1Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

      9However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

      12So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

-Romans 8:1-17

The very first verse in this passage defines and sets the tone for the rest, and for that reason this essay will primarily center on its profound implications.

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

Among many other things this means that Self-Condemnation is no remedy for self-centeredness. In fact self-condemnation is, by definition, self-centered. Some Christians make the mistake of thinking that by mercilessly condemning themselves they are somehow cooperating with God’s plan for them to die to self. This is a fallacy, even a twisted sort of pride. Brennan Manning once said that what believers truly need is "self-acceptance without self-concern". By this he implies that it is only when we accept ourselves in Christ as sons and daughters of God, rather than hate ourselves as sinful failures, that we are ready to forget ourselves and live more fully for God and for others. Condemning ourselves rather than our sins only perpetuates self-obsession and spiritual immaturity.

It is easy for Christians to mistake unhealthy self-recrimination for healthy repentance. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is our tendency to see the God of the Bible as an angry father whose primary mission is to convince us how evil we are. While it is true that conviction of human evil is a component of God’s plan to bring us back to Himself it is only the initial component. It is true that we cannot realize our need for a Savior until we first realize that we are sinful from birth and justly separated from our Creator by that sinfulness. Without the dawning of this knowledge we will continue to walk blithely on towards Hell thinking that we are "good persons." It is absolutely essential to our redemption that we do come to know, to at least some degree, how black our unredeemed hearts really are.

But that is only for those on the other side of salvation. Once we are convicted of our wickedness, cry out to Jesus Christ to forgive us, and become “new creatures” in Him we are no longer required to overly focus on our remaining evil tendencies. Instead we now can focus on the One who redeemed us. We need to also meditate on what He has turned us into: beloved children of God who have been made righteous in the sight of our new heavenly Father. While we still have a sinful part of us, the flesh that must be progressively put to death, we are no longer defined by that dying part of our old nature but by "Christ in us, the hope of glory".

We dare not turn the initial awareness of evil that brought us to Christ into an ongoing, misguided hatred of all that we are now. That was never the purpose of the initial revelation of our fallenness. Its only purpose was to open our eyes to the absolute need for salvation in Christ. After that salvation is secured through sincere faith the only one who wants moral self-awareness to involve crippling self-condemnation is the Enemy of our souls. He knows that a Christian who is busy hating himself is a Christian who cannot grow in love for God and others. If Satan cannot prevent our salvation his next ploy is to make our lives miserable and unproductive. If he can convince us that we should not “accept our acceptance” by our loving Lord then he has achieved this secondary goal.

Once Jesus Christ has saved us our blessed new purpose is to enjoy and serve Him forever while learning to love others and ourselves. Self-condemnation has no place in the life of God’s "new creatures".