open to you, and over time it brings great freedom.
Reconciliation is different. Reconciliation is the restoring of the relationship itself, the return of trust, closeness and access. Reconciliation requires two people. It requires the truth to be told and the wrong to be turned from. You can forgive alone. You cannot be reconciled alone.
Peter wanted a number. Seven seemed generous to him. Jesus answered with a figure that makes counting pointless. But Jesus did not then tell Peter to stop rebuking, stop looking for repentance, or stop protecting the vulnerable. Unlimited forgiveness and unlimited exposure to harm are two different things.
Why reconciliation needs truth and changed conduct
“I have apologised. What more does she want?” Kenneth’s question is common. It sounds reasonable. He had said the word sorry. In his mind, the matter should now be closed, and if it was not closed, the fault was hers.
But an apology is the beginning of repentance, not its completion. When the crowds came to John the Baptist, he told them, “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). Fruit takes time to grow. It shows whether the root has truly changed. A man who has humiliated his wife for eleven years cannot expect a single apology, however sincere, to restore what eleven years have damaged. That is not because his wife is hard. It is because trust is rebuilt by evidence.
Consider Joseph and his brothers. When they came to Egypt for grain, Joseph recognised them immediately. These were the men who had thrown him into a pit and sold him into slavery. He did not reveal himself at once. He spoke roughly to them, held Simeon, sent them back for Benjamin, and finally placed his silver cup in Benjamin’s sack to see what they would do (Genesis 42 to 44). He was testing whether these were the same men who had once sacrificed a brother for their own advantage.
The decisive moment came when Judah offered himself as a slave in Benjamin’s place. The brother who had once proposed selling Joseph now offered his own freedom to protect his father’s favourite son. Only then did Joseph send everyone out and weep aloud, saying, “I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt” (Genesis 45:4). Joseph had long since released any desire for revenge. His words at the end of the story make that plain. But he did not restore intimacy until he had seen that the men in front of him had changed.
That is wisdom, and it is entirely compatible with forgiveness. An injured spouse is not sinning when she asks for time, for counselling, for clear changes in conduct, before restoring closeness. She is not being unforgiving when she says, “I need to see that this is different.” She is asking for the fruit that Scripture itself says repentance should bear.
What does that fruit look like in a marriage? It looks like the offending spouse naming the specific wrong without minimising it: not “I’m sorry if you were upset” but “I have mocked you in public for years, and I smashed your phone in front of our children, and it was wrong.” It looks like seeking help without being forced to: a counsellor, a pastor, a programme for anger. It looks like accepting the consequences without complaint, including the consequence that the injured spouse needs time. It looks like changed behaviour sustained over months, especially in the moments that used to trigger the old pattern.
And it looks like a willingness to stop demanding. A repentant person does not say, “I have done my part, now you must do yours.” Real repentance is humble. It knows it has no right to set the timetable for someone else’s healing.
When the wrong keeps happening
PunchlineHere we must speak very plainly, because confusion about forgiveness has kept many people, most often women, in situations of serious danger.
Forgiveness never requires concealing abuse. It never requires returning to danger. Scripture does not teach that a Christian spouse must endure violence, threats, sexual coercion, or persistent cruelty in the name of submission or covenant. Marriage is a covenant of love and protection. When one partner uses the marriage to harm the other, it is he who has violated the covenant, not the one who seeks safety.
The Bible honours those who flee danger. “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself” (Proverbs 22:3). David fled from Saul, who was the Lord’s anointed and his own father-in-law, and he fled more than once. When the Jews in Damascus plotted to kill Paul, “the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket” (Acts 9:25). Jesus Himself, when the crowd in Nazareth tried to throw Him off a cliff, passed through the midst of them and went His way (Luke 4:29-30). Leaving danger is not a failure of faith.
If you are being physically hurt, threatened, or forced into anything against your will, please get to a safe place. Tell someone you trust. Contact the police, or the domestic and sexual violence response services that Lagos and a number of other states now provide. Keep a record of what has happened. Seek help from a qualified counsellor and, where needed, a lawyer. If your church leaders respond by sending you back into danger, you are free to seek help elsewhere. You can forgive from a place of safety. You cannot heal while you are still being wounded.
