Freeing Yourself (1)

So if the Son sets you free, you really will be free. John 8:36 NASB

Free – Did you read the statements of Jonathan Sacks from yesterday’s edition?  Oh, if you didn’t, then go back before you read this.

Do you remember what he wrote?

“Atonement and forgiveness are the supreme expressions of human freedom – the freedom to act differently in the future than one did in the past, and the freedom not to be trapped in a cycle of vengeance and retaliation. Only those who can forgive can be free.”

What does this mean?  Becoming human means being able to forgive, and, can I suggest, that this must begin with you?  We often discover that it is easier to forgive another than it is to forgive ourselves.  We remove the guilt of the other when we volunteer forgiveness.  We release them from the burden.  But how difficult it is to lift away the burden of guilt from ourselves!  We know better than anyone how we have failed, how we have deliberately disobeyed, how we have ignored God’s whispered prompting to turn around.  Other people don’t see the weight we carry inside—the weight of criticism, condemnation, and disapproval inflicted by our own conscience.  We know!  And because we know all the story, we find it extremely difficult to free ourselves from this burden.  It hangs on us like an invisible millstone around the neck.

One of the significant implications of Sacks’ insight is this: we cannot become human until we learn to forgive, and since we cannot forgive ourselves, we prevent ourselves from becoming the very thing God intended—human!  Oh, it’s one thing to kneel in prayer and ask God to forgive us.  He will.  The weight of disobedience from the divine perspective is removed.  But that doesn’t lift our own self-condemnation.  The power of the yetzer ha’ra is found in its ability to remind us that our past actions still have consequences.  No sin can ever be erased.  It can be forgiven, but it is still a part of the moral inventory.

When Yeshua said that he truly frees us, it cannot mean we are only relieved of the statutory infringement.  That dismisses the judicial proceeding, but it doesn’t forgive.  To be forgiven must include self-forgiveness.  If it does not, the goal of becoming human will be obstructed.  We will be condemned to repeating the offense in search of true self-forgiveness.  We will act out the old pattern because it has never really gone away.  It’s still there, waiting to really be lifted from us.  When Yeshua said that he was able to provide real freedom, a freedom that ends the cycle of self-condemnation, he must have included the emotional resolution of our awareness of failure.  Without that, we are never really free.

Is that what you heard when you read his words?

Topical Index:  free, forgiveness, condemnation, John 8:36