The Error of Self-Forgiveness

“I know God forgives me, but I just can’t seem to forgive myself.”

Do you know someone who says this? Maybe you’ve said it about yourself. We feel bad because we have sinned, so we wallow in self-pity, fearing that we are estranged from God for a period of time until we learn to come to terms with the sins of our past.

The error above seems harmless. “Forgiving yourself” means putting your past behind you and moving on with life. Isn’t that a good thing?

We must come understand that there are 0 verses in the Bible about forgiving yourself. I want to tell you why that it is good news.

Pursuing self-forgiveness subtly erodes the doctrine of justification. And if a doctrine is contrary to justification, we can be assured it will hinder us from our sanctification.

I want to consider this error of self-forgiveness through three distortions. First, how self-forgiveness distorts our view of God. Second, how self-forgiveness distorts Christ’s sacrifice. Third, what self-forgiveness does to the promise of the gospel.

1) How self-forgiveness distorts our conception of God.

When we think about self-forgiveness, we often think about things we have done that are really bad. “Big sins” if you will. While all sins break one of the 10 Commandments in some sense, we don’t think about self-forgiveness for peccadillos. Sins like adultery, murder, theft, and so on are the sins we think require us to forgive ourselves before being restored to a right relationship with God. This is simply not true.

In God’s good providence, we have been given an example of someone receiving forgiveness for such sins. His name is David, King of Israel.

David wrote most of his Psalms without giving a clear context for the Psalm’s composition. One clear exception is Psalm 51, where the title reads: “A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

And what do we find about King David in Psalm 51? These words:

3  For I know my transgressions, 

and my sin is ever before me. 

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned 

and done what is evil in your sight, 

so that you may be justified in your words 

and blameless in your judgment. 

Does this mean David had not sinned against Uriah? Or Bathsheba? Or Joab? Of course not. David’s egregious sin was against all of those other image-bearers. He coerced one to let an innocent man die, murdered one, and committed adultery with another. These are all sins he committed against other people.

But the sins that David committed were principally against God. If God could forgive David’s sin, he could be forgiven. All sin is first and foremost an affront against God and secondarily against others. Why? Because to call something sin, we must transgress God’s laws, not the laws others create for us. In transgressing God’s laws, we often sin against others. However, the law comes from God, not from human beings. Jesus never sinned against the Pharisees, though he broke their “laws” regularly. Sin is first and foremost against God.

What does it say about us if we ask God to forgive us for horrible crimes, as David did, believe God forgives us, as David did, and then yet we still refuse to see ourselves as forgiven? What does it mean if we think God has forgiven us but we fail to forgive ourselves? Is God’s delcaration worth anything at all?

If claim we have not been fully forgiven for sins, even after confessing them to God, does not that invalidate a promise like 1 John 1:9?

1 John 1:9 (ESV)

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If the Lord says I am clean from all unrighteousness, who am I to insist I am still unrighteous? Is my declaration about my sin greater than God’s declaration over my sin? This is an affront against God’s character, stating that there must be something he missed in his evaluation of his people.

If we claim we are still unforgiven while God has forgiven us, we are stating God is unjust to pronounce us forgiven. We are subtly claiming to be more just than God is. We proclaim that our own process of self-forgiveness is greater than God’s declaration of righteousness over those who repent and believe.

This is not to minimize sin. Sin is heinous. We should run from it. At the same time, we empty God of his power if we pretend as if we must first forgive ourselves before we can move beyond the sins of our flesh. Self-forgiveness is essentially self-worship.

God’s declaration of justification is infinitely more powerful than our own declaration that we still need to forgive ourselves. Self-forgiveness distorts our understanding of God.

2) How self-forgiveness distorts Christ’s sacrifice.

Jesus Christ took names to the cross of Calvary. He did not die in hopes that somewhere, at some point in the future, some hypothetical people might benefit from his work, like one generation building a bridge in hopes that future generations would use the bridge to cross a wide river. No, Jesus died upon Calvary’s cross to actually redeem people from their sins. He did not die simply to make redemption a possibility.

