I hope this Lenten season has been a positive and spiritually enriching experience for you and your families. Good Friday and our special remembrance of the crucifixion of our Blessed Lord are nearly upon us, as is His triumphant Resurrection from the dead. May each one of us take advantage of the abundant grace and forgiveness He offers so that like Him, we may rise glorious with Him and be happy with Him forever.
A constant theme in the presentations I make through Spirit Filled Hearts Ministry, my apostolate, is that of forgiveness, beginning with the need to forgive ourselves. We are forgiven. Amen?
We may know that in our heads, but is it in our hearts? How many of us condemn ourselves for what we think we should have done, or mistakes that we have made? That has been my biggest challenge in my life!
A major spiritual challenge
Why is life so difficult? I asked my brother Bill that question. His answer? “Because it is supposed to be.” What adds to the challenge is that the devil wants us to believe that we are junk. That is one of the reasons I love Marriage Encounter. They have a saying: “God does not make junk!”
I have found that many people have the same challenge I do, a difficulty in forgiving themselves. I grew up in an environment where it felt like I had to be perfect in everything I did. If I wasn’t perfect then I wasn’t loved, or so I believed. I was condemned or ignored; that is what it felt like.
This is what my life was like. If my behavior was pleasing to my parents, I was accepted and praised. If my behavior was not pleasing, then I was ignored, sent to my room, or, in the worst case scenario, physically beaten.
How did that affect my actions? In wanting to be accepted, I led a double life: the life I wanted my parents to see versus my real life. I was not free. I was in bondage.
Jesus told us clearly in John:
John 10:10 “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
Yet because I didn’t know Jesus on a personal basis, I relied on myself to try to survive emotionally. How did it work out? Not well. I hid my feelings. I only shared what I wanted my parents or other people to know. This was not freedom. I needed to be set free by Jesus Christ.
Overcoming self-condemnation
A few years ago, I met a woman at an SCRC Charismatic Renewal convention in Anaheim who also had this “condemnation of self” syndrome. I saw her after one of my workshops and she told me she needed to talk to me in private. She tracked me down after the Saturday evening service and spoke to me about her life.
She had traveled down from the Northwest with her pastor and was very active in her church. However, she was holding on to a secret. She blurted out that no one, including the priests at her parish, knew that she had had an affair.
She looked at me with sad eyes and said, “My life is over. I cheated on my husband. God can never forgive me and I can never forgive myself.” Perhaps some of you reading this book feel the same. You have had an affair or worse. Many women have had abortions or children out of wedlock. So much pain. So many sins.
I say to you who are in bondage and pain the same thing I told that woman: “Who is whispering in your ear that you are not forgiven? It cannot be Jesus! He died on the Cross for your sins. He has forgiven you! He wants you to receive that forgiveness and healing!” She began to cry violently. But it was a healing cry.
Her eyes were opened to the truth. It was the lies of the devil that she had believed! She finally realized that she had been set free by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ! That was a total and complete miracle! Her eyes were opened. The bondage was gone forever!
Christ frees us
You have been freed by the same Death and Resurrection of our Savior! Understanding and meditating on this reality will change your life. So many people are living in bondage. They don’t truly believe that when Jesus died and rose again it set them free if they accept this unconditional gift. That is the “Good News of Jesus Christ.”
As we recall the Death and Resurrection of Christ this Easter, please remember that you are loved unconditionally. God is real, and through our baptism we each have become His adopted son or daughter.
Please forgive yourself for not being perfect. Do not condemn yourself for your past mistakes. Jesus does not condemn you, He loves you despite your past sins and failures.
Make loving and serving God your first priority. Experience the joy that only living in His friendship can offer.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus is real. He died for your sins and rose again. He doesn’t condemn you so why should you condemn yourself?
It is, indeed, a miracle! God’s supernatural intervention has made you free. Forgive yourself now and forever!
6 thoughts on “The Necessity of Forgiving Yourself”
Thanks Deacon Steve. You bring up a very difficult truth. And as the comments roll in, it’s apparent many can’t stop the lashings with their wet noodle.
The Church gives us the Sacrament of Reconciliation as our path to forgiveness. Without it, we are Protestants. In Confession, we cite our sins as we understand them, and Christ forgives us through the Church, via the priest. I can’t think of anyone in the Bible, from Moses down through Paul, who was told to “forgive yourself.” I hope the Deacon sent the woman in this story to Confession as the proper, substantive follow-up to her emotional moment.
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The more appropriate and sanctifying way of conveying this message is to say that we must accept God’s forgiveness and allow ourselves to be forgiven by His redemptive work so we will not be condemned in our unbelief or in our unwillingness to “go and sin no more”. To “forgive ourselves” as it’s been put here and so often implies that we have the ability to save ourselves and answer our call to live in holiness apart from Christ Jesus. We do not, but we do have the ability with His grace to respond rightly to His offer of salvitic firguveness and leave our lives of sin behind us by embracing repentance and covenental love. All of which brings a new life of conditions that provide us to live in complete freedom inside the confines of His authority and leadership over our lives. For if unconditional love is truly everlasting and eternal then hELL would be empty and we would be Universalist who don’t trust in the very words of Jesus our Savior.
The path the leads to salvation is narrow and few will find it. Choose the narrow way, not the broad one that leads to our destruction. In Christ, Andrew
I agree that, as it says in John 15, “Without me you can do nothing.” However, Jesus gives us free will. We must want to be forgiven and make that decision. It is very important to ask for the grace to forgive ourselves, knowing that Jesus loves us unconditionally.
Jesus does not love us unconditionally, as far as our entrance into Heaven is concerned, and John 14:21 makes that quite clear as does what comes before and after, including the first part of chapter 15 that talks about the non fruit-bearing branches being thrown into the fire. However, if you truly believe that our Lord and Savior does not condition His covenantal love for His family and adopted sons and daughters, then please provide evidence from Scripture for that. Evidence that of course does not contradict with the rest of Scripture as a whole.
There are many conditional statements in the Bible, including those that speak about the requirements for forgiveness, which is not unconditional in terms of our salvation either.
Our Triune God is not a permissive parent who allows His children or future children to run amuck unchecked or unchallenged without punishment or discipline, for doing otherwise is not responsible, divine love from an all good Father.
In Christ,
Andrew