55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him, and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.
– Acts 7:55-60 (NRSVUE)
“I just don’t understand how a theology of unlimited forgiveness works in abusive relationships. If we’re to follow Jesus’ model of self-sacrifice, should we just keep forgiving?” My wife and I were driving down the highway, discussing healthy boundaries, when to call it quits on relationships with friends or family members, and how those actions connect to the model of unlimited forgiveness in the Bible.
The truth is that this question of forgiving those who persecute you is still very much a live question in today’s church—just as it was when our earliest manuscripts were written. Some of the earliest Christian communities also wrestled with this question of forgiveness. Close attention to both the formation of the text and the text itself can provide us with a path forward that offers a different understanding of forgiveness, one that avoids reinforcing oppressive structures and perpetuating toxic relationships.
The book of Acts tells of the story of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. His story is well-known: the opposition plots against him, takes him to court on trumped up charges, and eventually drags him out and puts him to death. As he is dying, he prays his final words, “Lord, do not hold this sinthis against them.”
Stephen’s story here in Acts echoes the narrative of Jesus. As with many other stories in Luke-Acts, the author does not use the exact same wording, but lets the narrative structure demonstrate the parallels between the apostles and Jesus. The point is clear: the apostles have taken on the mission of Jesus and are following his model of praying, teaching, and displaying a forgiving spirit during persecution.
The text seems to be saying, Jesus forgave even his killers, so Stephen, too, forgave his killers. To follow in this example would be to extend forgiveness even to those who do us harm. This fits in with other sayings of Jesus’ sayings: bless those who persecute you; love your enemy; turn the other cheek.
The ethical implications of this theology can be uncomfortable, to say the least. If someone is in an abusive relationship, are theywe to forgive their abuserthem? If someone is actively and repeatedly harming us, are we to forgive them? If someone is actively hunting us down to harm us or even kill us, are we to let bygones be bygones?
If this theological-ethical conundrum gives you pause, you are not alone. Scholars over the centuries have wrestled with the question of how to define forgiveness. In the earliest textual manuscripts that we have for Luke’s gospel, there is a discrepancy in including Jesus’ supplication for forgiveness for his murderers. In several early manuscripts, Jesus’ call for God to forgive his murderers is recorded. However, in other early, important manuscripts, this saying is omitted. This is an unresolved question in New Testament studies, and an ongoing debate with heavy-hitting scholars landing on either side of the saying’s authenticity.
Regardless of whether or not it is original to the Lukan text, the discrepancy tells us something important about the earliest Christian communities who copied and reproduced this text. There was disagreement about forgiveness—and specifically, the forgiveness of persecutors.
Some scholars point to high tensions between Christians and Jews during the early centuries after Christ, positing that the verse was removed by scribes with an anti-Jewish agenda. Here, we see that the idea of forgiveness—especially, forgiving one’s enemies—is already political. It is already wrapped up in structures of us/them and oppressor/victim. This question of the “forgiveness of the Jews” has long stained Christian theology and praxis.
Whatever the cause or whether it is truly original, the textual variance shows that there were differing attitudes towards this question of forgiveness of one’s killers. And, this discrepancy shows the political dimensions of forgiveness. The practice and theology of forgiveness is always wrapped up in questions of power.
In her book The Limits of Forgiveness, New Testament scholar Maria Mayo writes of this conundrum,. “The modern church has always had this verse, and regardless of its textual authenticity, pastors, priests, and individual believers have to deal with it.” Mayo’s work wrestles with the sobering reality that the Bible—and this verse in particular—has been used by church leaders and pastors to excuse abuse. But this is not a hermeneutic gathering dust in a cupboard of other harmful interpretive strategies. Even today, the Bible is used to justify, excuse, and dismiss abuse.
