Post by Cindy on Jul 10, 2015 7:11:38 GMT -5
I want to talk about forgiving ourselves as it's something else that's terribly misunderstood, mainly again, because of what the world teaches about self esteem and forgiveness.
First, nowhere in the Bible does it say that we're to forgive ourselves for anything. Yet some Christian authors even say it's a sin not to forgive ourselves. That's pretty dangerous to say something like that when there's nothing in the bible that indicates it's a sin, so that would be adding to God's Word, which isn't good! A sin is failure to obey a command of God. That's why I can say it's a sin to worry, because God commands us in many scriptures, not to worry. But nowhere does God command us to love ourselves or to forgive ourselves. The scripture used by most folks to say He does is when He tells us to love others as we love ourselves. But He isn't telling us to love ourselves there. Instead, He's saying that He knows we do love ourselves (way too much!) and that He wants us to love others with that much love. Basically Jesus implies that we already love ourselves way more then we should and that we should start applying that love to others instead. I say "instead" because of His commands that we are to put others before ourselves and think of them before ourselves etc. All of that is addressed in the thread Biblical Self-Esteem so I'm not going to cover more about it here. That's a good thread to read every once in awhile though even if you've already read it.
I say again that the Bible says nothing about forgiving ourselves. So what do we do if we feel we can't forgive ourselves for something? Well, first let's look at what we're really saying when we say we need to forgive ourselves.
Usually when someone says they want or need to forgive themselves, even if they're unable to, they're saying that they want to put the incident behind them, that they feel a lot of guilt about it and they don't want to feel that anymore. Here's where the world's ideas really get messed up. Because if the person who wants to forgive themselves, even if they think they're unable to actually did have a low self esteem, instead of wanting for forgive themselves they'd be saying things like, “Well, you’d expect someone like me to do that, wouldn’t you?” Normally though we hear people saying things like, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for that", which says that they're very anxious to forgive themselves but don't know how. We're really saying that we wish that we could know for sure that we'd not ever do that again aren't we? And the reason we feel we can't forgive ourselves is not only because of the damage already done by our sin, but also because we're aware that since we haven't changed at all, we can't be sure we won't do it again. We're carrying around this load of guilt and we won't put it down because we're afraid that we'll just keep doing it. And if we carry it around long enough, we may have even repeated the offense since the first time, which of course only makes it worse.
Let's look and see what God has to say about all this. We've really already covered this, it just wasn't covered as self forgiveness. For those of us born again, how can we be forgiven? We're forgiven when we repent right? And repentance means turning from our sin. What happens when we do that? God not only forgives our sin, but He cleanses our conscience too. So why didn't He? Because we didn't apply all that He has for us when we asked Him to forgive us. As we talked about before, that's often because we didn't know it was available to us.
But there's another reason too. We need to ask the Lord to help us and search our hearts to see if we just might be using this as a way to punish ourselves for our sin; a way to kind of show the world that we're miserable over what we did. This really isn't all that unusual and is often something we learn from the world as children. Another possible reason is self pity, which is a very nasty sin and leads to many others. Unfortunately for us, feeling guilty can often lead to that. So this is a time to be honest with ourselves about all of our reasons for holding onto this.
How do we overcome this and get rid of the burden of guilt? First we have to be saved, that's number one. Since all of us are, we'll go to the next step which is that we have to be willing to apply what Christ has to offer us, which is not only forgiveness but the cleansing of our conscience as well.
Hebrews 10:22–23 —let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. *Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. *
What do we do then? Exactly what the verse says: we draw near to God with a sincere heart, knowing by our faith, that He will cleanse us from the guilt and remove it as far from us as the east is from the west. In other words, we go to the Lord in repentance asking Him to cleanse our conscience and accept by faith that He has indeed done so.
John 15:3–4 —You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. *Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. *
Then, we "remain in Him" by staying close to Him all the time in prayer and through studying His Word daily. When we are living that way, we are living a lifestyle of faith and our conscience is clean because we know that we wouldn't do anything purposely to dishonor Him. Like Paul, we can say:
Acts 24:16 —So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man. *
But we know, just as Paul did, that doesn't mean we won't slip up and sin at times.
1 Corinthians 4:4 —My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. *
Again like Paul we can know that the Lord will bring any sin we've committed to our minds so we can know about it and repent of it. We know He will do this because He loves us, not because He wants to condemn us - just the opposite for He has already given His life for us! Therefore, when we do realize that we've sinned, we're not afraid to run to the Lord and ask His forgiveness and help to overcome it. We know He loves us and only wants to help us.
