Hebrews 12:15 · Subject · Forgiveness
Forgiveness and Health
Hebrews 12:15 calls bitterness a root that springs up and defiles many, and Paul names bitterness first among the sins that believers are told to get rid of in Ephesians 4:31.
In a laboratory experiment published in 2001, unforgiving thoughts raised heart rate and blood pressure above their resting levels more than forgiving thoughts did, and forgiving thoughts brought a greater sense of control.
Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God, and that no root of bitterness springs up to cause trouble and defile many.
- Books
- Hebrews, Ephesians
- Hold in memory
- Hebrews 12:15, Ephesians 4:32
Summary
Scripture grounds forgiving in God's forgiveness in Christ, and it warns that envy, resentment and an unforgiving heart harm the one who keeps them. Psychologists have measured forgiving and grudges in laboratories, in surveys and in trials. Their findings agree with the warnings, and they come with limits of time, design and sample that the studies themselves state.
- Trials of forgiveness therapy report less depression, anxiety, anger and stress among those treated than among those left untreated.
- Across 103 samples, the link between forgiveness and health was stronger for psychological health than for physical health.
- In older Americans, forgiving others only on conditions went with a higher risk of death, and the study did not test whether forgiving lengthens life.
What Scripture Says of Bitterness
Hebrews, Ephesians, Proverbs and the parable of the unforgiving servant each speak of bitterness, envy or a refusal to forgive.
The question is whether forgiving, or refusing to forgive, bears on the health of the one who was wronged. Scripture speaks to it first, in its warnings against bitterness and resentment and in its command to forgive as God has forgiven. Forgiveness, the value, rests on that command and on the word of Christ in Matthew 6:14 to 15, so research can only corroborate it.
The research ranges from imagined grudges in a laboratory to a workbook given to thousands of adults. It measures anger, stress, depression, blood pressure and mortality, the things a laboratory or a survey can count.
The Greek word for bitterness in Hebrews 12:15 is pikria, which Strong's dictionary defines as acridity, especially poison, and which the New Testament uses four times. Moses used the picture of a poisonous root when he warned Israel before it entered the land.
Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that bears such poisonous and bitter fruit,Hebrews 12:15 uses the same picture of a bitter root, so this older warning against turning from the LORD stands behind it.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, outcry and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.Paul follows the list with kindness and forgiving, the very conduct that the forgiveness programmes in the studies set out to teach.
A tranquil heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones.Solomon's proverb links the state of the heart with the body's health, and the studies below put that link to the test.
A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.Proverbs ties the inner life to the body a second time, setting the cheerful against the crushed in spirit.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes on Proverbs 14:30, reads the rot as moral as well as bodily. He writes of envy "which eats, like a consuming disease, into the very bones and marrow of a man’s moral life".
In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should repay all that he owed. That is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”Jesus ends the parable of the unforgiving servant with the jailers and with a warning to forgive a brother from the heart.
Peter's question about how often to forgive, and the parable that answers it, are taught on Seventy Times Seven.
Proverbs 14:30, Proverbs 17:22, Matthew 18:34 to 35
Eight Studies of Forgiveness and Health
Four of the eight test programmes that teach forgiveness, three measure links in surveys, and one measures the body in a laboratory.
The trials measured the mind over weeks and the surveys measured links, so the eight studies show association and short-term change.
| Study | Design and sample | Finding | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Witvliet, Ludwig and Vander Laan, Psychological Science (2001) | Laboratory imagery, 71 adults (35 women, 36 men) recalling real offenders | Higher brow muscle activity, skin conductance and cardiovascular changes from baseline under unforgiving imagery | Minutes of imagery, with no measure of health |
| Lundahl, Taylor, Stevenson and Roberts, Research on Social Work Practice (2008) | Meta-analysis of 14 published reports with comparison groups | Those taught forgave more (effect size .82), with more positive affect (.81) and self-esteem (.60) and less negative affect (.54) | Published reports only, with no physical measure |
| Toussaint, Owen and Cheadle, Journal of Behavioral Medicine (2012) | National sample of 1,232 Americans aged 66 and older, followed for mortality | Only conditional forgiveness of others stayed a predictor of mortality risk after the controls | Observational, so it shows a link and no cause |
| Wade, Hoyt, Kidwell and Worthington, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (2014) | Meta-analysis of 54 reports, with 2,323 people after treatment and 1,716 at follow-up | More forgiveness than no treatment (0.56) and than other treatments (0.45), and greater change in depression, anxiety and hope than no treatment | Mental outcomes only |
| Toussaint, Shields, Dorn and Slavich, Journal of Health Psychology (2016) | One-time survey of 148 young adults | Lower forgiveness and greater lifetime stress each predicted worse mental and physical health | A single survey of a small sample |
| Akhtar and Barlow, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse (2018) | Meta-analysis of randomized trials in adolescents and adults who had suffered hurt or violence | Less depression (SMD -0.37), anger and hostility (-0.49), and stress and distress (-0.66) | Mental well-being only |
| Rasmussen, Stackhouse, Boon, Comstock and Ross, Psychology and Health (2019) | Meta-analysis of 606 correlations from 103 samples, 26,043 people in 17 countries | A reliable link, stronger for psychological than physical health, with robust links to heart rate and blood pressure | Correlations, which show no cause |
| Ho, Worthington, Cowden and others, BMJ Public Health (2024) | Randomized trial of a self-directed workbook, 4,598 adults in five countries, against a waiting list | At two weeks, lower unforgiveness (SMD -0.53), depression (-0.22) and anxiety (-0.21) | Measured once, at two weeks, with no active treatment for comparison |
Rasmussen, Stackhouse, Boon, Comstock and Ross, Psychology and Health (2019), Ho, Worthington, Cowden and others, BMJ Public Health (2024)
The Body Under a Grudge
A laboratory study measured the body over minutes, and a national survey of older adults tracked their mortality.
