There is something wonderful about understanding God’s love for us.
We have already looked at the fact that He accepts us that when we come to Him, He will never drive us away.
We have also seen how much He values us.
But there is another expression of God’s love that I believe we need to understand deeply:
God forgives us.
The Bible tells us:
“If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”
1 John 1:9 (NLT)
For some of us, though, forgiveness has different layers.
We may believe that God forgives other people. We might even find it relatively easy to tell someone else, “God has forgiven you. You need to let that go.”
But when it comes to ourselves, things can become much more difficult.
We start thinking:
Yes, but you don’t know what I’ve done.
Surely God must be deeply disappointed with me.
Maybe He has forgiven me, but how can I forgive myself?
And this is where understanding what Jesus has actually done for us becomes so important.
When Your Memory Won’t Let It Go
As we get older, most of us accumulate things we wish we had done differently.
Decisions we regret.
Words we wish we hadn’t spoken.
People we may have hurt.
Opportunities we wasted.
Times when we knew better but still made the wrong choice.
Sometimes the problem is that our memory is doing too good a job.
Experiences with a strong emotional impact tend to stay with us. We can replay them long after they happened.
And although we may have confessed something to God, turned away from it and genuinely changed, the memory can remain.
Our conscience keeps bringing it back.
You can be driving somewhere, lying in bed or simply going about an ordinary day when suddenly that memory appears again.
And with the memory comes the guilt.
This is where simply telling ourselves, “Stop thinking about it,” doesn’t always work.
We need something stronger than our memories.
We need truth.
And sometimes we need to meditate on that truth long enough for it to begin reshaping the way we think.
This Is Where Good Theology Helps Us
There is a remarkable passage in the book of Hebrews that has helped me understand what Jesus’ sacrifice actually accomplished.
The writer is explaining why the sacrifice of Jesus is completely different from the sacrifices offered under the old covenant.
He writes:
“So Christ has now become the High Priest over all the good things that have come… With his own blood not the blood of goats and calves he entered the Most Holy Place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.”
“Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God.”
Hebrews 9:11–14 (NLT)
I would encourage you to read the whole passage in Hebrews 9:11–15.
But there is one sentence I want us to stop at:
“Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds…”
Hebrews 9:14 (NLT)
Just think about that.
Not only forgiveness.
A cleansed conscience.
Jesus’ Sacrifice Reaches the Place Guilt Lives
There are several things in this passage that I think are important.
First, Jesus offered Himself willingly.
This wasn’t something we persuaded God to do.
God made the first move.
Once again, love begins with Him.
But there is something else here that I find incredibly powerful.
The sacrifice of Jesus doesn’t only deal with what we have done.
It reaches our conscience.
That is the place where so much of the internal struggle takes place.
Our memories may store things we regret.
Our conscience may remind us of decisions we’ve made.
We may remember the people our choices affected.
And sometimes those memories can become part of how we see ourselves.
“That’s who I am.”
“That’s what I did.”
“I should have known better.”
But Hebrews tells us that the blood of Christ reaches somewhere religious rituals never could:
the human conscience.
Christ doesn’t merely forgive the record of our sin while leaving us permanently crushed beneath the memory of it.
His sacrifice is sufficient even there.
When the Memory Comes Back
This is where I think we have to become practical.
The fact that a memory returns doesn’t mean God hasn’t forgiven you.
And the fact that you still feel something when you remember it doesn’t mean Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t enough.
When an old failure comes back to mind, instead of allowing the memory to write the story, we can begin replacing it with what God has said.
Perhaps something like:
“Yes, I remember what happened.
I regret what I did.
I confessed it to God and chose to turn from it.
And Jesus has forgiven me.
His sacrifice is greater than my failure.
Even my conscience can be cleansed.”
This is what I mean by re-scripting our thought patterns with Scripture.
We’re not pretending the past didn’t happen.
We’re allowing God’s truth to have the final word about it.
You Don’t Have to Keep Punishing Yourself
I think this is where some of us get stuck.
God has forgiven us, but somehow we feel that continuing to carry guilt proves that we are genuinely sorry.
Almost as though punishing ourselves for another five or ten years will somehow make things right.
But our guilt doesn’t add anything to the sacrifice of Jesus.
Jesus already paid the price.
We can acknowledge what we did.
We can make amends where appropriate.
We can learn from it.
We can change.
But we don’t have to spend the rest of our lives trying to pay a debt that Christ has already paid.
The purpose of His sacrifice is freedom.
Hebrews says our consciences are cleansed:
“…so that we can worship the living God.”
Hebrews 9:14 (NLT)
In other words, God doesn’t want us permanently looking backwards.
He wants us free to walk with Him.
This Is How Much God Loves You
When we understand forgiveness this way, we begin to see just how far God’s love has gone for us.
Jesus’ perfect sacrifice has already accomplished the deepest cleansing we could ever need.
Even the places inside us that other people cannot see.
Even the memories we wish we could erase.
Even the things we find difficult to forgive ourselves for.
God knows them.
And still He invites us to come.
This frees us to love and serve God from gratitude rather than obligation.
We aren’t trying to earn forgiveness.
We aren’t trying to pay God back.
We’re responding to something He has already done.
This is the gospel.
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the picture of God that people hear.
Some people spend their lives imagining God constantly disappointed with them, waiting to condemn them whenever they fail.
But Jesus came to show us something very different.
He came to reveal the Father’s love.
He came not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17).
So perhaps part of learning to receive God’s love is learning to accept the full extent of His forgiveness.
Not just saying:
“God has forgiven me.”
But eventually being able to say:
“Because God has forgiven me, I don’t have to keep condemning myself.”
When the memory returns, let the truth return with it.
You have been forgiven.
Your conscience can be cleansed.
You are free to walk with God again.
What truth about God’s forgiveness has helped you let go of something you were still carrying? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
