Relational Resilience, Grace, and the Role of Divine Forgiveness

The constructs of relational resilience, divine forgiveness, and grace have recently grown in popularity within the field of positive psychology, yet their associations have thus far remained unexplored. The present study sought to fill this gap in the literature and determine what relationship exists between these variables while controlling for other related factors such as interpersonal forgiveness, self-forgiveness, spirituality, and general resilience. Participants (N = 247) from a large private Christian university provided responses to both trait and conflict-specific measures. Correlational findings supported significant positive relations between relational resilience and divine forgiveness, interpersonal forgiveness, and self-forgiveness. Relational resilience was not significantly correlated with perceptions of experiencing God’s grace or giving grace to others. When assessing the relationship between divine forgiveness and relational resilience, divine forgiveness did not significantly predict relational resilience beyond other variables and did not moderate the relationship between grace and relational resilience. Rather, interpersonal forgiveness significantly predicted relational resilience beyond other variables and post-hoc analyses revealed that it mediated the relationship between divine forgiveness and relational resilience. An exploratory analysis revealed that the relationship between experiencing grace and relational resilience was serially mediated by divine forgiveness and interpersonal forgiveness. These findings support the importance of promoting an individual’s understanding of God’s grace, divine forgiveness, and interpersonal forgiveness in Christian counseling applications to strengthen the relational foundations necessary for dyadic partners to bounce back from relational injury.