There are also patterns that fall short of physical violence and yet do deep damage: years of contempt, public humiliation, financial control, constant threats to leave, the silent treatment used as punishment. These too are real wrongs. They need to be named, not explained away as “just his temper” or “just how she is.”
To church leaders, family elders and friends I would say this: be very careful whom you pressure. It is almost always easier to lean on the injured spouse than to confront the one who caused the injury. She is usually the one who wants peace. He is often the one with the louder voice, the higher income or the family on his side. When an uncle tells a battered wife to “go home and let it die,” he is not making peace. He is transferring the whole cost of the wrong onto the person who suffered it. That is the very opposite of what the cross did.
The injured spouse should never be made to carry the whole cost of the wrong. Pressing her to restore access before the truth is told and conduct has changed is not peacemaking.
When you are the one who caused the hurt
Some readers will recognise themselves on Kenneth’s side of the room. If that is you, this section is for you, and I want to speak to you with both firmness and hope.
Scripture is clear about the two roads open to you:
He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.
Covering is the instinct of every person who has done wrong. It began in Eden with fig leaves. In marriage it looks like minimising, blaming, changing the subject, or offering a dramatic apology to make the discomfort end quickly. It looks like saying, “You also provoked me,” or “Other men do far worse.” Covering never brings prosperity to a relationship, because it leaves the wound unattended.
Confessing and forsaking is the other road. Notice that it takes both words. Confession without forsaking is just a ritual. Forsaking without confession leaves the injured person guessing. You need to tell the truth about what you did, fully and specifically, and then turn away from it in practice.
Look at Zacchaeus. When Jesus came to his house, the chief tax collector did not merely say that he felt badly about his past. He “stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:8). He went beyond what the law required. Grace had reached him, and the evidence was restitution. He was eager to repair what he had damaged.
What might restitution look like for you? It may mean telling the people in front of whom you humiliated your spouse that you were wrong. It may mean replacing what you broke, in every sense. It may mean seeing a counsellor every week for a year, attending an anger programme, or giving up alcohol. It will certainly mean being patient. You cannot demand that your spouse trust you on your schedule. Her caution is the natural result of your conduct. Bear it humbly.
And here is the hope. You are not beyond grace. The gospel is for sinners, including husbands and wives who have done real harm. Christ forgave you at the cost of His own life. Your identity in Him is secure, and that security is exactly what can free you to stop defending yourself. A man who knows he is accepted by God no longer needs to win every argument with his wife. He can say, “I was wrong,” without feeling that his whole worth has collapsed. Grace does not excuse your behaviour. It gives you a place to stand while you face it.
Healing for the one who was hurt
If you are the injured spouse, forgiveness may feel like a mountain. You may have been told that it is a single decision, made once and finished. For small wrongs that is often true. For deep and repeated injuries, forgiveness is usually a decision that has to be renewed, sometimes many times, as memories surface and the pain returns.
That is not failure. When you remember the wrong and feel the hurt again, you have not undone your forgiveness. You are simply a human being with a memory. Each time, you can bring it back to the Lord and say, “Father, I release this again. Vengeance is Yours. Heal what this has done in me.”
Scripture also warns us about what happens if we refuse that road:
Follow peace with all men , and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you , and thereby many be defiled.
A root of bitterness grows underground. For a long time no one can see it. Then it springs up and troubles everything around it, and “thereby many be defiled.” Bitterness in a marriage spreads. It infects the children, who learn to see one parent through the other’s resentment. It infects friendships and even church life. The writer of Hebrews calls it a failure of the grace of God, because bitterness is what grows in the place where grace should have been received and passed on.
Forgiveness is how you pull up that root. It does not require you to feel warm toward the person who hurt you. It does not require you to trust him again immediately, or to pretend you are not still in pain. It requires you to hand the debt to God and refuse to let the wrong rule your heart.
Healing also takes ordinary means. Talk to a trusted counsellor. Grieve what has been lost. Tell the truth to God in prayer, including the angry and confused parts; the Psalms are full of such prayers. Let mature friends walk with you. Rest. If anxiety, sleeplessness or depression persist, see a doctor. God works through all of these.
