Once in awhile you will hear a Christian person talking about the need to, “forgive themselves.” But the fact is, there is not so much as a single verse in the Bible that even addresses the issue. The issue is not addressed because the entire dialog is a bunch of baloney. Indeed, this idea of forgiving oneself is nothing more than disguised self-righteousness. It is nothing more than disappointment with self because we didn’t measure up and prove we are righteous enough for God.
We don’t need to forgive ourselves — we need to see the Truth about ourselves in the light of Jesus Christ. If we would see the Truth about ourselves in the light of seeing Jesus Christ, there would be no talk of forgiving self. We would know that the only solution for us is DEATH — exactly as God states — death in the death of Jesus Christ.
God has forgiven all sin solely in His Son. But do we realize that God’s forgiveness is more than just the removal of the penalty for sin? For if God forgives sin by merely lifting the penalty from the sinner — then yes, the sinner would be legally forgiven — but the sinner would still BE a sinner in bondage to the sin nature. Legal forgiveness would do nothing to change the nature that produced the sin to begin with. The end product would be a forgiven Adam race — but an Adam race that remains corrupt — with no capacity to fellowship with God.
What God DID do was send Jesus Christ so that the Adam race could die in Him. What emerged from His death was full forgiveness for sin — but more — what emerged was a NEW creation that was free of the nature of sin itself.
Self-forgiveness is based in self-disappointment. It is just another attempt by religious man to fix himself — all the while failing to lose his life completely in Jesus Christ. You cannot fix anything by forgiving yourself. You must lose yourself completely to find Christ as your life.
If I see the Truth and lose myself to Christ, the result is not going to be self-forgiveness. But neither will I excuse myself. Rather, I will see the Truth about myself and be delivered from the continual preoccupation with myself. Christ will more and more become my life.
If we do not see the Truth, we are going to approach all things from our preoccupation with self. Everything will carry that corruption. Again — the only solution is to see the Truth about ourselves and lose ourselves to Christ. Have we yet to see the Truth that there is absolutely NOTHING that we can do about ourselves? See this Truth and you will be delivered from self over to Jesus Christ as your life.
David DePra