One of the strangest routines I have is my return to shame and guilt. Things long eradicated from my life by the overwhelming love of God’s kind wooing to repentance continue to redux in my mind. Though he has delivered me from certain disaster and relational isolation, I find myself repeatedly internalizing past sin and disobedient flaws in character.
Though it may seem pious or somehow spiritually significant to repeatedly visit the depths of our past, it is an unnecessary injury to our spirit and hindrance to our freedom. When I choose to wallow in the old self, I not only waste the joy offered through the mercy of God, I also cheapen the sacrifice of Jesus by rejecting the truth. What then shall I do? Believe harder? Be a better person? Disingenuously pretend that I am “over it”? May it never be so! Instead, I must KNOW that I am forgiven! I must KNOW that my old self is dead! I must KNOW that my confidence is not in myself or my ability to not sin. This knowing comes from a full surrender of my will and spirit to the truth that the sacrifice is enough…God’s forgiveness is enough…his loving-kindness is sufficient to deliver me from my past and free me from the bondage of self judgement…even so, it already has! How arrogant it must be in the sight of God for me to cling to self-condemnation over his abolishment of sin! He has completed the work of forgiveness and rendered me a new creation…born again into a new life! Let us not be bound any longer to the tired reruns of our own personal sitcom, and let us take on to ourselves anew the freedom of our renovated identity that we have been gifted through the cross!