Because we are living a life of faith and remaining in Him, more and more we become like our Lord, while those who aren't saved become more corrupt. They can't help it because their conscience is corrupt and will remain so until or unless they become saved. So the unsaved can never really have this freedom from guilt that we can. They can have their conscience seared, their heart hardened, however so that they no longer "feel" anything that the Lord would want them to, such as guilt over sin etc. but that's hardly the same thing.
Once we realize that God cleanses our consciences from guilt and shame, and we've gone to Him in faith believing He will, from that point on we have to accept that He has and is doing so. To continue to hang on to our thoughts of guilt and shame would be the same as saying He wasn't strong enough or powerful enough to forgive and cleanse us. Which brings me to the final thing we must do in order to make sure we're handling this as the Lord would have us do. As I say so many other times, from this point on, our job is to accept His forgiveness and to take any further thoughts about being guilty or feeling shame, self pity, or whatever about the sin captive and replacing them with the Truth from God's Word. If we continue to allow those kind of thoughts in our minds, it doesn't mean that God hasn't cleansed us, because He has; it means we are refusing to accept it as the Truth and live it. So every time we start back to our old habit of thinking about the issue, we need to stop the thought even before we finish it - the sooner the better - and replace it with the Truth: that we've been totally and completely forgiven by the Lord. This is one of our Lord's commands that is basic to living a life of victory. If you have never learned about this, please read the article, Taking Our Thoughts Captive for more information. We need to keep our hearts and minds pure and the only way we can do that is by staying in God's Word daily as that's how He renews our minds, and taking our thoughts that go against the Truth captive and replacing them with the Truth.
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22–24)
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)
“To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” (Titus 1:15–16)
However, if we're still hanging on to feelings of guilt and or shame, it could also be an indicator that we've missed something...that something still hasn't been taken to the Lord. Maybe when we searched our hearts we saw what we thought the problem was and took that to Him, but we just didn't go deep enough when searching.... Again to use myself as an example, lets say I sinned and was speeding; when I searched my heart, the first sin I realized was that I had broken the law and we're told to obey the law. When I continued to search my heart about what I'd done and how sinful it was, I found yet more sins were involved in it and finally got to the root sin which rebellion and selfishness. If I had stopped when I realized that we're supposed to obey the law, thinking that's all there was too it, I wouldn't have taken care of the deeper problem I had. See what I mean? So that's always a possibility if we're still hanging on to those feelings of guilt.
Last remember what Paul told us: don't look back! Don't live in the past. Take those thoughts captive and press forward!
“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13–14)
First, nowhere in the Bible does it say that we're to forgive ourselves for anything. Yet some Christian authors even say it's a sin not to forgive ourselves. That's pretty dangerous to say something like that when there's nothing in the bible that indicates it's a sin, so that would be adding to God's Word, which isn't good! A sin is failure to obey a command of God. That's why I can say it's a sin to worry, because God commands us in many scriptures, not to worry. But nowhere does God command us to love ourselves or to forgive ourselves. The scripture used by most folks to say He does is when He tells us to love others as we love ourselves. But He isn't telling us to love ourselves there. Instead, He's saying that He knows we do love ourselves (way too much!) and that He wants us to love others with that much love. Basically Jesus implies that we already love ourselves way more then we should and that we should start applying that love to others instead. I say "instead" because of His commands that we are to put others before ourselves and think of them before ourselves etc. All of that is addressed in the thread Biblical Self-Esteem so I'm not going to cover more about it here. That's a good thread to read every once in awhile though even if you've already read it.
I say again that the Bible says nothing about forgiving ourselves. So what do we do if we feel we can't forgive ourselves for something? Well, first let's look at what we're really saying when we say we need to forgive ourselves.
Usually when someone says they want or need to forgive themselves, even if they're unable to, they're saying that they want to put the incident behind them, that they feel a lot of guilt about it and they don't want to feel that anymore. Here's where the world's ideas really get messed up. Because if the person who wants to forgive themselves, even if they think they're unable to actually did have a low self esteem, instead of wanting for forgive themselves they'd be saying things like, “Well, you’d expect someone like me to do that, wouldn’t you?” Normally though we hear people saying things like, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for that", which says that they're very anxious to forgive themselves but don't know how. We're really saying that we wish that we could know for sure that we'd not ever do that again aren't we? And the reason we feel we can't forgive ourselves is not only because of the damage already done by our sin, but also because we're aware that since we haven't changed at all, we can't be sure we won't do it again. We're carrying around this load of guilt and we won't put it down because we're afraid that we'll just keep doing it. And if we carry it around long enough, we may have even repeated the offense since the first time, which of course only makes it worse.
