Buried Is Not Healed: What Forgiveness Actually Costs You
By Erik Kingsley · · Imagine Church, Pembroke Pines, FL
There's a conversation that happens in a lot of kitchens. One person brings something up — something old — and the other one sighs and says, "That was eight years ago."
And everything in the first person wants to say: "It was yesterday to me."
That gap — between the person who thinks it's over because it's old, and the person who knows it's not over because it's buried — is exactly where a lot of us are living. Not in open conflict. Not in crisis. Just quietly carrying something we told everyone, and maybe ourselves, that we'd moved past.
Here's the thing about buried things: they don't age. They just wait. They wait for the anniversary, the song, the small moment that looks a little too much like the big one — and then all of it comes up at once. And suddenly you're not fighting about tonight. You're fighting about eight years ago.
Moved On and Buried Are Not the Same Thing
Paul writes to the church in Colossae with a simple instruction that turns out to be anything but simple:
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." — Colossians 3:12–14 (ESV)
Put on. But a chapter earlier, in Ephesians, Paul uses a different phrase first:
"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." — Ephesians 4:31–32 (ESV)
Put away. Then put on. That sequence matters. You can't get dressed for a next-level marriage — or friendship, or family relationship — while you're still wearing what the last wound did to you. Most people try to put a better relationship on over an old injury. Paul says take the old thing off first.
Buried looks like "I'm fine" with your jaw tight. It looks like being sweet to someone's face and vicious about them in the car. It looks like reacting to your spouse as if they're the person who left you, not the person who married you. It looks like telling yourself you made peace with your father when what you actually made was a ceasefire.
And here's what buried does that nobody warns you about: it doesn't stay in the hole. It shows up in how you parent. How you fight. How you love. How you flinch. The bitterness, the wrath, the anger Paul lists — not one of those is what they did to you. Every one of those is what's growing in you because of what they did.
Forgiveness Is a Debt You Cancel, Not a Feeling You Find
When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive someone — and offers seven as a generous number — Jesus doesn't give him a bigger number. He takes the number away entirely. Seventy-seven times. Or seventy times seven, depending on your translation. Either way, the point is the same: if you're still counting, you haven't started forgiving.
Then Jesus tells a story. A king settles accounts with a servant who owes him ten thousand talents — a number so large it was mathematically unpayable. And the king wipes it. All of it. Gone. That same servant walks out the door and immediately finds a fellow servant who owes him a hundred denarii — real money, but real money to a man who just had an unpayable debt erased. And he chokes him over it.
"You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" — Matthew 18:32–33 (ESV)
Most people are waiting to feel like forgiving. But forgiveness in this story isn't a feeling. The king didn't suddenly like the servant. It's a ledger. There's a debt on the books, and the king takes a pen and writes "paid" across a number that was never going to be paid.
That's what forgiveness actually is. Not saying it wasn't that bad. Not saying they didn't mean it. Maybe they did. Forgiveness is looking at a real debt — the trust, the years, the money, the marriage — and saying: You owe me. And I'm not collecting anymore.
The debt is real. Cancel it anyway.
And notice what Jesus doesn't say. He doesn't say forgive because they deserve it. He doesn't say forgive once they're sorry. He says: as I had mercy on you. The only reason given for forgiving is that you've already been forgiven. Forgiven people forgive people. That's not a suggestion. That's the math.
You Forgive From Forgiveness, Not For It
There's a version of forgiveness that's really a transaction. I'll forgive you so I can feel better. I'll forgive you so we can move on. And that kind always falls apart — because the moment you don't get what you were forgiving for, you take it back.
But the forgiveness Scripture describes doesn't work toward something. It works from something.
"For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." — Psalm 103:11–12 (ESV)
Think about a GPS. If you drive north long enough, you eventually start heading south — north and south meet at the poles. But east and west never meet. You can drive east for the rest of your life and you will never once be going west. That's how far God put your sin. Not a long way. Infinitely, permanently, never-going-to-meet far.
And Romans 5 makes it even more specific:
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us... For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son..." — Romans 5:8, 10 (ESV)
While we were still sinners. While we were enemies. God didn't wait for the apology. He didn't wait for us to get it right. He forgave us at our worst, before we asked, before we cared, before we even knew we needed it.
That's the foundation. You don't forgive to get free. You forgive because you already are.
Forgiveness Doesn't Wait for the Apology
The hardest part for most people isn't the decision to forgive. It's forgiving someone who hasn't asked for it — and may never ask.
"And Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" — Luke 23:34 (ESV)
Look at the timing. Not after. Not once they'd stopped. Not once they'd realized. While the nails were still in. While they were gambling for His clothes at His feet. Jesus forgave before a single person in that crowd had turned around.
Some of the people who hurt you will never say sorry. Some don't think they did anything wrong. Some aren't reachable anymore. And if your forgiveness is waiting on their apology, you've handed the keys to your freedom to the person who hurt you. That's not patience. That's a second injury.
One more distinction that matters — especially for anyone in a complicated or unsafe situation: forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing. Forgiveness takes one person. Reconciliation takes two. Forgiveness is between you and God about them. Reconciliation is between you and them. Forgiveness is always required. Reconciliation is not always possible — and it's not always safe. You can fully forgive someone and still keep a boundary. Canceling the debt doesn't mean handing back the keys.
What You Actually Do This Week
This isn't a concept to agree with. It's a decision to make. Here's where to start:
Answer the question honestly. Is there something you're calling "moved on" that is actually just buried? Write the name down. That's step one.
Cancel the debt out loud. Alone, before God: "[Name], you owe me. I'm not collecting anymore. I forgive you." Don't wait to feel it. Say it.
Stop the replay. Stop telling the story to people who can't fix it. Stop bringing the old wound into new fights. No more withdrawals from a closed account.
If you owe an apology, go. This week. Text, call, or face to face. If you're married, start at home.
Every relationship has a next level. But nobody gets to the next level carrying the last one.
You can't change what happened. But you can decide what happens next. And that decision — made before God, out loud, without waiting for a feeling — is the thing that gives you back your future.
This post is based on "Forgiving What You Can't Forget," part of the US series at Imagine Church. Listen to the full message on the podcast or watch it on YouTube once it's up. If you want to go deeper, the week's reading plan covers Colossians 3, Matthew 18, Ephesians 4, Psalm 103, Luke 23, and Romans 5 — and it's worth doing every day this week. Couples, read them together.