Forgiving Ourselves

Adapted from an article published in 'Christianity' Magazine in September 2007, based on the new book by R T Kendal.

Introduction

As Christians we know that we are meant to forgive other people. For example, when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he taught them these words, “Father, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” As I have talked about in the past, this is the only conditional clause in the Lord’s prayer. Our own forgiveness depends in part upon our willingness to forgive others.

In Matthew’s Gospel the question of forgiveness is raised by Peter when he asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Here Peter is trying to be clever, because the Jewish religious leaders said that you had to forgive someone three times, so Peter thinks he is going one better. But Jesus’ response is "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22) In other words forgiveness is a continual act.

Of course, we have to acknowledge that forgiving someone who has hurt us, is not always easy. In fact it can be very difficult, but at least as Christians we know that this is what we are meant to do.
But today, I want to look at the issue of forgiveness from a different perspective. I said a moment ago that sometimes we find forgiving others difficult, one of the reasons for this is that very often we struggle to accept that we ourselves have been forgiven.

Very often we carry around with us a deep sense of guilt about things we may have said or done in the past. And even if we have confessed this sin to God, very often we still feel a sense of guilt and shame. We do not live as though we are truly forgiven people.

There is a true story of a priest in the Philippines, a much- loved man of God who carried the burden of a secret sin he had committed many years before. He had repented but still had no peace, no sense of God's forgiveness.

In his parish was a woman who deeply loved God and who claimed to have visions in which she spoke with Christ and he with her. The priest, however, was sceptical. To test her he said, "The next time you speak with Christ, I want you to ask him what sin your priest committed while he was in seminary." The woman agreed. A few days later the priest asked, "Well, did Christ visit you in your dreams?" "Yes, he did," she replied. "And did you ask him what sin I committed in seminary?" "Yes." "Well, what did he say?" "He said, 'I don't remember'" What God forgives, He forgets.
So this evening I want to look at the reasons why we should totally forgive ourselves.

1 It is what God wants you to do
This is what many of us have difficulty in believing, that God really wants to forgive us. But sometimes we feel it is simply too good to be true that God would totally forgive us all our sins because Jesus died on the cross for us.

Paul in Ephesians 4:31 writes, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Just as it is wrong to be bitter, to hold a grudge and not to forgive others, so it is a sin to be bitter towards ourselves, to hold a grudge against ourselves and not to forgive ourselves.

God loves us, and wants us to be secure in that love. He did not create us to hate ourselves. It should be one of the most natural things in the world to love ourselves. This is why we are commanded to love our neighbour as we love ourselves (Matthew 19:19). As I was saying this morning
o We are loved
o We are God’s masterpiece
o We are Significant
o We are Holy
o We are Beautiful
o We are Forgiven
o We are Unique
o We are Accepted
o We are Free

God wants us to know and understand this. Jesus was given a mandate to “release the oppressed.” (Luke 4:18). There is nothing more oppressive than guilt. God does not oppress us and is not the author of fear. Fear is of the devil. The devil wants you to be afraid and he certainly does not want you to forgive yourself.

2 Satan does not want you to forgive yourself
The CEV translates 2 Corinthians 5:10-11 like this: “I will forgive anyone you forgive. Yes, for your sake and with Christ as my witness, I have forgiven whatever needed to be forgiven. I have done this to keep Satan from getting the better of us. We all know what goes on in his mind.”
Why does Paul refer to forgiveness in connection with the devil’s schemes? Because when we refuse to forgive others, or refuse to forgive ourselves, it makes us more vulnerable to the Devil’s attacks. The devil is the accuser, whereas God wants to build us up and encourage us, the devil wants to attack us and drag us down. Satan does not want you to forgive yourself. He loves your misery. Whereas Christ came to see us free from guilt and sin, the Satan wants to bind us to it. You are no threat to Satan when you are punishing yourself and living in torment over what happened yesterday, or years ago.

What Satan attempts, is to keep your paralysed and living in a pit of near despair over what is in the past. He is the one who whispers lies into your heart, saying “what you did was so terrible that not even God could forgive you.” “You don’t deserve to be forgiven” “You’re worthless.” This is how Satan tries to drag us down, but God speaks to us through Scripture and through his Holy Spirit, saying “You are my child. You are precious. You are loved. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. I sent my son Jesus into the world to die for you, so that you may experience my forgiveness.”

