Today’s question: How do I forgive myself?
Do you ever have trouble forgiving yourself for the mistakes you’ve made? On this Freedom Friday episode, we’re going to look at the question: How do I forgive myself?
This is a question I get all the time. It’s not always the easiest thing to do, but there are some things you can do to take a step forward to forgive yourself. I get this question so often. I’ve had people say to me in my Bible classes, “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for the mistakes I made.” But as we worked through the issues, they were able to find it in their heart to forgive themselves.
A lot of this comes back to, and I’ve said this before, in the Freedom Friday series and on the regular episodes of The Bible Speaks to You Podcast, a lot of this comes back to how you identify yourself. If you think of yourself as a victim or if you think of yourself as someone who can’t forgive yourself, or if you see yourself as a sinner who just can’t stop sinning, the way you see yourself influences the way you’re able to think and pray and forgive or not forgive yourself.
So it’s really important to get a clearer picture of your true spiritual identity.
Can I forgive myself? Learn from Jim
Let me tell you about my friend Jim. The first part of this story is how he forgave his dad, but then it turns into how he forgave himself as well.
His father did the best he could to provide for his family, but he didn’t really come from a loving family, and so he didn’t know how to express love to his own children that well. As a result, my friend Jim really experienced a lot of emotional abuse. It wasn’t on purpose. It was just that his dad just didn’t know how to function in a way that expressed the love that he felt.
Jim’s dad was in a nursing home, and his health was deteriorating.
I said to Jim, “You know, Jim, have you forgiven your dad?” I knew he had not. I said, “You really need to forgive him. You’ll feel a lot better if you forgive him before he passes on. And while you’re at it, you really kind of need to be able to say to him that you love him.”
Jim said, “I do not love him. I do not forgive him. He abused me emotionally, and it just messed me up for years.”
Learning to love
I said, “I understand all that.” Then I shared with him what he already knew about his dad’s history. His mother was not very loving. He never had a good example. I said, “Part of that’s not his fault.” But then an idea came to me. I said, “Jim, imagine your dad as a newborn baby before his mother or anybody else messed him up. He was just this pure little bundle of joy, A pure, innocent little baby. Now imagine that you’re holding him in your own dad as a baby. I know this sounds weird, but you’re holding him in your arms, and you’re looking down into his sweet little eyes. Can you love that baby?”
After a hesitation, he said, “Yeah, I can love that.”
“Okay,” I said, “all right. That’s who you’re loving. You’re loving who God originally made. This pure, innocent child. That’s who you love when you say you love your dad. That’s who you’re loving. And to forgive means that you can see through all the layers that the world has put on this person or that they’ve put on themselves. [It’s kind of like the mud we talked about in a previous episode.] To forgive means you can see all the way back to who God created your father to be made in His image and likeness. It’s pure. It’s full of joy and love, and that’s who you love. And when you say you forgive your dad, it means you can see all the way back to your dad as a little, innocent baby.”
Now, you can take that metaphor a little farther.
But that really helped Jim. He said, “You know what? I can do that.”
Learning to forgive
And he did forgive his dad. The next time he went to the nursing home, and he’d kind of been avoiding going, the next time he went, he told his dad he loved him. And his dad cried and said, “I love you, too, Jim.” Unfortunately, his dad just had never learned how to express love.
The love was there. It just didn’t come out right. And not too long after that, Jim’s dad passed on. Jim thanked me multiple times that I encouraged him to take that step towards forgiveness.
So how does this story apply to forgiving yourself? Well, Jim used this same idea to forgive himself. He had done some things when he was a young man right out of college, that he regretted the way he treated some people. And he wasn’t very loving. And it had always bothered him.
Jim could finally say: I forgive myself
It had bothered him for 20 years. He carried around this guilt. Well, he started seeing himself as God’s image and likeness. Not that he had perfectly lived that out, but he started to see himself as the image and likeness of God.
Well, try this yourself. Imagine, and I know this does sound kind of weird. Imagine you’re holding yourself as a little baby. You’re holding your little baby self in your arms that’s just a day old, and you know it’s you, and you’re just loving that little baby.
Your pure, original identity as a child of God, that’s really what forgiveness comes down to, is how you see yourself.
All the things that you’ve done wrong, all the mistakes you’ve made, the sins you’ve committed, they were not part of you as a newborn babe, you hadn’t done those things yet. Forgiving yourself is seeing that original purity.
You were not born in sin
Now, I know some churches teach that you’re born in sin. Jesus never says that. That’s what the Pharisees believed. But Jesus never said that. He saw little children and he said, you’re not a bunch of miserable sinners.
He said, “This is what the kingdom of heaven is like.” He saw their purity and their innocence in the eyes of God. So we need to get back to the way Jesus looked at little children, the way Jesus looked at everyone.
He could see the mistakes they had made, the sins they had committed. But he could also see all the way through that, back to the way God had originally created that individual in God’s own image and likeness.
Your spiritual identity
So here again, it comes down to identity. How do you see yourself? If you’re having trouble forgiving yourself, quit trying to do that for a little bit. Focus on the fact that God made you in His image and likeness.
That image and likeness is still intact. It hasn’t been broken. It hasn’t gone away. It hasn’t been diluted or polluted. It may have some mud on it. You may have made some mistakes. Those things have happened to all of us. But Christ washes that mud away, washes the mistakes away, washes the sins away, because they’re not part of your original identity.
The more you get back to your original identity as the image and likeness of God, then you’ll forgive yourself and you realize, “Oh, those things aren’t really part of who I am.” That’s what forgiveness is. You can apply this to other people as well, but it’s especially important to apply it to yourself.
You’re not condoning the bad things you did and saying, “Oh, that’s okay, it doesn’t matter,” because they were wrong, but you’re just realizing they’re not part of your true spiritual identity. This is not always just a one-time effort. Sometimes you make a breakthrough in one, sort of aha moment, thinking along these lines and praying along these lines. Sometimes you have to do it over and over and over. And that’s what Jesus means when he says forgive somebody 70 times 7.
You can finally say: I forgive myself
It takes some work sometimes to let go of all that hurt and anger and wash away all those layers of mud on yourself. This has helped me forgive myself for the sins I have committed, for the mistakes I’ve made, sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally.
And one more thing is, you may be trying so hard to forgive yourself and you’ve tried over and over and over and you just really haven’t had a breakthrough. I think sometimes our problem is that we are trying to forgive ourselves with the human mind, with the human intellect, with the human heart.
Your human abilities, whether it’s your heart, your human love, your human affections, your human intelligence and wisdom are never enough. You can’t do it all by yourself. You need God’s help. And in fact, your ability to forgive really comes from God’s constant forgiving presence, His constant, loving, merciful, gracious presence in your life.
That’s where your ability to forgive yourself or anyone comes from. So I hope these ideas are helpful. I’d love to hear from you. If you’re still struggling with forgiving yourself, please reach out. I would love to help you discover your ability to forgive yourself.
Photo Credit: Allef Vinicius
_____________
James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and church mentor. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by learning to think, pray, and love like Jesus. Contact him here.
Make a donation to support the show
Listen and leave a review on
