We need to understand that forgiveness is conditional. In other words there are conditions attached to forgiveness. It's not given without those conditions. Many people think we have to forgive others even if they don't repent and they use what Jesus said on the cross to prove it. (you know, where Jesus said, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do" Luke 23:34) The problem with this is that when Jesus said that, He wasn't forgiving anyone, He was praying! If He had forgiven everyone then everyone would be saved without having to accept Him as God and without having to believe that His death paid for their sins. The Father did in fact answer His prayer too. Think about what was happening right then. The Lord, the God of all creation was hanging on a cross, put there by men He Himself had created, after they had tortured Him! If anything would anger the Father, THAT would! Remember what happened? It sure sounds to me like the Father was angry!
Luke 23:44–45 —It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, *for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. *
Matthew 27:51 —At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. *
Matthew 27:54 —When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” *
I honestly believe that the only reason God didn't wipe out mankind right then and there is because of our Lord's prayer! But no one was forgiven of their sin, especially the sin of crucifying the Lord unless or until they had repented. The Father answered that part of our Lord's prayer as well as both the thief and the centurion repented and I'm sure others did as well that we're not aware of Luke 23:42–43, 47; and of course others were saved after the Lord rose again and more still after the Holy Spirit was sent. Each one that was saved though had repented of their sins.
Any way you look at it though, Jesus did not forgive "everyone" or anyone when He prayed that, He was only asking the Father to forgive mankind for what they were doing to Him. Just like Stephen did when he was stoned. Jesus knew that those who had put Him on the cross did so because they were still under the control of sin...of Satan and that they didn't understand what they were doing. He wanted them (and us) to have another chance to be saved.
In the entire Bible, the only time someone is forgiven is when they have repented of their sin. That includes us too. Let's say we have a habit of swearing. We've done it for years and we really don't think it's all that bad because we don't use the really bad words, just a few of the milder ones. But we go to God and ask Him to forgive us because we know it's wrong and a sin. If we don't truly hate that sin and mean to stop, then we are not forgiven of it. We can ask all we want to, but until we truly repent, we're not forgiven. If we have truly repented, we will hate that sin and do our very best not to repeat it. If we do slip and repeat it anyway, it will cause us to feel just awful about it and we'll go to the Lord begging His mercy and help and be forgiven again. However, if we're just asking forgiveness because we know we're supposed to, then we might as well save our breath. Our relationship with the Lord won't be restored and we won't have peace with Him until we truly hate that sin. Look at that portion of the passage we're studying again:
Luke 17:3–4 —So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. *If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *
It's when the person has repented that we're then able to forgive them. Luke 24:46–47, Acts 17:30 and many many other passages show us that repentance must come before forgiveness.
So let's say a Christian lies to you and you go to them and tell them that you know that they lied. Let's pretend they act really sorry about it and say they repent and ask you to forgive them. Keep in mind, if you say you will forgive them, then you're promising that you won't bring up this matter ever again to them, to yourself or to anyone else. Because the Lord says to forgive them though, you do so. You both feel better and you go back home. Well a few days later, you're talking to them on the phone when they again say something that you again know is a lie!
So you again confront them right away and again they repent or seem to, and you again forgive them. Let's say this keeps happening, over and over again and you're really beginning to wonder if this person even knows what repentance is! You're getting really annoyed with them and having trouble not sinning yourself because of anger toward them. This is the kind of situation the apostles were talking about when they asked Jesus just how many times they were supposed to forgive someone for something.
Luke 17:4–5 —If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” *
See how they responded to the Lord when He said that? If put in modern terms, you could say they said,
"Whew! That's asking a lot! No way i can do that without more faith!" What did Jesus think of their reply though? Did He tell them that was good and that more faith would be supplied if they needed it? No!
Luke 17:6 —He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. *
And after saying that, He then went straight into the story about the servant and how the servant should obey and not expect to be rewarded for just doing what he'd been ordered to! So with those words, Jesus took care of all our excuses for not forgiving someone who has repented, or who at least says they've repented!
