Are we supposed to forgive ourselves?

Who can describe the blessedness of forgiveness? It is quietness after the storm, relief from the great burden. It gives a deep, holy peace to the heart as the sense of it is realized. The Pharisee cannot know this blessedness, nor the man who excuses his sins or refuses to own to God and to himself that he is a sinner. But the man who has felt the smart and sting of sin, the man who has discovered that his sins are neither dead nor done with, that he cannot escape them, that with persistent feet they are pursuing him, gathering round him and crying insistently, "Thou art the man" — that man will welcome it and value it. The man whose conscience has been awakened and who feels that he has sinned against God and has looked into the abyss into which his sins were forcing him, he will find no ease and no rest until be is assured of God's forgiveness; he cannot forgive himself, neither man nor angel can justify him, but God can, and with a broken and contrite heart he will turn to God and find that God will put upon him the kiss of forgiveness and clothe him in the best robe. Then he will take up David's song and say, "Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered."

Who can describe the blessedness of forgiveness? It is quietness after the storm, relief from the great burden. It gives a deep, holy peace to the heart as the sense of it is realized. The Pharisee cannot know this blessedness, nor the man who excuses his sins or refuses to own to God and to himself that he is a sinner. But the man who has felt the smart and sting of sin, the man who has discovered that his sins are neither dead nor done with, that he cannot escape them, that with persistent feet they are pursuing him, gathering round him and crying insistently, “Thou art the man”—that man will welcome it and value it. The man whose conscience has been awakened and who feels that he has sinned against God and has looked into the abyss into which his sins were forcing him, he will find no ease and no rest until be is assured of God's forgiveness; he cannot forgive himself, neither man nor angel can justify him, but God can, and with a broken and contrite heart he will turn to God and find that God will put upon him the kiss of forgiveness and clothe him in the best robe. Then he will take up David's song and say, “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

I do not speak about this seventh point in a light-hearted way, when believers live and walk together there are sometimes difficulties, we may be deeply hurt in our heart by something a brother or a sister does and we say, 'I cannot forgive this'. Of ourselves we cannot do this, but we can when we realise how much God has forgiven us in Christ. When our Saviour was on earth He told the parable in Matthew 18 of the man who had a great debt and could not pay and he was forgiven and did not have to pay his debt, but then the same man went to another man who owed him a little debt and put him under pressure to pay. This is a very serious story, but does not this sometimes happen amongst believers? We have been forgiven such a great debt in Christ, and yet we are sometimes unable to forgive our brother or sister.

You are looking for feelings of forgiveness; but what do your feelings have to do with it? God's forgiveness is what God feels about you, not what you feel. When He forgives He feels all right about it, or He wouldn't forgive. Don't be looking at yourself; look at what God says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive." After you have confessed your sins to Him, believe He has forgiven your sins just as He says He would. Believe Him to be true to His promise. Don't make Him out to be a liar by doubting what He says.

Notice the verse says that God "is faithful and just to forgive." Faithful and just towards whom? Towards Christ! Christ bore our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24). When you confess your sins to God, believing that Christ bore them on the cross, God would be unfaithful and unjust towards Christ if He didn't forgive you. It would be the same as if God said, "I am not satisfied with what Christ did when He died for your sins so I still have to hold them against you." Can you imagine God being so unjust toward Christ, after Christ paid the debt, as to still hold you accountable for it? Perish the thought! Christ's work is perfect and God's Word is sure.

You are looking for feelings of forgiveness; but what do your feelings have to do with it? God's forgiveness is what God feels about you, not what you feel. When He forgives He feels all right about it, or He wouldn't forgive. Don't be looking at yourself; look at what God says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive." After you have confessed your sins to Him, believe He has forgiven your sins just as He says He would. Believe Him to be true to His promise. Don't make Him out to be a liar by doubting what He says.

