ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FORGIVE OURSELVES?

There is a church in the Chicago area that says the Bible does not tell Christians that they need to forgive themselves. When I was attending that church, without giving it too much thought, I took it as sounding right. Now that ten years or so have gone by, it has been slowly coming to me that this is wrong teaching.

I base my convictions upon the verse that says, "forgetting those things that are behind." And I couple that with a definition I read years ago for the concept of forgiveness: True forgiveness is forgiveness that has as one of its ingredients, the ability and determination and promise not to talk about the offense anymore.

So, if I apply all of that to "forgiving myself" for things that I have done that are wrong, horribly wrong, or devastatingly wrong, I am to forget about it, leave it behind, not talk about it anymore (because God for Christ's sake has forgiven me), and therefore, forgive myself. I forgive myself for things that I did when I was a youngster, when I was a teen, a new wife and mother, and when I was married a long time and walking apart from God. Forgiving myself for those things means that I have left them behind in my thinking because of the hugeness of God and His un-understandable forgiveness. We must have a point where we say, "I sinned, I messed up, I hurt other people, my heart had an ice cube surrounding it, I fell, I fooled everyone, I hated, I withheld love and goodness," but I forgive myself because now I am clean, now I am seeking God and now I can put it behind me and move on.

Yes, yes, yes! You must forgive yourself for doing wrong; otherwise, you live a life of thinking that you are not worth anything and that the other people around you are probably close to sin-free. You must look at yourself and say, "I forgive myself because i, like the other people that God tells me I have to forgive--according to God's Word--am not complete yet.

I think what these folk mean is that it doesn't matter if we forgive ourselves as long as we know and experience God's forgiveness. What I am trying to say is that you can live your life under the black cloud of your sin, deep down in your heart, even when you know and experience God's forgiveness. We hate ourselves for getting away from God and causing all kinds of trouble to ourselves and others; we despise ourselves for the ramifications of our sin; certain sins, in particular, keep coming to mind and cropping up and debilitating us. We need to convince ourselves based upon God's powerful Word that since God has forgiven us as a result of our going to Him for that forgiveness, then we ought to say, "Now I am going to leave this behind completely and move on." It is a deep and moving thing that happens in your soul and spirit, an understanding between you and God that those sins are gone in God's eyes, and in ours.

Maybe it's got a lot to do with semantics. Maybe. But I think we ought to forgive ourselves and call it just that!