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Christian Network

Self-Condemnation is no remedy for self-centeredness. In fact self-condemnation is, by definition, self-centered. Some Christians have made the mistake of thinking that by mercilessly condemning themselves they are somehow cooperating with God’s plan for enabling them to die to self. This is a fallacy. Brennan Manning once said that what believers truly need is "self-acceptance without self-concern". By this he implies that it is only when we accept ourselves in Christ as sons and daughters of God, rather than hate ourselves as sinful failures we think He rejects, that we are ready to forget ourselves and live more fully for God and for others. Condemning ourselves rather than our sins only perpetuates self-obsession and spiritual immaturity.

It is very easy for Christians to mistake unhealthy self-recrimination for healthy repentance. Perhaps the biggest reason this happens is in our tendency to see the God of the Bible as an angry father whose primary mission is to convince us how evil we are. While it is true that the unvarnished condemnation of human evil is a component of God’s plan to bring us back to Himself it is only the initial component. It is true that we cannot realize our need for a Savior until we first realize that we are sinful from birth and justfully separated from our Creator by that sinfulness. Without the dawning of that knowledge we will continue to walk blithely on towards Hell thinking that we are "good persons". It is absolutely essential to our redemption that we do come to know how black our unredeemed hearts really are.

But that is only for those on the other side of salvation. Once we have been convicted of our wickedness, cried out to Jesus Christ to forgive us and become new in Him we are no longer required to focus primarily on our own evil. Instead we now can and must focus on the One who redeemed us and on what He has turned us into, namely beloved children of God who have been made righteous in the sight of our new heavenly Father through the shed blood of His Son. While we still have a sinful part of us that must be progressively put to death we are no longer defined by that dying nature but instead by "Christ in us, the hope of glory".

We dare not turn the initial awareness of evil that brought us to Christ into an ongoing hatred of all that we are. That was never the purpose of the initial revelation of our fallen-ness. Its only purpose was to open our eyes to the absolute need for salvation in Christ. After that salvation is secured through sincere faith the only one who wants moral self-awareness to morph into crippling self-condemnation is the Enemy of our souls. He knows that a Christian who is busy hating himself is a Christian who cannot grow in love for God and others. If Satan cannot prevent our salvation his next ploy is to make our lives miserable and unproductive. If he can convince us that we should not accept our acceptance by our loving and saving Lord then has achieved this secondary goal.

Once Jesus Christ has saved us our blessed new purpose is to enjoy and serve Him forever while learning to love others and ourselves. Self-condemnation has no place in the life of God’s "new creatures".