The apostle James encourages us by saying: “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:9)

3 You will have inner peace and freedom from the bondage of guilt
The third reason God wants you to forgive yourself is so that you can experience his inner peace and freedom. There was one occasion about 9 years ago, when I did something I felt deeply ashamed of, and as I went to bed that night to poured my heart out to God was genuinely repentant, and asked for God to come and forgive me. And that night as I slept, I heard God speak to me in my dream, and all he said, over and over, was “I forgive you, I forgive you…” When I woke up the following morning, I knew God had forgiven me, and all the worry and anxiety I had been feeling melted away and was replaced by a deep sense of inner peace.

Maybe you also need to experience God’s peace and forgiveness. In the freedom in Christ course that we’ve been looking at over the last few weeks in church, we’ve been learning about the importance of trusting in God’s word. And God promises us that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)

4 It will help you love people more
One of the reasons people find it hard to forgive themselves totally, is because they don’t like themselves. How often have you stood in front of the mirror and not liked the person you see staring back at you? Maybe there are things that we physically do not like about ourselves, or maybe it is things to do with our personality, and as I was talking about this morning, these thought patterns can produce strongholds in our lives.

But this is not the way God wants us to think of behave. God loves us unconditionally, and wants us to love ourselves.

Totally forgiving ourselves helps us to love people more. The apostle John writes “If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” We could reinterpret this verse by saying If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates himself, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love himself, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” We cannot be in a position to think about loving others when we cannot love ourselves.

This is not a call to unbridled individualism and selfishness, we are called to put God first in our lives, others second and ourselves last, but this is not the same as hating ourselves. We are to have a proper understanding and respect for who we are as people made and loved by God.

5 It will enable you to fulfil all God has in mind for you and keep you from being paralysed by the past.
God does not want us to be paralysed by the past, he wants us to know true freedom. Paul writing in 1 Corinthians 13, says that the greatest gift that we can have as Christians is love. And one aspect of love is not pointing the finger, in other words, keeping no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5). God grants us true freedom and forgiveness, but if we do not believe we’re truly forgiven, we are missing out of the God’s loving reassurance and mercy. When we have totally forgive ourselves and accepted God’s forgiveness it shows in the way we live.

6 Your own physical health could be at stake
It has been proved by medical research that holding a grudge can injure your health. Studies have shown that unforgivness can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, arthritis and other ailments. It is reasonable to assume that if anger and bitterness are bad for your physical health, so not forgiving yourself is bad for your health too, because you’re holding a grudge against yourself.

In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus puts our physical needs before the spiritual. First came ‘give us this day our daily bread’ then came ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’. Jesus placing the physical before the spiritual demonstrates that God cares about our health and our well being.

7 Our mental & emotion health could be at stake
When we are unwilling to receive God’s forgiveness, it is often because we carry a deep sense of guilt for something we’ve said or done, or maybe failed to do. Again, one of the things God wants to do is to free us from this guilt which can be like a strangle hold on our lives.

8 Our spiritual state is at stake
If we carry around within us feelings or hurt, or grudges, bitterness or rage, and when we refuse to accept God’s forgiveness, it prevents the fruits of the spirit from growing in our lives, the fruits of love, joy, peace, self control and gentleness.
How do we forgive ourselves?

A Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, "Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?" There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up. "Sin," he said.

To receive God’s forgiveness, all we need to do is confess our sins and turn from the wrong we have done. And if we do this, and genuinely mean it, then God will forgive us, because through the cross of Christ God has open the door of forgiveness to us. The blood of Jesus has washed our sins away. And the least I can do, therefore, in the light of God forgiving me, is to forgive myself.
I want to finish with this final story. In 1880, James Garfield was elected president of the United States, but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hospital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet, but he couldn't find it.

They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. He was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over. The president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally died-not from the wound, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man, eventually, killed him. So it is with us when we dwell too long on our sin and refuse to release it to God. As Christians we are wonderfully privileged, because through God we can be forgiven.

Forgiving ourselves is not merely an option, it is something God wants us all to do. Let’s pray.