How many people do you know who live in guilt and do not forgive themselves? Even though we have committed mistakes, rebelled against God in may ways, but the truth is, unless we let go and forgive ourselves, unless we realise that the situation is over, we can’t move forward.
It is true that our past actions shaped today.
But we are not what we have been. We don’t need to carry around labels or mistakes from yesterday as if they define us. Whatever you have done, it’s over. It doesn’t have to brand you, particularly not if you are making the conscious choice to do things differently now.
Complete forgiveness was offered by God through His son Jesus Christ on the cross.
God offered us His grace, His love and mercy, not because of anything we have done to earn them, but it is His generous, free, and totally unexpected and undeserved gift.
If you look at yourself in the mirror and you begin to dislike that person you see, then you need to forgive yourself and learn how to love the person that God has made in you. If you have repented of your sins and confessed them before the Lord, then you are forgiven.
You need to stop associating your failures with your “new creation” image as the scripture clearly says in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away; behold, all things become new”.
The way you see yourself is not an accurate picture of what Christ has done for you. It is basically denying the work that Jesus accomplished for you on the cross. In Christ you are no longer and enemy, a foreigner, a stranger, but the heir, the son and daughter of God.
When we fail to forgive ourselves, we are like a man who is given a ticket to go on a trip to watch Barcelona and Real Madrid playing soccer, yet he keeps complaining that he can’t go, even when everything is paid for him. Failure to forgive ourselves will cause us to see things through the eyes of guilt, shame and condemnation. And that will ruin our faith and cause us to go blind spiritually.
