Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)
Huldra Forsvant (Theodor Kittelsen)

Thursday, February 14, 2013

I Can't Forgive Myself

'Some of you are stuck because your primary identity is in your sin and not in your Savior. You’re unable to move beyond your past because of shame, and guilt, and conviction, and condemnation. God has forgiven you, if you are in Christ, for things that you would say to this point, “I just can’t forgive myself,” which sounds cute, but it’s blasphemous. Because if what you’re saying is, “God forgives me but I can’t forgive myself,” what you’re saying is, “There’s a God above Jesus with my name, and though the lesser, lower God named Jesus forgives me, the higher, greater God with my last name cannot.”

Some of you have wrongly thought that if you will obsess over your sin more, God will be more pleased with you. Some of you have taken your sin on as your primary identity, and the only difference you would see between a Christian and a non-Christian is a non-Christian is a guilty, evil, vile, wicked sinner, and a Christian is a guilty, evil, vile, wicked sinner who’s forgiven. No difference in who you are, no change in your nature, no alternation in your identity whatsoever, that the Christian and the non-Christian are the same, and the only difference is one is forgiven, the other is not, but neither are changed.'

-Mark Driscoll, from this talk.

1 comment:

Tasmanian said...

Obsessing about our sin seems so godly sometimes. But Mark is right. It is forgiven. We need to walk on in obedience but when we fail to be obedient, we need to repent and keep walking.