How Do I Forgive Myself?

We recently published a blog article, “How Do I Forgive Others?”, and received a question in the form of a comment on our related social media post: “How does a person forgive themselves?”

Making it more personal: How do I forgive myself?

This is a weighty question, one that we all wrestle with to some extent because we’re sinful. We do things every day that fill us with guilt and shame. Sometimes, we find it difficult to let go of that guilt and shame. We confess our sins and repent of them to God, and we hear his amazing words of forgiveness, but we still struggle to forgive ourselves.

Why?

It isn’t easy to forgive others and it certainly isn’t easy to forgive ourselves. Maybe that’s because we’ve listened to the devil’s lies for so long that we’ve started to believe them and tell them to ourselves as well. We wrongly think that we can’t and don’t deserve to forgive ourselves.

It isn’t easy to let go of the things we’ve done that fill us with guilt and shame. We’re not alone in that. Believers throughout the ages have struggled with that too. King David wrote in Psalm 51:3, “I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.” Always before me!

Whether we’re reflecting on something we did years or seconds ago, all the while, the devil is right there, whispering lies in our ears. The last thing he wants is for us to listen to the truths found in God’s Word—that God has forgiven all of our sins in Christ Jesus; that he has blotted out our transgressions; that he remembers our sins no more. The devil wants to keep our attention fixed on the sinful things we’ve done and not on what our Savior has done for us.

God has forgiven us through Jesus. There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And if the God who created all things, including you and me, has forgiven us and does not condemn us, then by his grace alone, we can forgive ourselves too. But how do we do that? What does that look like?

Dear Christian, the ability to forgive others and ourselves doesn’t come from within us.

The ability to forgive—along with forgiveness itself—comes from outside of ourselves. It comes from our loving Savior-God, who repeatedly tells us throughout the pages of Scripture and in his sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, “You are forgiven. You are set free from sin. I have given you new life in my Son Jesus. You are my dearly loved child.”

As we struggle to forgive ourselves, we need to hear God’s truth-filled words of forgiveness in his Word and sacraments. Pastors, friends, family—God calls us as his church to encourage and forgive one another and speak the gospel message of God’s forgiveness to one another.

We point one another to the cross and see our Savior’s forgiveness and love there. That’s for you. That’s for me. We remind one another of who we are in Christ Jesus: forgiven and dearly loved children of God.

If we’re asking ourselves the question, “How do I forgive myself?” and we’re struggling to do that, God invites us to take that exhausting burden to him. And he lovingly tells us how he sees us and who we are to him.

God wants us to bring him our troubles, our worries, our fears, and our doubts.

Just as God wants us to bring him our struggle to forgive others, he wants us to bring him our struggle to forgive ourselves too. He wants us to look not at ourselves and our inability to forgive but at him and what he has done, is doing, and continues to do for us: forgive and empower us through his Word to live as his children.

Turn our eyes to you, O Lord. Forgive us when we struggle to forgive ourselves. Draw us closer to you and continue to work on our hearts through your Word and sacraments. Strengthen our faith and fill our lives with reminders of the grace you show us every day—of the forgiveness won at the cross. Heal what wounds we carry until the day you call us home. Help us forgive ourselves, as you have forgiven us. Amen.


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Alex Brown is the marketing and content copywriter at Northwestern Publishing House. He has his Master of Divinity degree from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time in God’s creation.

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