When You Need a Scripture for Forgiveness
What Scripture Offers When Forgiveness Feels Impossible
Forgiveness in scripture is not the same as forgetting, excusing, or pretending something didn’t happen. It is a specific act — releasing what you have every right to hold — that scripture describes as both a gift to receive and a gift to give. Both are hard. Both are addressed directly across the full breadth of scripture.
These passages come from Old and New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the words of General Authorities who have spoken with unusual depth about both receiving and extending forgiveness.
Doctrine and Covenants 58:42
Doctrine & Covenants
"Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more."
The most direct statement in latter-day scripture about what divine forgiveness actually does. Not held on file. Not referenced later. Remembered no more. That is a specific and radical promise.
Alma 36:19–20
Book of Mormon
"And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more. And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold."
Alma the Younger's testimony of the moment forgiveness landed — a physical and spiritual transition from torment to light. What it actually feels like when forgiveness arrives.
Matthew 18:22
New Testament
"Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."
Seventy times seven is not a number — it is a dissolution of the accounting system entirely. For the forgiveness that keeps getting harder to give.
Psalm 103:12
Old Testament
"As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."
An unmeasurable distance — east and west never meet. David's image for what God does with sin when He forgives it. Not set aside. Removed to a distance without end.
Elder David A. Bednar
General Conference
"The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes possible both the cleansing of our sins and the strengthening of our capacity to bear the burdens of mortality."
From a General Conference address on the enabling power of the Atonement. Forgiveness here is not just removal — it is replacement. Strength comes where guilt used to be.
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