Now look at a verse lower down - "If we confess our sins." Look at this word "confession." There is a great deal of difference between confessing and asking for forgiveness. In confession we do not excuse ourselves. In asking for forgiveness we may say, and think too, things might have been different, and if they had been we should not have fallen in this way into the sin. Now the first thought in the soul of the one that is confessing is not the thought of forgiveness. Forgiveness comes to the one who confesses; but we have to do with the Father Himself, with the One against whom we have sinned, and we have sinned in spite of the grace that would have kept us. The first thought is, "I have sinned - sinned in spite of the grace, the blessed grace, that would have kept me from it." It is deeper, far deeper, than merely asking forgiveness. Grace would keep us. If we were always dependent on His grace, we should never sin; grace would keep us. But if we have sinned, what are we to do? "If we confess our sins" come before Him without making any excuse whatever, the soul laying itself before Him in all the blessed realization of what His love is, His grace is - acknowledging His grace would have kept us; but we have sinned. Well, I can come and tell Him all that without any thought that anything can change His love to me, and I do thus tell it all out to Him. This is confession, and far deeper and more searching than merely seeking forgiveness. Indeed, not to tell it is a pain, a sorrow, a burden.

In 1 John 1 we have the difference between confession and forgiveness. Coming to God merely to seek forgiveness may or may not be accompanied with full confession. In making confession to Him, forgiveness is not the first thought of the one who thus draws near to Him. If it is merely forgiveness that is sought, circumstances and feebleness will be pleaded as excuses, in order that a ground for forgiving may be presented other than what there is in Himself. But in true confession there is no question of the force of circumstances, nor of one's own feebleness. And with the Christian this goes still further; for there is consciousness that grace has been left on one side, and that there has been lack of dependence upon it, and that self‑will and pride have led away from Him and His grace into the commission of that which is being confessed. There is thus no question of circumstances, nor of one's own weakness; no question of the temptations or trials surrounding one. It is a question solely of "Thy grace" and my self‑will. His grace would have kept me; I refused it, thought nothing of it, and did not count upon it as needful for me. His power would have kept me, but I looked to another power, and left the place of dependence. Thus I placed myself in the temptation, and fell. I allowed it, and why? If I look upon the circumstances, and shelter myself behind them, I am taking refuge behind lies; and the one that has to do with God says ever, "Away with all refuge of lies; let the be real with God; it is with Himself alone I have to do."

In Romans 8 we have it very fully. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." And he explains this in two ways. How could you condemn them? "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." How could you condemn what is perfectly good? That which God has given me in the Spirit of life in Christ. But there is another reason. God has condemned sin already. There is a reason founded upon the character of the new life, that God will never condemn what is good. But, moreover, God has condemned the bad life already: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." He has already judged my nature. It is not a question of forgiveness. I do not want my nature to be forgiven; I do not forgive it myself.

Forgiveness needs no such process. Convinced of guilt, no doubt we must be; but this supposes no knowledge of self - that is state, not acts which constitute guilt. There is no forgiveness of a nature; but where it was condemned, death came in (the cross), and so I am delivered.

Your question, "Do the accusations of the enemy and our own hearts work together for good" would not have place here; although God may and no doubt does turn them to account for our blessing, because the enemy has been silenced for ever as to our acceptance with God. God Himself has proved Himself "for us," and has justified us, so that the Holy Ghost asks in verse 33, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" There is none. "Who is he that condemneth?" There could be, nay is, no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. As to the accusations of our own hearts, we have nothing to satisfy us in them; if we had, it would be a bad sign. We know that no matter how deep the discovery we make of the evil of our hearts, Christ has been under it all, and has put it away for ever. We do not think badly enough of ourselves. Once we have discovered that there is no "good thing" in us, and with the full knowledge of what we are, Christ died for us, and that He has delivered us completely and for ever; we begin to think not at all of ourselves ― we then have done with ourselves altogether. The Spirit, who dwells in us, is grieved with the slightest shadow of failure or sin, and does not, nay could not, for the time, lead our souls into the enjoyment of our place and portion. He turns us in on our own hearts that we may see the evil and exercise self-judgment as to it; this we may confound with the "accusations of our own hearts."