Self-Forgiveness

This topic has been something I have been battling with for all my Christianity. The ability to forgive myself for my short-comings, my missteps and continue moving towards God. I might go as far as saying it is a common motif in this blog, the ability to forgive ourselves for parts of ourselves we can't seem to shake off.

To start I will share an excerpt from one of my journal entries this week:

"I’m not doing enough in response to your faithfulness”

In response to this, gently yet clear, I felt the Holy Spirit say to me “what do you think would be enough?”. That question had me stunned, because actually what do I think would be enough in response to God sending Jesus to us.

As the year rolls to an end , I get all contemplative and proud of some things and disappointed about other things. Last week we mentioned that your salvation was not earned and thus it is not ours to maintain. Same thing applies to forgiveness, you did not earn God’s forgiveness and thus it is not yours to earn.

If Paul had not forgiven himself for the part he played in the destruction of the early church there is possibility he would not have had as much of a positive impact on the early like he did. Forgiving yourself means understanding that even if you know better and did not do better, you do not deserve to punish yourself. To better understand the impact of forgiveness on our walk I’ll explain how forgiveness from God operates.

Forgiveness from God:

Back in the day, God created heaven and earth as we all know this story. He made all things, including us. When He made us with His infinite wisdom God knew we would sin, fall short and choose the thing He hated.

As a solution, He decided He would become man and die on our behalf so we could be free from sin itself. All this happened at the beginning of time, but God only came much later. As we waited His arrival, instead of leaving us, He created the law which we could live by so that we can maintain closeness to Him through it.

When God eventually came, He lived with us and loved us, healed us, taught us and then died for us so that the death of our souls would not be a burden we have to bear. He bore it on the cross. After the fact, He left His spirit with us to remind us what is right and wrong, and how to walk in the faith effectively.

Hence the death of our Lord Jesus had the effect of taking death as His own, so that in our failings we have nothing to fear because if a God who loved you enough to sacrifice the most precious thing regardless of what your choices would be loves you, the capacity to forgive is nothing to Him.

Satan however has taken something as beautiful as forgiveness and perverted it and made us believe that God won’t forgive us because we have failed yet again and if God won’t forgive us we must never forgive ourselves.

We have carried the guilt of our sin as though Jesus has not already done it.

Effect of punishing yourself:

Self rebuke on the surface appears righteous, in fact it may appear like it’s repentance. However when placed side by side, self rebuke is destructive. It shames, it disrupts, and it distracts. It is proud at the root, believing we decide when we are ready to return to our Father and if we are worthy of returning to our Father. Your worth is not a matter of your deciding any longer, we have been bought at a hefty sum of the blood of Jesus!

Repentance corrects, it refocuses and it is Holy Spirit lead. God is passionate that the spirit He placed in you be obedient to Him. I love this verse and will always go back to it:

“Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.”

‭‭James‬ ‭4‬:‭5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

By default then it means that if the spirit within you is made to be faithful to Him, the act of withholding yourself from Him is self punishment. I once heard a teaching where sin was likened to self punishment. Distance from God in the name of not being worthy is a projection of the failing of human love on a perfect God. How disappointing it must be for God to hear that considering He died on our behalf.

You are not doing yourself a service by holding yourself back from returning to church, not reading the Bible or not praying. Get out of your head and get into His presence. The effect of distance from God is punishing ourselves for something already rectified. The year has been long and hard, you let yourself down in some way, but you do not judge yourself, God does and He is not judging you but beckoning you to return to a place of reconciliation.

“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Prayer:

Lord could it be that simple, that you love us as we are sin and all. It is not hard to believe when we look back at the cross and see how passionate you have been about our spirits. Lord we are thankful even if we do not say it enough. Help us to get out of our own way and trust in you and your unfailing love. You have redeemed us, help us remember it in times when we feel unworthy of this redemption.