(This is the first part of an article I wrote titled “Christformation And Embracing Forgiveness” that appeared on the Renew.org website. You may click on the link to access the whole article.)
What is God up to in our lives? When we look throughout Scripture, we see that, above all, God is restoring his image in us so we can be fruitful members of his eternal community of love. Restoring God’s image is another way of saying “becoming like Christ,” or as I like to put it, “Christformation.”
I would like to explore the importance of embracing forgiveness in order to progress in Christformation. Throughout Scripture, we learn that God has forgiven our sins through the cross of Christ: “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3, NIV). I want to persuade you to fully believe in this forgiveness from God. In fact, I want us to believe in this forgiveness enough that we are not averse to discovering our weaknesses and faults and the roots behind them. Much of Christformation depends on our willingness to let God make us aware of our faults. If we resist this process, then we are resisting the restoration of the Christ-shaped image of God in our lives, which also means that we are resisting God’s mission to create his community of love with himself and his followers. If we embrace the process, we will experience steady progress in freedom from our corruption and freedom to abide in Christ. But we need to practice embracing forgiveness to advance in this way.
In my early 30s, I had gone through over a year of excruciating physical and emotional pain. One day I was standing in the yard looking out over the waters of Puget Sound, reflecting on what I was feeling, and I realized that I was angry at God. This was not welcome news, but I accepted it and began to tell God why I was angry at him. Even though I had not done this before and was afraid to fully admit and express anger at God, I pressed on because I trusted his forgiveness.
When I was done, there was no sense of rejection from him; on the contrary, it was a big release and birthed a deeper relationship with him. It was okay to be honest about my frustration and tell him all about it. A forgiveness mindset gave me the freedom to acknowledge my misguided anger and taught me how to develop a better relationship with God.
Without a forgiveness mindset, our natural attitude toward our faults is to minimize or deny them. Even when we are clearly wrong, we try to justify what we did. We like to blame others for how we are and think we cannot help but act the way we do. We even have the capacity to consciously or unconsciously pretend that faults aren’t there.
We do all this to convince ourselves that we are still good people. We cannot bear the thought of thinking that we aren’t good because we believe that would mean we are less valued and less wanted, even if we consciously reject that thinking. If we did not think that faults led to some type of devaluation, we would never avoid the truth about our faults. It is all rooted in the basic human desire to view oneself as justified and right, which easily leads to forms of self-deception and pride.
Another indicator that we lack a forgiveness mindset is becoming overwhelmed by all the commands for living in the New Testament. Just reading the Sermon on the Mount can make us feel like we will never measure up. The weight of the “shoulds” in Scripture feels too heavy to bear. So, we may choose to minimize or avoid our shortcomings.
But if we practice embracing forgiveness, we can view all the commands as positive instructions for living and goals that God wants to achieve in us. If we welcome them as gifts, they will teach us about ourselves and guide us.
The battering we take in life due to our weaknesses and faults also tends to draw us away from honest self-awareness. We may not want to think about our faults at all because we are just trying to get through life and be reasonably good Christians. Maybe we grew up with dysfunctional parents and never developed a sense of security and intrinsic value. We may live in anxious circumstances and become discouraged about life. We may be confused about the meaning of the Christian life. Focusing on our faults just produces more discouragement and may lead to self-rejection.
If someone does manage to emerge from childhood with enough inner resources to pursue a satisfying career and a stable life, they still have to battle all the time pressures, financial stress, selfishness, deceit, and destructive social influences around them. If they don’t feel connected to God, they must also battle the exhaustion, futility, and loneliness that gradually wells up inside them. Finally, they must wrestle with their destructive responses to life’s challenges. They may have a sense of what is good, but they can’t do it, so they try to ignore their weaknesses, faults and lack of fulfillment.
On the other end of the spectrum, some of us dwell on our faults, become very frustrated with them, and beat ourselves up. We may find faults where faults do not exist. We do not allow ourselves peace because we keep stumbling and feel like second-rate Christians. We embrace subtle self-rejection. Paradoxically, these attitudes can also make us resistant to discovering the root faults underneath our known faults.
Many (most?) of us practice a combination of minimization and self-rejection when it comes to our faults. We hurt ourselves in both ways because we do not practice embracing forgiveness, even if we have followed Jesus for many years. It takes practice to resist these two errors. Thus, we naturally resist deep self-awareness.
(Go to Renew.org to read the remainder of the article. It resumes at the subheading “Breaking Our Bondage to False Beliefs.”)
How much do you practice embracing forgiveness? Are you secure enough in your forgiveness that you can easily accept a new awareness of your sins and weaknesses?
