Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Being forgiven

Jared Wilson:
Darryl Dash said it. ....
It's popular to say that we need to forgive ourselves, but is that a valid concept?

I'd suggest that the desire for ourselves to be forgiven is a valid one, but we don't have the power to forgive ourselves. Telling someone that they have to forgive themselves before they forgive others doesn't make sense, just like forgiving myself for a debt I owe to the bank is silly. Forgiveness has to come from outside of myself.
[....]

I have found in my own life that when I am most burdened by the sins and failures of my past, it's not because I am not forgiving myself, it's because I am not yet grasping how immense God's grace is and I have not yet really trusted that He has forgiven me.

There's an ironic pride in there, a sense of thinking that, well of course Jesus died for the sins of the world, but it's as if my sin is too big for Jesus to cover.
The Gospel-Driven Church: You Don't Need to Forgive Yourself; You Just Need to Repent

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