LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Forgiveness in Counseling
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
Forgiveness in Counseling
Man’s greatest need is forgiveness. It is so easy for Christians to forget what it meant for
them to come to Christ and be forgiven. But a lively sense of having been forgiven is essential to
vital Christian devotion; without it, one easily leaves his “first love” (Rev. 2:4). And, without it,
he will tend to lack the forgiving attitude toward others that is essential to proper Christian
living and to dealing with many counseling difficulties. It is important, therefore, for counselors
to learn all they can about forgiveness; and they must also spend time remembering their own
forgiveness and reminding counselees about the pit from which they were dug.1
Christians are forgiven people—and should be thankful for it; that’s what makes them
unique. But this unique factor carries a responsibility with it: because they are forgiven, they
must also become forgiving persons as Ephesians 4:32 says, “and be kind to one another,
tender-hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ forgave you.”
Within the Christian community, there should be much forgiveness going on all the time.
The Christian home, the church and the counseling room are also prime areas for both seeking
and granting Christian forgiveness. On all fronts, a Christian should be a forgiving person who
never forgets how God forgave him. Counselors must realize the importance of this and work
toward it in every counselee’s life.
Matthew 18:23–35 is a graphic parable (to which we shall return later) that makes the
Christian’s obligation to forgive plain. We are indebted to God—not the debt that Christ paid
for us but—to forgive others, sharing with them the joys of the same sort of forgiveness that
we have experienced.
Because it is so basic, there is a great emphasis on forgiveness in the Scriptures—not just
Christ’s forgiveness of us, but also our forgiveness of others (cf. Matt. 5—where forgiveness
leading to reconciliation takes precedence over worship; Matt. 18—where church discipline is
plugged into the willingness/unwillingness of brothers to forgive one another; Matthew 5—
where our parental forgiveness is conditioned upon willingness to forgive, etc.).
Christian counselors need to learn the biblical teaching about forgiveness; they must know
the subject thoroughly, traversing the entire field again and again until they are entirely familiar
with it. They must be well acquainted with the exegetical, theological and practical sides of the
issue. That is why I have decided to devote so much space to this subject at this point. I can
think of no more important subject for counselors to understand fully.
The church is riddled with holes out of which power is leaking. Many of these holes are
difficulties of all sorts in the realm of interpersonal relations. And most of those have never
been plugged because of a failure to understand, teach and enforce the principles of Christian
forgiveness. Counseling is a secondary activity designed to enable Christians to engage freely in
primary activities. It helps people to begin to live as Christ wants them to live by freeing them
from the obstacles that hinder them. Counseling is not an end in itself. It makes people fit for
serving Christ in missions, evangelism, teaching, worship, etc. The subject, therefore, is quite
pertinent for today. There is a great opportunity, during this time of world chaos, political and
personal confusion, human unrest, to spread the gospel widely. There are personnel and funds
available—we must not miss this opportunity, but enter into it fully, NOW. But the one thing
that could most readily keep us from doing so is a church weakened by unresolved internal
difficulties, looking inwardly, licking its own wounds. That is why an all-out effort in counseling
is the strategy for the present hour. And, that is why forgiveness is so important a subject for
counselors to study. A high majority of counseling cases, in one way or another, involve
forgiveness.
Jack Winslow, head of a large British mental institution, declared, “I could dismiss half my
patients tomorrow if they could be assured of forgiveness.”2 In my work in the mental
institutions at Kankakee and Galesburg, Illinois, during the summer of 1965, I found this
statement corroborated by my own experience. When Karl Menninger wrote the book,
Whatever Became of Sin?, he set forth an interesting thesis. He reported a significant change
that had occurred over his long lifetime. Years ago, people talked about sin; they don’t do so
very much any more. It isn’t that sin has lessened, of course. Rather, it has been relabeled.
What used to be understood as sin, now is called either crime or sickness. This change is
significant because neither crime nor sickness can be forgiven. Crimes must be punished,
sicknesses must be healed (or if that isn’t possible, excused). As the result of this change, there
are all sorts of people today who have sinned and need forgiveness, but (as he puts it) can’t be
forgiven. Menninger is right in this basic analysis, however wrong he may be in much else in the
book (e.g., he thinks of sin only as wrongs against men; not against God!). There are many
persons who know that something is wrong, something is missing, but they have been
brainwashed into thinking it is something other than the need for forgiveness of sin. Until
Christian counselors fearlessly tell them the truth—to call sin “sin” is the kindest approach
possible—they will continue in their misery.
I propose, in what follows, first to investigate what the Bible says about forgiveness and
then to show how God wants us to use biblical teaching in practical cases.
