I’m a failure.
My family is better off without me.
I’m a terrible friend.
I can’t believe I messed up like that again.
Why do I even bother trying?
Have you ever said or thought any of those things? I have. I’ve uttered words I regret, berating myself for messing up again. I’ve also listened as others say things about me that simply aren’t true, accusations that hurt but have no basis. And I’ve heard judgments that are true, failures I can’t outrun or dismiss.
Sometimes these accusations can lead us down into an abyss of self-condemnation. We start to believe lies about our redemption, lies about who we are in Christ. And when we believe those lies, we’re unable to rest in the grace and forgiveness of God.
It’s complicated because there are often pieces of truth mixed in. We have messed up. We have failed. We’re not always good friends, spouses, or parents. Sin comes all too easily, and often we do need to confess. If we’re honest, we know we’ve fallen short and missed the mark. How do we sort out the lies when the accusations seem true? How can we rightly acknowledge our sin but not fall into self-condemnation?
Reality of Redemption
The Devil has a thousand tricks up his sleeve, ways he reminds us we deserve darkness instead of light, death instead of life. He can name real sins and shortcomings and point out how we’re undeserving of the life God offers. So lies and the truth get muddled together, twisted and warped, and we struggle to keep it all straight.
We might know “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23) and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), but some of us get stuck there. We forget what comes next in those verses. We see only our faults, and so we repeat words of condemnation and phrases of judgment like a broken record, wincing as the scratches rhythmically remind us of our own brokenness. We end up being so sure of our failures yet so unsure God’s grace is enough to cover them.
Eugene Peterson wrote in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction,
The lies are impeccably factual. They contain no errors. There are no distortions or falsified data. But they’re lies all the same, because they claim to tell us who we are and omit everything about our origin in God and our destiny in God.
There may be truth in Satan’s accusations. But he conveniently leaves out the reality of our redemption.
It Really Is Finished
There may be truth in Satan’s accusations. But he conveniently leaves out the reality of our redemption.
On our own, we stand before God filthy, covered in a mess of our own making, and he has every right to turn his face from us, every right to condemn us on the spot. Instead, he takes off our filthy rags and clothes us in righteousness—a righteousness we could never muster on our own but that comes only from the Lord Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:8–11).
God’s people before Christ longed for the day the Messiah would come as they held onto God’s promises of redemption. We get to look back at the fulfillment, the moment when Jesus cried, “It is finished.” On that day, Christ didn’t dismiss the accusations of our sin as baseless. He took all the condemnation we deserve on himself.
Whatever our past, our faults, our mistakes, Christ took all our sin to the cross and bore the punishment for it. It really is finished! As Paul explains, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). And there’s nothing you or I could do to undo the work of our Savior.
Free from Condemnation
When we know and believe we’ve been redeemed by Christ who took on himself all condemnation, we’re free to grieve our sin without fear and have holy sorrow for our failures. We know the grace of God. But we don’t abuse that grace by continuing to live in sin. That would be like wearing an outfit covered in sewage when God has given us new clothes or submitting “to a yoke of slavery” after we’ve already been set free (Gal. 5:1). Rather, we confess our sin with the confidence that God will forgive (1 John 1:9) and we look to him for help to obey with the knowledge that he loves to lead us in paths of righteousness (Ps. 23:3).
Christ didn’t dismiss the accusations of our sin as baseless. He took all the condemnation we deserve on himself.
When we’re free from the burden of condemnation, we’re also free to parent, to love, to work, to live God’s way with joy, knowing the accusations of the Evil One hold no power over us. We get to give up our filthy rags and “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:13–14).
I don’t know what words of condemnation nag at you. I don’t know your story of failure—maybe there’s a moment you let someone down, a day you felt like the worst parent on the planet, a constant feeling of guilt you carry. But I do know this: we can be free from the burden of condemnation because no failure is too much for the grace of God.
The Gospel Coalition