Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
There is a fundamental difference between the actions of self-condemnation and self-denial – one is of God and one isn’t. Some believers tend to equate these actions with each other. It is a sure recipe for a defeated life. This is because, when we exchange one for the other, we live in spiritual deception.
Self-condemnation occurs when Christians judge themselves according to false, damaged personal consciences instead of leaving the prerogative of final judgment to God and God alone. More importantly, as far as that divine judgment is concerned, one verse in the Bible demolishes any justification we might think we have for consigning ourselves to our own Hells or believing we are consigned to the real one. Romans 8:1 tells us “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” If we have received Jesus as Lord and Savior we have passed from existing in a sinful state of true condemnation into the redeemed life of a blood-bought and forgiven child of God. When we despise ourselves as Christians we despise the new clean hearts that God has given us through our faith in His Son. This should never be.
Now this is not to say that there are not aspects of our not-yet fully sanctified being that we should hate. The “old man”, the sinful flesh, which is dying but still all too present in our being, is to be loathed, and rightfully so. But hating the flesh is different than hating who we now are in Christ. It is indeed true that legitimate self-love has to be carefully defined. The secular self-esteem movement tells us that all human beings should exalt themselves as being “good” apart from the need for forgiveness from, transformation by, and surrender to God. This is a satanic lie that keeps the lost from knowing their condition and Christians need to expose it for what it is.
That said it is very important that we do not, in our rejection of purely secular concepts of self-esteem, forget that our Lord Himself ordained appropriate self-love. When He told us to love our neighbor He framed it in the context of loving that neighbor as our self. It is not wrong to love and care for yourself. You are now a son or daughter of God and you have great worth in the eyes of the One who sees you through the lens of Jesus Christ. Appropriate positive self-regard is not a sin in a Christian. We are to love God first, yes, as well as our neighbors but we are to love ourselves too.
A counselor friend of mine who went home to be with the Lord several years ago believed that self-love must precede self-denial. What he meant was that the kind of sacrifices for others that we are encouraged to make as children of God require that we have something healthy in ourselves to give up! People who despise and condemn themselves destroy their very ability to love others from a pure heart, abundant in compassion. If we have no compassion for ourselves how are we to have compassion for others? We may do good things for others but out of the fear that if we do not we will be more condemned! This is a sure recipe for a deep sense of hypocrisy, likely followed sometime thereafter by “burn-out” or what has come to be known in recent years as “Compassion Fatigue”. We quickly run out of love to give to persons in need when we have received little God-given and ordained love in our hearts for ourselves.
The key to joyful self-sacrifice is that it must come from a heart that is overflowing with the love of Christ. Self-loathing of not only our dying flesh, but also our blood-bought, God-loved selves will quite effectively quench that overflow. For this reason it is vital we come to know the blessing of Godly self-denial over the self-inflicted curse of self-condemnation. That begins with consciously rejecting thoughts of self-condemnation, when they come, and beginning the process of instead regularly affirming the truth that we are beloved children of the King. This will take time for the self-condemning soul, but the final result will be the joy and peace of a newly abundant life in Christ.