Let's look and see what God has to say about all this. We've really already covered this, it just wasn't covered as self forgiveness. For those of us born again, how can we be forgiven? We're forgiven when we repent right? And repentance means turning from our sin. What happens when we do that? God not only forgives our sin, but He cleanses our conscience too. So why didn't He? Because we didn't apply all that He has for us when we asked Him to forgive us. As we talked about before, that's often because we didn't know it was available to us.
But there's another reason too. We need to ask the Lord to help us and search our hearts to see if we just might be using this as a way to punish ourselves for our sin; a way to kind of show the world that we're miserable over what we did. This really isn't all that unusual and is often something we learn from the world as children. Another possible reason is self pity, which is a very nasty sin and leads to many others. Unfortunately for us, feeling guilty can often lead to that. So this is a time to be honest with ourselves about all of our reasons for holding onto this.
How do we overcome this and get rid of the burden of guilt? First we have to be saved, that's number one. Since all of us are, we'll go to the next step which is that we have to be willing to apply what Christ has to offer us, which is not only forgiveness but the cleansing of our conscience as well.
Hebrews 10:22–23 —let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. *Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. *
What do we do then? Exactly what the verse says: we draw near to God with a sincere heart, knowing by our faith, that He will cleanse us from the guilt and remove it as far from us as the east is from the west. In other words, we go to the Lord in repentance asking Him to cleanse our conscience and accept by faith that He has indeed done so.
John 15:3–4 —You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. *Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. *
Then, we "remain in Him" by staying close to Him all the time in prayer and through studying His Word daily. When we are living that way, we are living a lifestyle of faith and our conscience is clean because we know that we wouldn't do anything purposely to dishonor Him. Like Paul, we can say:
Acts 24:16 —So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man. *
But we know, just as Paul did, that doesn't mean we won't slip up and sin at times.
1 Corinthians 4:4 —My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. *
Again like Paul we can know that the Lord will bring any sin we've committed to our minds so we can know about it and repent of it. We know He will do this because He loves us, not because He wants to condemn us - just the opposite for He has already given His life for us! Therefore, when we do realize that we've sinned, we're not afraid to run to the Lord and ask His forgiveness and help to overcome it. We know He loves us and only wants to help us.
Because we are living a life of faith and remaining in Him, more and more we become like our Lord, while those who aren't saved become more corrupt. They can't help it because their conscience is corrupt and will remain so until or unless they become saved. So the unsaved can never really have this freedom from guilt that we can. They can have their conscience seared, their heart hardened, however so that they no longer "feel" anything that the Lord would want them to, such as guilt over sin etc. but that's hardly the same thing.
Once we realize that God cleanses our consciences from guilt and shame, and we've gone to Him in faith believing He will, from that point on we have to accept that He has and is doing so. To continue to hang on to our thoughts of guilt and shame would be the same as saying He wasn't strong enough or powerful enough to forgive and cleanse us. Which brings me to the final thing we must do in order to make sure we're handling this as the Lord would have us do. As I say so many other times, from this point on, our job is to accept His forgiveness and to take any further thoughts about being guilty or feeling shame, self pity, or whatever about the sin captive and replacing them with the Truth from God's Word. If we continue to allow those kind of thoughts in our minds, it doesn't mean that God hasn't cleansed us, because He has; it means we are refusing to accept it as the Truth and live it. So every time we start back to our old habit of thinking about the issue, we need to stop the thought even before we finish it - the sooner the better - and replace it with the Truth: that we've been totally and completely forgiven by the Lord. This is one of our Lord's commands that is basic to living a life of victory. If you have never learned about this, please read the article, Taking Our Thoughts Captive for more information. We need to keep our hearts and minds pure and the only way we can do that is by staying in God's Word daily as that's how He renews our minds, and taking our thoughts that go against the Truth captive and replacing them with the Truth.
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22–24)
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)
“To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” (Titus 1:15–16)
However, if we're still hanging on to feelings of guilt and or shame, it could also be an indicator that we've missed something...that something still hasn't been taken to the Lord. Maybe when we searched our hearts we saw what we thought the problem was and took that to Him, but we just didn't go deep enough when searching.... Again to use myself as an example, lets say I sinned and was speeding; when I searched my heart, the first sin I realized was that I had broken the law and we're told to obey the law. When I continued to search my heart about what I'd done and how sinful it was, I found yet more sins were involved in it and finally got to the root sin which rebellion and selfishness. If I had stopped when I realized that we're supposed to obey the law, thinking that's all there was too it, I wouldn't have taken care of the deeper problem I had. See what I mean? So that's always a possibility if we're still hanging on to those feelings of guilt.
Last remember what Paul told us: don't look back! Don't live in the past. Take those thoughts captive and press forward!
“Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13–14)
!!