Do not let anyone shame you for taking time. And do not let anyone persuade you that your forgiveness depends on reconciliation. If your spouse repents and changes, there may be a road back to a restored marriage, and many couples have walked it with joy. If he does not, you can still forgive, and your forgiveness will still be real. Christians hold different convictions about whether, and when, a marriage may finally be ended, and those questions deserve careful pastoral counsel. But whatever the outcome, the release of vengeance is between you and God, and He will honour it.
What a church and family can do
In much of Nigerian life, marriage is never only a matter between two people. Families are involved from the introduction to the traditional wedding and beyond. That involvement can be a great blessing. Uncles and aunts, elders and pastors can hold a couple steady through hard seasons. But they can also do great damage when they rush to close a matter that has not been opened.
Here is what wise family members and church leaders can do. Listen to both spouses separately, and especially to the quieter one. Ask what actually happened, and be willing to hear things that are uncomfortable about someone you like. Do not quote forgiveness to the injured person without first quoting repentance to the offender. Jesus’ own order was rebuke, then repentance, then forgiveness. Refer to people who are qualified to help, and take any mention of violence seriously. Support the injured spouse practically if she needs a place to stay. And hold the offending spouse accountable with love, offering him real help to change.
Galatians gives the right spirit: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). Restoration is the goal. Meekness is the manner. But restoration in that verse means mending what is broken, the word used for repairing fishing nets. You cannot mend a net by pretending it is not torn.
Toyin did not go home that Sunday evening.
To everyone’s surprise, it was the pastor of their church who changed the direction of the meeting. He had come late, at Toyin’s sister’s request, and he had listened from a chair near the door. When Kenneth asked what more his wife wanted, the pastor spoke quietly. “Kenneth, she wants what God wants. She wants the truth told and the behaviour to stop. Forgiveness is hers to give, and I believe she will give it. But going home is something you will have to make safe for her.”
It took nine months. Kenneth began seeing a Christian counsellor every Tuesday. For the first few weeks he mostly argued. Then, slowly, he began to talk about his father, who had treated his mother in exactly the same way. He wrote Toyin a letter naming specific things he had said and done over the years. It was four pages long. She told me later that it was the first time she had felt that he actually knew what he had done.
She forgave him long before she moved back. She said the forgiveness came in pieces, on her knees in her sister’s spare room, sometimes in tears and sometimes in anger. Moving back came later, when the counsellor, the pastor and her own heart agreed that the house had become a different place.
About a year after the meeting in Ikeja, they attended a cousin’s wedding reception. One of Kenneth’s old friends, seeing Toyin at the table, began one of the jokes he used to enjoy, about wives who could not think beyond the market. Kenneth put down his plate and said, loudly enough for the whole table to hear, “My friend, I used to say that. I was wrong. My wife is the wisest person in our house. Don’t say it again.”
Toyin said that was the moment she knew the forgiveness had been worth it. The wrong had been faced. The debt had been released. And the man who had once broken her phone against a wall had become the one who protected her name.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Is there a wrong in your marriage that has been tolerated or buried when it needed to be named and forgiven?
- How does the cross show that God’s forgiveness takes sin seriously? What does that teach you about your own forgiveness?
- Can you distinguish between releasing vengeance and restoring access in a relationship that has hurt you?
- If you have caused harm, what would “fruits worthy of repentance” look like in your home this month?
- Where might bitterness be growing quietly in your heart, and what would it mean to hand that debt to God?
This Week
Set aside an unhurried hour this week to sit with God and a notebook. Write down, honestly and specifically, any wrong you are still holding against your spouse, and any wrong you know you have done to them. For the wrongs done to you, pray aloud, “Father, I release my right to repay this. Vengeance is Yours.” For the wrongs you have done, decide on one concrete act of confession or repair, and do it before the week ends. If anything you write involves danger or abuse, take the step of telling a trusted, qualified person this week.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that in Christ You have forgiven me, not by pretending my sin was small, but by bearing it Yourself. Teach me to forgive in the same way, looking honestly at the wrong and releasing it into Your hands. Where I have been hurt, heal me and guard my heart from bitterness. Give me wisdom to know the difference between forgiving and returning to harm, and courage to seek safety and help where I need it. Where I have caused hurt, give me the humility to confess it fully, to turn from it, and to repair what I can without demanding trust I have not earned. Make our home a place where truth is told and grace is real. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.