Mayo offers an alternative to this understanding of unlimited forgiveness by pointings to the actual words of both Jesus’ and Stephen’s final prayers:
Scripture provides an alternative. When Jesus prays, ‘Father, forgive them,” he turns the matter of forgiveness over to God. He is shown as enduring violence to the point of death, a depiction that can be read by victims to indicate that forgiveness in the midst of suffering is not an obligation and maybe not even possible. We may reasonably take Jesus’s prayer in place of forgiveness to provide an alternative model for responding to abuse, a model that relieves the victims of abuse of the burden of forgiveness and restores moral agency to them. (164).
A similar logic can be applied to Stephen’s words. When Stephen prays, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,”, the agent of forgiveness is God, not Stephen. As Christy Randazzo notes in their post on this same passage, there is inspiration but also danger in the ecstatic, ‘heroic’ forgiveness of one’s oppressors and abusers.
At first glance, Mayo’s reading might seem to run against other Scriptural commands on forgiveness. For example, in Luke 17, Jesus teaches that Christians must forgive others even seven times a in a day, if that person returns saying they have repented. But, Mayo puts the spotlight on repentance. Though it seems unlikely that someone is truly repenting if they return seven times having committed the same offense, nonetheless, the text instructs: if there is repentance, “you must forgive” (Luke 17:4). For Mayo, for forgiveness to be offered, this text indicates that there must be both repentance and also community accountability.
Drawing on the work of Peter Horsfield and Margaret Urban Walker, Mayo asserts that non-forgiveness by survivors of abuse can be a reclamation of moral agency. A refusal of forgiveness is a refusal to stay in conditions of continued harm and oppression. By refusing to stay on the cross, or in the pit being stoned to death, victims of abuse look ahead to the justice of a world without sin, praying for a world of restored relationships even when those are impossible in the present. Even with divine influence, some acts are so morally egregious that they remain unforgivable—at least in our human, creaturely capacity.
The political dimensions of forgiveness are further illuminated by queer theology. Scholar of religion William Stell unpacks the queering of forgiveness at play in Kesha’s song, “Praying”. Kesha spent a decade embroiled in a legal battle with her producer, accusing him of abuse and assault. This song was released in 2017, in the midst of ongoing lawsuits that were settled in 2023. The lyrics directly address the abuser, narrating the harm he inflicted and also naming her own resilience.
Stell posits that within this song there is “something like forgiveness” at play in the lyrics: “It is not a forgiveness that downplays abuse, as Kesha is forthright in naming and revealing the severity of her pain. … it is not a forgiveness that lets someone off the hook for their evil actions, as Kesha clearly conveys that her abuser must repent, that his soul must change, that he must fall on his knees.” The song climaxes with the last line of the bridge, where Kesha hits impossibly high notes with the line: “But some things only God can forgive”. Returning to Mayo’s framing, this song follows Stephen and Jesus in their supplications for God to forgive their abusers without issuing forgiveness themselves.
For another example, consider the words of Sabrina Fulton in a 2020 interview, whose 17-year-old son Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in 2012. “I have not gotten to the point where I have forgiven the person that shot and killed my son. … I think Black people are not forced to forgive, but they are expected to forgive because there are so many times where we have forgiven people who have done mean, evil, and nasty things to us.”
Fulton demonstrates her own moral agency amidst a society, culture, and religion that all push for a quick forgiveness. Miguel De La Torre documents this pattern in his book Embracing Hopelessness: “To ask black families to forgive the perpetrator places the burden of the event upon the grieving families—something that would not have happened if the victims were white and the murderer black. They are now the ones who must bring healing to the family of the murderer” (112). To see the political dimensions of forgiveness is to recognize the asymmetries of power and oppression both in the present moment and throughout history.
So often, forgiveness can be weaponized to enforce the status quo or oppression. By resisting a rush to forgive, we insist on an unblinking account of the moral web around us. We insist on a world where there is community accountability for harm, and we intervene to make sure that this harm is not ongoing. And yet, we simultaneously hold to a hope that abusers, oppressors, and all evil doers will repent of their ways. When there are things that we cannot forgive or will not forgive—following the examples of Stephen and Jesus—we turn forgiveness over to God.