He first tells us that no matter how little our faith is, we have enough to obey Him and forgive because forgiveness is a choice not a feeling. Only God knows for sure what's in someone's heart. He does tell us in other places that we can know people by their fruit, but fruit takes time to grow. It doesn't grow over night or even in a day or a week. So just because someone keeps repeating a sin, if they say they've repented and ask our forgiveness, we have to forgive them. We have no choice, because those are our orders. We're to leave the judging to Him and forgive them.
Then He tells us the story about the servant and that one takes care of our excuse of not feeling like forgiving them! Read that one now:
Luke 17:7–10 —“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? *Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? *Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? *So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” *
Now, think of this servant. He's been working hard all day long and like anyone would, by supper time, he's hungry. But it's his job to prepare supper and serve his Master, not to eat it himself. So he cleans up, fixes supper and by then he's starving! He takes the meal out to his master, practically drooling over it himself, and has to stand their ready in case his master wants something, while his master eats it! When his master is finally done, he still doesn't get to eat... now he has to bring out the desert! When his master has finished that, he has to clear the table. Then and only then, can he finally reheat everything and get some supper for himself.
What is that servant feeling do you think? I'm quite sure he's feeling hungry and wanting to eat that food and wishing he could. His "feelings" are telling him to eat it and to eat it right now! Then why doesn't he? He doesn't eat it because he knows that he has to obey His master. There's no way he's going to think something like, "If I feel like it I'll obey my master, but if I don't feel like it, I'll just do what i want, which in this case means I'll go ahead and eat!" Jesus tells us that when the servant obeys in spite of how he "feels", he's not even doing anything special. He's just doing what he's supposed to do!
So now we know that we have to forgive when another Christian says they repent, regardless of how we feel, regardless of whether or not we see the "fruit" of repentance in their lives, and regardless of how much "faith" we have, because how ever much we have is enough.
Often we tend to think we're being hypocritical if we forgive someone that we don't feel like forgiving, so we really need to remember and understand that forgiveness is not a feeling. I want to quote from one of my books again because the way they explain this is really good and easy to remember.
“But, wait a minute! God doesn’t want me to be a hypocrite, does He? ”
No.
“Then, if I forgive someone when I don’t feel like doing so, won’t I be a hypocrite?”
No. Let me tell you why. The only reason you raise such an objection is because you have been influenced by the feeling-oriented times in which we live. You see, to think that way one must adopt an unbiblical, feeling-oriented view of hypocrisy. Your argument is that if you don’t feel forgiving, granting another forgiveness will be insincere and thus hypocritical. But actually, you have bought into a very foolish viewpoint. Let me explain.
Every morning I do something against all my feelings: I get up. Hardly ever do I want to get up. I’d like to throw the alarm clock through the window, cover my head with the covers, and forget the whole unpleasant business. But I don’t. I get up. Now, does that make me a hypocrite? Of course not. And, that isn’t the only thing I have to do against my feelings. All day long, in order to be responsible to God and others, I must do many things against my feelings. What does it mean when I pursue my responsibilities against my feelings? It simply means I am being responsible.
The biblical view of hypocrisy makes sense. If I had told you or led you to believe that I love to get out of bed in the morning when the truth is I don’t, then I would have been acting hypocritically. But I’ve told you the truth.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
One other thing I want to address is the idea that we're to "forgive and forget". We already talked about God "not remembering" our sins meaning that He promises not to bring them up to us, Himself or anyone else again, which we are also to do when we forgive. Forgiving and forgetting is another one of those sayings that have been repeated so often that people think it's biblical when it's not found in the bible anywhere! God never tells us to forget something. For one thing, He'd never command us to do something we're incapable of. (yes, I know He tells us to "be perfect" but the word that's translated "perfect" in that passage simply means to be "spiritually mature", so He is telling us there to grow in our faith which we are perfectly capable of doing) For another, He tells us to be aware and alert of dangers and temptations, and if we literally forgot things, we couldn't be aware of many of them. You can't learn a lesson and forget how you learned it. What He does tell us to do is "not remember" the sin in the same way He doesn't.
