When you do something stupid or sinful, what’s the script that plays in your mind? If you’re like me and most of the people I talk with, it’s probably some form of self-condemnation. “I’m so stupid.” “I’m so clumsy.” I’m an idiot.” “I’ll never break this habit.” Or some variation on that theme. Our minds are incredibly creative when it comes to self-condemnation.
If you’re a follower of Jesus this kind of self-condemnation isn’t just a minor annoyance – it’s a serious problem. It’s a matter of spiritual life or death and a crucible in which we test and prove whether or not we actually believe what God has said about us.
This is a topic I keep coming back to in my writing here, partially because it’s so relevant to me personally and partially because, based on my conversations with numerous people who love Jesus deeply, it’s a significant issue throughout the community of faith.
Religion and self-condemnation
If you’ve spent any time in the Christian religious system odds are you’ve been inculcated with a deep-seated system of laws and implicit expectations about what you must and must not do, plus a very helpful guide for the level of guilt and shame you should feel upon doing or not doing those things.
For many the Christian faith has become a mirror in which to examine themselves and judge whether or not they are living appropriately. But that is exactly what it is not meant to be. Christ didn’t come so that we could have a higher moral standard against which to judge ourselves. Far from it. Christ came to fulfill the law and free us from the need to live up to it. The Apostle Paul goes so far as to say that all who attempt to live by, “works of the law are under a curse.” (Gal. 3:10)
Judgment and Law
Most of you are probably nodding in agreement. Yes, of course, we can’t work our way to salvation. We’re saved by grace through faith. If you’re a good evangelical you know that well. But do you live it well? Do the scripts that play in your mind when you fail, falter, and sin align with that truth?
If the conversations that happen in your head when you fall short are filled with self-judgment I want to submit that you don’t truly believe and know that “For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5:1a) Self-condemnation is proof that you are trying to live under the law rather than living in Christ under grace.
Contrast the attitude that states, “I’m stupid and I’ll never get out of this mess” or feels crushed when someone else points out a flaw or failure with the Apostle Paul’s attitude towards condemnation and judgment:
But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.
1 Corinthians 4:3-5
Don’t judge yourself
Read that again. What a radical shift from the seemingly holy practice of constant self-incrimination! Paul is so radically free from the law that he has given up his right to judge himself, replacing it with faith that God will be the one judges.
Paul has so thoroughly known the free gift of Grace in Christ that he not only isn’t afraid of what other people think about him – he’s not even afraid of what he thinks about himself. Instead his evaluation of himself is replaced completely by God’s evaluation of him in Christ, which he writes of elsewhere, saying:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:1-6
Don’t condemn the uncondemnable
God has sent his son Jesus and set you free from the law. He has, in Christ, made it so that “the righteous requirement of the law [is] fulfilled in us.” Note that well, my friends. The righteous requirement of the law has been fulfilled in us. Past tense. God has already passed judgment on you, and that judgment is that you are not condemned. You are loved, restored, and filled with the Spirit.
Every time we judge ourselves we are usurping God’s place, attempting to rewrite the sentence that God has written. Every time we hold up the mirror of the law to evaluate our progress and growth (or lack thereof) we are, as Paul put it, setting our minds on the things of the flesh. We are taking our eyes off of Christ and putting them on ourselves, which always results in condemnation and death.
Instead we must stop trying to condemn the uncondemnable and start setting our minds on the Spirit. Every time a condemning thought flits through our minds we can simply laugh at it and let it slide off of, saying with the apostle Paul, “with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged”…I do not even have the right to judge myself. There is no condemnation for me!
Stop hitting yourself. That radical shift will utterly transform you life.
Stop condemning what God has called righteous and good. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Gal. 5:1) As you practice living in that freedom you’ll discover that it is indeed true that agreeing with the Spirit (rather than trying to work under the law) is life and peace in abundance. I, for one, want to live that kind of life.
No Comments