How to forgive yourself; or instead....

by Dan Phillips

Tuesday, we springboarded off a WikiHow article on "How to Forgive Yourself." I concluded with this:

So where does this whole idea come from? I think a lot of it comes from psychologized, man-centered nonsense.

But I also think some of it doesn't, at least not as directly. I think some of it comes from Christians who have sinned, who know they've sinned, and who nonetheless continue in guilt and misery. What shall we tell them, then?

So, what of those situations? Since I'm not writing a book on the subject, let's just dart into some of the possible causes of a lingering, unassuaged sense of guilt:

FIRST: Given that "lingering" is a relative term, one possibility is that this is a normal part of the conviction process, part of the Holy Spirit bringing one to a full grasp of the enormity of what he's done. After David's sin with Bathsheba, the brief narrative alludes to no inner conflict within David; merely that he marries Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:27). Yet he himself gives us a window into his internal life in that period, in Psalm 32:3-4 --

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah

I take it, then, that David was feeling the pressing weight of conviction for his unrepented sin during this period. The closeness he'd enjoyed with the Lord was gone, and he was haunted with nagging guilt and restlessness (cf. Proverbs 28:1, 17).

In this case, the confrontation by Nathan was the lance that pierced the boil and released the infection of truth-based guilt (2 Samuel 12:1ff.). The spear went straight into David's heart, he accepted the reproof, humbled himself, and repented. David found sweet relief when he confessed and acknowledged his sin, and knew the purifying and forgiving grace of God (Psalm 32:1-2, 5, 11; 51). The genuineness of his repentance was shown in part by how he accepted the consequences of his sin.

SECOND: injured pride. In this case, the stinging, lingering pain is not a heart aching over the affront done to God, and God's name and glory -- but the embarrassment of letting myself down. Here I'd thought of myself as such a fine Christian, and I did that. My friends so look up to me; what will they think? What will happen to my reputation? How could such a great guy/gal do such a thing?

All the worse if we've resisted rebuke for awhile, insisting that our sewage doesn't stink, that the sin we sinned wasn't sin when we sinned it. Then we feel we'd have to eat humble pie... which is exactly what we need to do. But our defense and attempted prettification of our sin didn't un-sin the sin, and if'we're Christians, we know that at some level.

In this case, Satan has successfully misdirected us. We've lost the whole focus of the situation. Sin is sin because it is an affront against God. What makes it awful is what it does to His glory, and what it cost Him to redeem us from it. There is no excuse and no buffer for it. Getting our eyes on ourselves and our own wounded dignity and majesty indicates that:

1. We think far too highly of ourselves; and
2. We think far too lowly of God

Only with such an orientation can we let loose with nonsense about needing / being unable to forgive ourselves.

In such cases, we must humble ourselves before God, ask Him to open our eyes to see our sin as He sees it, start analyzing it Biblically, and take it to the Cross.

THIRD: works-righteousness. This is related to the previous, though it feels more like humility. I cling to the feelings of misery and guilt and shame, because I have an unspoken (and perhaps unconscious) belief that I am myself atoning for my sin thereby. I am not bringing bulls or lambs or chickens to any altar; but I am bringing my frowns and moans and sighs and moroseness. Maybe enough of that will satisfy... will satisfy....

Well, whom? See, here's where we so often get mired in the bottomless swamp of our own subjectivity. Do we really think we'll appease God by these sacrifices? Odds are we don't really think it out that far, as we're being ruled by our emotions. The truth is, however, that it is ourselves we are trying to appease, and we cherish murky hopes of reaching some point of satisfaction that we have "suffered enough."

In this case, we must repent of our "repentance" that is not repentance. If we feel that our feelings (of misery) can atone for our feelings (of guilt), we haven't yet grasped the weight of sin as objective wrong against the holy God.

What is more, we have not seen that there is only one suffering that atones for sin, and it is not our suffering. It is the suffering of Christ that atones for our sin (Hebrews 9:26; 1 Peter 3:18). How can the Father declare that He is satisfied with Christ's suffering (Romans 4:25), yet we insist that we are not?

FOURTH is pretty obvious: we simply have not repented. Instead, we have rationalized our sin, redefined it in some way that it is not sin, made excuses and distractions and dodges and scenarios. God does not forgive rationalizations, He does not forgive excuses, He does not forgive dodges and blame-shifting. Those, we keep, until they neutralize our prayers and destroy us (Proverbs 28:9, 13a; 29:1). God forgives sins, when we repent of them as sins (Proverbs 28:13b; 1 John 1:9).

Nuts, isn't it? By our refusal to deal with sin as sin, we cling to it and all the miseries and harm that it brings in its train.

So we must repent, which is Bible-oriented and God-centered and involves specificity and mortification, and possibly a commitment to restitution (an essential element of mortification).

FIFTH, a simple lack of faith. Twenty-five years ago, I would have felt this was far too simplistic. But I've come to see that it's dead on the money.

Jesus announces that He is about to pour out His blood to establish the new covenant, with its element of the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28). He does pour out His blood, forsaken by God for our sins (Matthew 27:46), and announces that "It is finished" (John 19:30). He is buried. When He rises from the tomb, He signals the Father's acceptance of His sacrifice as sufficient to bring us a righteous legal standing before Him (Romans 4:25). In His blood, through faith, we have forgiveness and a fully-righteous standing (Romans 3:25; Ephesians 1:7).

It is for this reason that John says that, when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just/righteous to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Though we need not sin and should not sin, if we do sin we have an attorney to plead our case before the Father -- Jesus Christ, the righteous.

I want to close with that though, as developed to my own great comfort and encouragement by Charles Spurgeon. It comes from his meditation for the evening of October 4, and it's worth quoting at length:

“If any man sin, we have an advocate.” Yes, though we sin, we have him still. John does not say, “If any man sin he has forfeited his advocate,” but “we have an advocate,” sinners though we are. All the sin that a believer ever did, or can be allowed to commit, cannot destroy his interest in the Lord Jesus Christ, as his advocate. The name here given to our Lord is suggestive. “Jesus.” Ah! then he is an advocate such as we need, for Jesus is the name of one whose business and delight it is to save. “They shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” His sweetest name implies his success. Next, it is “Jesus Christ”—Christos, the anointed. This shows his authority to plead. The Christ has a right to plead, for he is the Father’s own appointed advocate and elected priest. If he were of our choosing he might fail, but if God hath laid help upon one that is mighty, we may safely lay our trouble where God has laid his help. He is Christ, and therefore authorized; he is Christ, and therefore qualified, for the anointing has fully fitted him for his work. He can plead so as to move the heart of God and prevail. What words of tenderness, what sentences of persuasion will the anointed use when he stands up to plead for me! One more letter of his name remains, “Jesus Christ the righteous.” This is not only his character BUT his plea. It is his character, and if the Righteous One be my advocate, then my cause is good, or he would not have espoused it. It is his plea, for he meets the charge of unrighteousness against me by the plea that he is righteous. He declares himself my substitute and puts his obedience to my account. My soul, thou hast a friend well fitted to be thine advocate, he cannot but succeed; leave thyself entirely in his hands.

Amen.

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