We're to make the same promise He does: not to think about it, not to remind ourselves of the sin, or remind the person or anyone else about it ever again. That means, taking our thoughts captive when necessary and using a Phil 4:8 list to direct our thoughts elsewhere if needed.
Philippians 4:8 —Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. *
(A Phil 4:8 list is a list we can make of things that we can think about that will agree with this verse. This list will be a list of things to think about whenever your mind starts wandering into areas it shouldn't. After writing down the verse, you list 20 different things to think about. These are NOT to be little, light things or things that you can only think about for a few seconds, but things that will keep your mind occupied for awhile. Write down things like, "What do I have to do to get ready to go on vacation"; "ideas of ways to talk about God to my children/grandchildren" or "how I want to redecorate or rearrange my living room"; or maybe, "people I might be able to help and include how" Or "what I'm going to do in my garden". I don't know what things you will want on your list, but they should all be things that agree with the above verse and that will keep your mind occupied for some time. Ask the Lord to help you think of things to put on it.
So the first step is to take your thoughts captive which we've discussed at length in other studies. If after taking your thoughts captive and replacing them with God's Truth, your mind keeps wanting to bring up the forbidden subject, that's when you use your phil 4:8 list to distract it.)
What's really great about this is that as we obey God and take our thoughts captive about these things (or anything else for that matter) we DO eventually forget it! Not literally of course. If we were to dig around in our memories, we'd find it, but for all practical purposes, eventually the memory of that sin will fade away as it's covered up with the other things we think about instead. You know that if you want to get rid of a bad habit, you can't just stop doing something or thinking something or saying something. You have to replace it with something else. Once you replace it and the replacement becomes a habit, then you've "forgotten" the bad habit. The same is true with this. Eventually the memory fades away as it's been replaced. So truly the only way we can forget something someone has done to us is by forgiving them God's way!
Now, about "apologizing". Apologizing is the worlds substitute for forgiveness. Originally the word meant defending yourself against a charge of wrongdoing in court (in Greece). Obviously that's the exact opposite of confessing your sins. Somehow or another though the word began to be used for when people said they were 'sorry" they'd done something. Saying your "sorry" and actually repenting of sin are two very different things. Someone can simply be "sorry" they got caught, or sorry they're going to have to pay the consequences of their sin, in fact they may not even believe in God or sin. If they do, they can even just be "sorry" that they're going to be in trouble for not doing what they knew they were supposed to do. They don't hate the sin, they're just sorry about it. All they're doing when they say they're sorry is telling you how they feel. They're not even telling you why they feel that way, which as I just showed could be for many different reasons! They aren't promising anything or doing anything about the sin when they say they're sorry either - as with repentance which means that they hate the sin and won't do it again and then they ask forgiveness and a promise is given that the sin won't be brought up again. Again this will help you understand it much better:
Picture the wrongdoer holding a basketball. He apologizes, saying, “I’m sorry.” The one offended shuffles his feet awkwardly. It is always awkward to respond to an apology, because you are not asked to do anything, and yet some sort of response is expected. The offended party says something inane like, “Well, that’s OK.” But it isn’t. The matter has not been put to rest. When you say the wrongdoing is OK you either lie or condone a wrong. At the end of the transaction the wrongdoer is still holding the ball.
Now, consider forgiveness. The wrongdoer comes with his basketball. He says, “I wronged you. Will you forgive me?” In so doing, he tosses the ball to the other person.
He is freed of his burden. Now, the burden for a response has shifted. The one wronged is asked to do what God requires him to do. He must either make the promise or risk offending God. There may be indecision on his part, but there is no awkwardness occasioned by unclarity. He knows what the Bible expects of him. When he says, “I forgive you,” he promises not to bring the matter up again. The two have both made commitments. The wrongdoer confessed to wrongdoing; he committed himself to that confession. The offended party committed himself to burying the matter. At the end of the transaction, the ball is tossed away and obligations concerning the matter are over and done with. Both are free to become reconciled. The matter has been set to rest.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
I think now you can see that apologizing is just the worlds substitute for forgiveness and it doesn't work very well. That does not mean that you can never say you're sorry to someone though. The world expects it and there's no real reason you can't give it to them, as long as YOU understand what's really happening. It's sad, but true that this is the best the world has to offer for unbelievers.