If you are in Christ, the final word God speaks over you is “righteous.” Romans 11:29 says, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” God’s decrees are righteous and they do not change.

There is no forgiveness left for you to earn from God. Learning to “forgive yourself” will not make God forgive you a little bit more. There are not two tiers of Christians, those who have made peace with their past by forgiving themselves and those who have yet to do so. There is simply one kind of Christian.

Every single Christian is a sinner who is vile, despicable, unworthy, and condemned, who has been washed, bought, forgiven, and justified by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That’s the only kind of Christian there is! This is the only kind of Christian Jesus will have!

Self-forgiveness injects works into the gospel, asserting that Christ’s sacrifice was enough to get us started on the road to forgiveness, but we have to do some heavy lifting on our own in order to really feel forgiven. A thought process such as this empties the cross of its power.

Galatians 3:3 (ESV)

3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

The answer is an assumed “no.” As human beings, we want to contribute some form of works to our salvation so that we might take a little bit of the glory for ourselves. But Christ does not need us to forgive ourselves in order for him to pronounce us forgiven.

Rest in Christ’s finished work for your forgiveness. Such a posture will assuredly lead to repentance.

3) What self-forgiveness does to the promise of the gospel.

John 6:37 

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 

So you’ve sinned. You’ve made a mess of your life. You have asked for God to forgive you and yet you still feel condemned. What are you to do?

I have been reading John Owen’s classic little book Communion with God. He spends several pages attempting to demonstrate from the Scripture that the love of God never changes. This means he loves his people with the same degree of free, unchanging, gracious love in their sinning as he does in their obedience. Owen anticipates that some might call this blasphemy, saying that God loves sin! He responds as follows:

“But you will say, ‘this comes nigh to that blasphemy, that God loves his people in their sinning as well as in their strictest obedience; and, if so, who will care to serve him more, or to walk with him unto well-pleasing?

Answer: The love of God in itself is the eternal purpose and act of his will. This is no more changeable than God himself if it were, no flesh could be saved; but it changeth not, and we are not consumed. What then? Loves he his people in their sinning?

Yes; his people, —not their sinning.

If you fear you have out sinned the grace of God, this appears to me to be a certain work of the Spirit. Conviction of sin is a sign of the Spirit’s active work, not his absence!

What wonderful truth this is for struggling sinners like me. Owen goes on to say that just as an earthly father’s love might take different forms, such as discipline, admonishment, or rebuke, so the heavenly Father disciplines the children that he loves, but he never stops loving them. His love for his people never diminishes, for our God never changes.

Self-forgiveness takes us out from underneath the promises of the gospel and places us underneath a false promise of obedience to the law. Self-forgiveness says if we can look within and do something external, then we can finally be forgiven. The gospel says look to Christ and find an all-sufficient pardon.

Self-forgiveness does not procure any blessing of the gospel. At the very best, it leaves us deceived. At the worst, it leaves us condemned. It is far better to believe in faith that Jesus loved you and gave himself for you.

Is this not preferable to the modern myth of self-forgiveness? Not only is the Bible silent on how we are to forgive ourselves, but it also doesn’t tell us what such a process will procure for us.

Will self-forgiveness provide us peace with God? If so, then why did Christ die?

Will self-forgiveness make God love us more? If so, then does God not truly love those he has forgiven until they also forgive themselves?

The Spirit will teach us to repent. Repentance is a fruit of salvation. But repentance is not forgiveness. God does not love us because we repent. He loves us because Christ is perfect and died in our place. If God has forgiven us, no matter how great our sin might be, we have all the forgiveness we will ever need.

The Puritans were well known for saying, “For each look at your self, take 10 looks at Christ!” For each time you feel you need to forgive yourself, take 10 looks to Calvary’s cross.

Psalm 51:10–12 (ESV)

10  Create in me a clean heart, O God, 

and renew a right spirit within me. 

11  Cast me not away from your presence, 

and take not your Holy Spirit from me. 

12  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, 

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

If you are forgiven in Christ, you are forgiven. No matter what the world, your flesh, or the devil might say, the forgiveness of God is a firm and final declaration over his weak and weary people.

Take heart, Christian. The Father loves you.