Delete

A couple of years ago I was with a group of college-age women at a conference hosted by The Impact Movement, a ministry designed to reach out to African-American students on university campuses. When I opened up the floor for questions a shy young woman, her head hung down in personal disgust, courageously stood from her seat and asked a question as simple as it was powerful: “How do you forgive yourself?”

Every other girl in the room turned their gaze from her to me, leaning in and listening intently, totally relating to where her question was coming from, and dying for someone to give them an answer.

Are you dying for somebody to give you one?

Maybe you chose an abortion years ago. Maybe you caused an accident. Maybe you stirred up some unintentional chaos. Maybe you missed an opportunity that has cost you more money, heartache, and regret than you even want to think about. Maybe you’ve done any of a number of things that have made living harmoniously with certain others a nearly impossible task. You’re reminded of it all the time. And you can’t seem to forgive yourself, just as this girl couldn’t. Her past mistakes were almost visibly swathed around her shoulders, bearing down with the force of dead weight only a past mistake can pack. Oh, how well I knew this feeling. I have been more familiar with it than any person should be.

So, I answered her. Not because I’d studied the topic of forgiveness in seminary or read commentaries on the Biblical references about it but because I’d had to deal with it myself and tear down the crippling shame of my past brick by agonizing brick. Today, I’ll tell you the same thing I shared with her that day: the capacity to forgive yourself is personally impossible. You can’t do it. I can’t do it.

Nobody can.

But there’s no need to be dismayed or defeated over this, because absolutely no place in Scripture are we told that this is something we’re supposed to do.

Hear that again: the Bible doesn’t tell us to forgive ourselves...

...but it does tell you something else...something that can change the life of anyone who has ever made a decision they wished they hadn’t.

Everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. (Romans 3:23–24 NLT)

Bottom line: forgiveness of your sins is something that Christ suffered a terrifying death to give you and His work was so complete, He is thereby able to promise and declare to you and me, “I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin” (Jeremiah 31:34).

And He Himself—your ultimate ruler and judge—chooses never to recall your misdeeds to mind again.

So why should you?

Actually, when you think about it, to say “I can’t forgive myself” means you don’t fully believe that what He did was quite enough, that in some strange way His forgiveness of you is inadequate. This is the arrogant, hubristic tendency of fallen humanity, refusing to accept that His gift was and still is enough.

But, yes, it is.

And, yes, it must be. For there is no human forgiveness strong enough—not even your own—that will ever free you from the torturous reminder of your offense and the cloak of guilt it lays upon your shoulders. Even if you were somehow able to find it and apply it, it wouldn’t be enough. Only through a gracious acceptance of the gift extended to you through Christ Jesus will you ever really be free—free from the bondage, free from its hold, free to see that your Savior Himself pressed the delete button for your sins when He...

Walked the road to Calvary.

Felt the crown of thorns pressed onto His head.

Took the beating.

Allowed the sword’s piercing.

Flinched against the nails puncturing His hands and feet. Hung on Golgotha’s tree.

That’s when you received all the forgiveness you’ll ever need. When He cried, “It is finished!” (John 19:30), it was done. Once and for all. He pressed the delete button on all your transgressions. Every one of them.

Even that one.

All that’s left for you now is to accept this for the glorious fact that it legitimately and eternally is. In doing this, you have forgiven yourself.