Luke 23:44–45 —It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, *for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. *
Matthew 27:51 —At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. *
Matthew 27:54 —When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!” *
I honestly believe that the only reason God didn't wipe out mankind right then and there is because of our Lord's prayer! But no one was forgiven of their sin, especially the sin of crucifying the Lord unless or until they had repented. The Father answered that part of our Lord's prayer as well as both the thief and the centurion repented and I'm sure others did as well that we're not aware of Luke 23:42–43, 47; and of course others were saved after the Lord rose again and more still after the Holy Spirit was sent. Each one that was saved though had repented of their sins.
Any way you look at it though, Jesus did not forgive "everyone" or anyone when He prayed that, He was only asking the Father to forgive mankind for what they were doing to Him. Just like Stephen did when he was stoned. Jesus knew that those who had put Him on the cross did so because they were still under the control of sin...of Satan and that they didn't understand what they were doing. He wanted them (and us) to have another chance to be saved.
In the entire Bible, the only time someone is forgiven is when they have repented of their sin. That includes us too. Let's say we have a habit of swearing. We've done it for years and we really don't think it's all that bad because we don't use the really bad words, just a few of the milder ones. But we go to God and ask Him to forgive us because we know it's wrong and a sin. If we don't truly hate that sin and mean to stop, then we are not forgiven of it. We can ask all we want to, but until we truly repent, we're not forgiven. If we have truly repented, we will hate that sin and do our very best not to repeat it. If we do slip and repeat it anyway, it will cause us to feel just awful about it and we'll go to the Lord begging His mercy and help and be forgiven again. However, if we're just asking forgiveness because we know we're supposed to, then we might as well save our breath. Our relationship with the Lord won't be restored and we won't have peace with Him until we truly hate that sin. Look at that portion of the passage we're studying again:
Luke 17:3–4 —So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. *If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *
It's when the person has repented that we're then able to forgive them. Luke 24:46–47, Acts 17:30 and many many other passages show us that repentance must come before forgiveness.
So let's say a Christian lies to you and you go to them and tell them that you know that they lied. Let's pretend they act really sorry about it and say they repent and ask you to forgive them. Keep in mind, if you say you will forgive them, then you're promising that you won't bring up this matter ever again to them, to yourself or to anyone else. Because the Lord says to forgive them though, you do so. You both feel better and you go back home. Well a few days later, you're talking to them on the phone when they again say something that you again know is a lie!
So you again confront them right away and again they repent or seem to, and you again forgive them. Let's say this keeps happening, over and over again and you're really beginning to wonder if this person even knows what repentance is! You're getting really annoyed with them and having trouble not sinning yourself because of anger toward them. This is the kind of situation the apostles were talking about when they asked Jesus just how many times they were supposed to forgive someone for something. Luke 17:4–5 —If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” *The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” *
See how they responded to the Lord when He said that? If put in modern terms, you could say they said,
"Whew! That's asking a lot! No way i can do that without more faith!" What did Jesus think of their reply though? Did He tell them that was good and that more faith would be supplied if they needed it? No! Luke 17:6 —He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. *
And after saying that, He then went straight into the story about the servant and how the servant should obey and not expect to be rewarded for just doing what he'd been ordered to! So with those words, Jesus took care of all our excuses for not forgiving someone who has repented, or who at least says they've repented!
He first tells us that no matter how little our faith is, we have enough to obey Him and forgive because forgiveness is a choice not a feeling. Only God knows for sure what's in someone's heart. He does tell us in other places that we can know people by their fruit, but fruit takes time to grow. It doesn't grow over night or even in a day or a week. So just because someone keeps repeating a sin, if they say they've repented and ask our forgiveness, we have to forgive them. We have no choice, because those are our orders. We're to leave the judging to Him and forgive them.
