“If we confess our sins (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I refer to this text a lot in preaching and writing because it hits at the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the grave and ascended to the Father for the purpose of forgiving us for our sins. There are a lot of other things that are involved in the Christian life, but forgiveness of sins is what gets us started, and what helps us to live victorious Christian lives. We can be forgiven for our sins by repentance and confession. After we are forgiven for our sins, we are expected to forgive others who sin against us. There is one other thing that we need to consider, and it is one that I have to work on in my own life, that is, that we forgive ourselves. I point out to others with whom I talk and to myself that if it is important to forgive everyone else, we should certainly forgive ourselves. Why would it be difficult for people to forgive themselves? It might be that this lack of self-forgiveness is because we expect better of ourselves than we have done. I can certainly say that this has been true of me in my own Christian experience. There have been many times that I have looked in my car mirror after inwardly fuming at another driver and said to myself: “You can do better than that.” Lack of self-forgiveness might come from a poor self image. I realize that we have taken “self image” today to a higher level than demanded of the Christian life, but we should certainly feel good enough about ourselves that we have a healthy self image. It might just be a matter of behaving ourselves better and we would have a better self image. (Just saying!) There are, no doubt, many other reasons why people would have a difficult time forgiving themselves, but what I have mentioned above should help. When we fail to forgive ourselves, we have not done anything about our guilt. The chances are good that those who cannot forgive themselves have genuinely asked for forgiveness, after which Jesus took the load of guilt away, but they hung onto it. It’s like we are carrying a load of iron on our backs and Jesus comes along and says “I will carry that load for you.” We might thank Him for the offer, but just trudge on with the weight on our backs. That might seem to be a silly illustration, but it is no sillier than going to Jesus with our load of guilt, asking Him to take it, which He does, then we continue to walk on with the weight on our minds and hearts. It almost seems that some people think that carrying a load of guilt somehow makes them holy. That is just plain silly. It is our faith in Christ that makes us holy and guilt over forgiven sins has no part in making us holy. When we accept Jesus as our Savior, He saves from sin and the guilt that sin brings into our lives. When we fail to forgive ourselves, we cannot live victorious Christian lives. This does not mean that we are not Christian, or any less Christian than other Christians. It just means that we can’t have the victory of forgiveness and maintain the defeat of unforgiveness and guilt in our lives. I know that Jesus just looks at the person still carrying the load of guilt and says, “But I have given you better than that.” I want you to think about what the apostle Paul had to overcome in his Christian experience. No one initially caused more harm to the cause of Christ than Paul, yet he accepted the forgiveness of Christ and went on to live victoriously for him. In Romans 7 Paul bemoaned the fact that he still had to deal with living the Christian life. But he concluded that by writing in Romans 7:24-25: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death? 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So when with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” He accepted his humanness, as we should, but knew that Jesus had forgiven Him and that Jesus was his hope. What is the point here? It is that if Christ has forgiven us, we can, and should, forgive ourselves. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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