In Witvliet (2001) each participant imagined a real person who had hurt them, once rehearsing the hurt and once imagining forgiveness. Several effects of the unforgiving imagery lasted into the recovery periods that followed it. The authors wrote that their results "suggest possible mechanisms" by which unforgiving responses held over time may harm health.
Toussaint (2012) drew on a nationally representative survey. Before the authors adjusted for religion, social standing and health habits, God's unconditional forgiveness predicted death along with conditional forgiveness of others.
After the adjustment only conditional forgiveness of others remained a predictor, and the authors traced part of that link through physical health.
Toussaint (2016) asked how lifetime stress and forgiveness work together in the same person. Stress was less tied to poor mental health among the more forgiving. The title says forgiveness "protects" health, a word that one measurement in time cannot prove.
Rasmussen (2019) pooled samples that included students, older adults, divorced mothers and combat veterans, and it weighed physical and psychological health separately.
What the Trials Measured
Two reviews of programmes, one review of randomized trials and one large trial tested teaching people to forgive, mostly over weeks.
Lundahl (2008) compared ways of delivering the programmes and found that "Individually delivered programs are superior to group delivery".
Wade (2014) pooled unpublished reports as well as published ones, so it weighed studies that never reached print. Longer treatments and treatments given one to one predicted more change in forgiveness than no treatment did.
Akhtar (2018) rated each trial it pooled for risk of bias. The authors called the result "moderately strong evidence" and added, "Further research is, however, needed".
Ho (2024) recruited adults in Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Africa and Ukraine. Half received the workbook at once and half after a delay, which made the delayed half the comparison group.
The Limits of the Research
The studies report links and short-term changes, and the long-term effect of forgiving on the body is still unmeasured.
The trials show change over the short spans they measured, mostly against people given no treatment. The surveys and reviews of correlations show that forgiving and health go together, which leaves open which one drives the other.
E. L. Worthington, an author of the 2014 review and the 2024 trial, developed one of the models those studies tested. The 2024 trial also reports a licensing interest held by another of its authors.
Studies of forgiving oneself form a separate line of research, and they are taken up on Forgiving Yourself: What Scripture Says. A person carrying an old injury needs the help of others, and Scripture tells believers, "Carry one another’s burdens" (Galatians 6:2).
Two Readings of Job 5:2
Commentators divide over whether the wrath that kills the fool in Job 5:2 is his own or God's.
For resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.Eliphaz speaks this maxim in his first answer to Job, a speech that begins in chapter 4.
Eliphaz's word for resentment is ka'as, vexation, which occurs 25 times in the Hebrew Bible.
After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. For you have not spoken about Me accurately, as My servant Job has.The book closes the debate with this verdict, so no maxim of the three friends stands as the book's own teaching without testing.
The fool's own resentmentMatthew Henry
Matthew Henry reads the line as the fool's own anger. He writes, "Wrath kills the foolish man, his own wrath, and therefore he is foolish for indulging it". He adds that "it is a fire in his bones, in his blood, enough to put him into a fever".
The objection: in the next verses Eliphaz tells of a fool whose house was suddenly cursed, which points to a judgment from outside him.
God's wrath on the wickedAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes reads the line as "the wrath of God". In his reading Eliphaz implies that Job "was to be regarded as having been a great sinner".
The objection: the second half of the verse names envy, which belongs to the simple person himself.
Forgive as the Lord Forgave
John Chrysostom, preaching on Ephesians 4:31, called bitterness an evil that "destroys first of all the very soul that engenders it". He urged his hearers, "Let us destroy all bitterness; let us cut it up by the very roots".
Bear with one another and forgive any complaint you may have against someone else. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.The command reaches any complaint against another, the small grievances of a household as well as grave wrongs.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- STEP Bible lexicons TBESG and TBESH, with James Strong's dictionary glosses, entries g4088 and h3708 (Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- C. vanOyen Witvliet, T. E. Ludwig and K. L. Vander Laan, Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: implications for emotion, physiology, and health, Psychological Science 12(2): 117 to 123 (2001)
- B. W. Lundahl, M. J. Taylor, R. Stevenson and K. D. Roberts, Process-Based Forgiveness Interventions: A Meta-Analytic Review, Research on Social Work Practice 18(5): 465 to 478 (2008)
- L. L. Toussaint, A. D. Owen and A. Cheadle, Forgive to live: forgiveness, health, and longevity, Journal of Behavioral Medicine 35(4): 375 to 386 (2012)
- N. G. Wade, W. T. Hoyt, J. E. Kidwell and E. L. Worthington, Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: a meta-analysis, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 82(1): 154 to 170 (2014)
- L. Toussaint, G. S. Shields, G. Dorn and G. M. Slavich, Effects of lifetime stress exposure on mental and physical health in young adulthood: How stress degrades and forgiveness protects health, Journal of Health Psychology 21(6): 1004 to 1014 (2016)
- S. Akhtar and J. Barlow, Forgiveness Therapy for the Promotion of Mental Well-Being: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse 19(1): 107 to 122 (2018)
- K. R. Rasmussen, M. Stackhouse, S. D. Boon, K. Comstock and R. Ross, Meta-analytic connections between forgiveness and health: the moderating effects of forgiveness-related distinctions, Psychology and Health 34(5): 515 to 534 (2019)
- M. Y. Ho, E. L. Worthington, R. G. Cowden and others, International REACH forgiveness intervention: a multisite randomised controlled trial, BMJ Public Health 2(1): e000072 (2024)
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, on Proverbs 14:30 and Job 5:2.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Job 5:2.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, Homily 15, on Ephesians 4:31.
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