Then He tells us the story about the servant and that one takes care of our excuse of not feeling like forgiving them! Read that one now:
Luke 17:7–10 —“Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? *Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? *Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? *So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ ” *
Now, think of this servant. He's been working hard all day long and like anyone would, by supper time, he's hungry. But it's his job to prepare supper and serve his Master, not to eat it himself. So he cleans up, fixes supper and by then he's starving! He takes the meal out to his master, practically drooling over it himself, and has to stand their ready in case his master wants something, while his master eats it! When his master is finally done, he still doesn't get to eat... now he has to bring out the desert! When his master has finished that, he has to clear the table. Then and only then, can he finally reheat everything and get some supper for himself.
What is that servant feeling do you think? I'm quite sure he's feeling hungry and wanting to eat that food and wishing he could. His "feelings" are telling him to eat it and to eat it right now! Then why doesn't he? He doesn't eat it because he knows that he has to obey His master. There's no way he's going to think something like, "If I feel like it I'll obey my master, but if I don't feel like it, I'll just do what i want, which in this case means I'll go ahead and eat!" Jesus tells us that when the servant obeys in spite of how he "feels", he's not even doing anything special. He's just doing what he's supposed to do!
So now we know that we have to forgive when another Christian says they repent, regardless of how we feel, regardless of whether or not we see the "fruit" of repentance in their lives, and regardless of how much "faith" we have, because how ever much we have is enough.
Often we tend to think we're being hypocritical if we forgive someone that we don't feel like forgiving, so we really need to remember and understand that forgiveness is not a feeling. I want to quote from one of my books again because the way they explain this is really good and easy to remember.
“But, wait a minute! God doesn’t want me to be a hypocrite, does He? ”
No.
“Then, if I forgive someone when I don’t feel like doing so, won’t I be a hypocrite?”
No. Let me tell you why. The only reason you raise such an objection is because you have been influenced by the feeling-oriented times in which we live. You see, to think that way one must adopt an unbiblical, feeling-oriented view of hypocrisy. Your argument is that if you don’t feel forgiving, granting another forgiveness will be insincere and thus hypocritical. But actually, you have bought into a very foolish viewpoint. Let me explain.
Every morning I do something against all my feelings: I get up. Hardly ever do I want to get up. I’d like to throw the alarm clock through the window, cover my head with the covers, and forget the whole unpleasant business. But I don’t. I get up. Now, does that make me a hypocrite? Of course not. And, that isn’t the only thing I have to do against my feelings. All day long, in order to be responsible to God and others, I must do many things against my feelings. What does it mean when I pursue my responsibilities against my feelings? It simply means I am being responsible.
The biblical view of hypocrisy makes sense. If I had told you or led you to believe that I love to get out of bed in the morning when the truth is I don’t, then I would have been acting hypocritically. But I’ve told you the truth.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
One other thing I want to address is the idea that we're to "forgive and forget". We already talked about God "not remembering" our sins meaning that He promises not to bring them up to us, Himself or anyone else again, which we are also to do when we forgive. Forgiving and forgetting is another one of those sayings that have been repeated so often that people think it's biblical when it's not found in the bible anywhere! God never tells us to forget something. For one thing, He'd never command us to do something we're incapable of. (yes, I know He tells us to "be perfect" but the word that's translated "perfect" in that passage simply means to be "spiritually mature", so He is telling us there to grow in our faith which we are perfectly capable of doing) For another, He tells us to be aware and alert of dangers and temptations, and if we literally forgot things, we couldn't be aware of many of them. You can't learn a lesson and forget how you learned it. What He does tell us to do is "not remember" the sin in the same way He doesn't.
We're to make the same promise He does: not to think about it, not to remind ourselves of the sin, or remind the person or anyone else about it ever again. That means, taking our thoughts captive when necessary and using a Phil 4:8 list to direct our thoughts elsewhere if needed.
Philippians 4:8 —Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. *
(A Phil 4:8 list is a list we can make of things that we can think about that will agree with this verse. This list will be a list of things to think about whenever your mind starts wandering into areas it shouldn't. After writing down the verse, you list 20 different things to think about. These are NOT to be little, light things or things that you can only think about for a few seconds, but things that will keep your mind occupied for awhile. Write down things like, "What do I have to do to get ready to go on vacation"; "ideas of ways to talk about God to my children/grandchildren" or "how I want to redecorate or rearrange my living room"; or maybe, "people I might be able to help and include how" Or "what I'm going to do in my garden". I don't know what things you will want on your list, but they should all be things that agree with the above verse and that will keep your mind occupied for some time. Ask the Lord to help you think of things to put on it.
So the first step is to take your thoughts captive which we've discussed at length in other studies. If after taking your thoughts captive and replacing them with God's Truth, your mind keeps wanting to bring up the forbidden subject, that's when you use your phil 4:8 list to distract it.)
What's really great about this is that as we obey God and take our thoughts captive about these things (or anything else for that matter) we DO eventually forget it! Not literally of course. If we were to dig around in our memories, we'd find it, but for all practical purposes, eventually the memory of that sin will fade away as it's covered up with the other things we think about instead. You know that if you want to get rid of a bad habit, you can't just stop doing something or thinking something or saying something. You have to replace it with something else. Once you replace it and the replacement becomes a habit, then you've "forgotten" the bad habit. The same is true with this. Eventually the memory fades away as it's been replaced. So truly the only way we can forget something someone has done to us is by forgiving them God's way!
Now, about "apologizing". Apologizing is the worlds substitute for forgiveness. Originally the word meant defending yourself against a charge of wrongdoing in court (in Greece). Obviously that's the exact opposite of confessing your sins. Somehow or another though the word began to be used for when people said they were 'sorry" they'd done something. Saying your "sorry" and actually repenting of sin are two very different things. Someone can simply be "sorry" they got caught, or sorry they're going to have to pay the consequences of their sin, in fact they may not even believe in God or sin. If they do, they can even just be "sorry" that they're going to be in trouble for not doing what they knew they were supposed to do. They don't hate the sin, they're just sorry about it. All they're doing when they say they're sorry is telling you how they feel. They're not even telling you why they feel that way, which as I just showed could be for many different reasons! They aren't promising anything or doing anything about the sin when they say they're sorry either - as with repentance which means that they hate the sin and won't do it again and then they ask forgiveness and a promise is given that the sin won't be brought up again. Again this will help you understand it much better:
Picture the wrongdoer holding a basketball. He apologizes, saying, “I’m sorry.” The one offended shuffles his feet awkwardly. It is always awkward to respond to an apology, because you are not asked to do anything, and yet some sort of response is expected. The offended party says something inane like, “Well, that’s OK.” But it isn’t. The matter has not been put to rest. When you say the wrongdoing is OK you either lie or condone a wrong. At the end of the transaction the wrongdoer is still holding the ball.
Now, consider forgiveness. The wrongdoer comes with his basketball. He says, “I wronged you. Will you forgive me?” In so doing, he tosses the ball to the other person.
He is freed of his burden. Now, the burden for a response has shifted. The one wronged is asked to do what God requires him to do. He must either make the promise or risk offending God. There may be indecision on his part, but there is no awkwardness occasioned by unclarity. He knows what the Bible expects of him. When he says, “I forgive you,” he promises not to bring the matter up again. The two have both made commitments. The wrongdoer confessed to wrongdoing; he committed himself to that confession. The offended party committed himself to burying the matter. At the end of the transaction, the ball is tossed away and obligations concerning the matter are over and done with. Both are free to become reconciled. The matter has been set to rest.
Adams, J. E. (1989). From forgiven to forgiving
I think now you can see that apologizing is just the worlds substitute for forgiveness and it doesn't work very well. That does not mean that you can never say you're sorry to someone though. The world expects it and there's no real reason you can't give it to them, as long as YOU understand what's really happening. It's sad, but true that this is the best the world has to offer for unbelievers.
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