A personal note: Our pastor’s new series entitled “No Condemnation, the Ridiculous Reality Found Only in Jesus” has a special resonance in my heart. The tendency to self-condemn has dogged me, to one degree or another, for basically my entire Christian life. In recent years, though, it has become far, far less of a problem for me. The theme of the following essay explains one of the reasons why (though not the only one).

It is vital to learn that there is a fundamental difference between self-condemnation and self-denial. One is of God and one is not. Some believers tend to equate these actions with each other, whether consciously or unconsciously. Doing so is a sure recipe for a defeated life because when we think them the same, we live in spiritual self-deception.

Self-condemnation occurs when Christians judge their very being according to their sin-damaged and therefore imperfect 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 self-condemnatory 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 fully redeemed life of blood-bought and forgiven children of God. Therefore, when we despise our deepest selves as Christians we are also despising the new clean hearts that God has given us through our faith in His Son.

This should never be.

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 ourselves now are in Christ. It is true that legitimate self-love must 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, transformation, and ownership by God. This is a satanic deception that keeps the lost from knowing their condition, and Christians need to continuously seek to expose it for exactly what it is.

That said, it is deeply important that we do not, in our rightful condemnation of 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 we love ourselves. It is not wrong to love and take appropriate care of 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. A certain kind of 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 late friend of mine believed that self-love must precede authentic 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 with the compassion of Christ. If we allow none of that compassion for ourselves, how are we to have it for others? We may even do good things for people, sacrificial things even, not out of true love for them but only out of the fear that if we do not we will become “more” condemned.

Self-condemning believers often assume their sense of condemnation is coming from God, rather than from themselves, or from the voices of those who abused them in their past, or from the Enemy of our souls. This is a sure recipe for a deep sense of hypocrisy, followed sometime thereafter by burnout or what has come to be known in recent years as "compassion fatigue." We gradually run out of the strength to give to persons in need when we have not accepted a God-given love in our hearts for ourselves.

The key to joyful and real self-sacrifice is that it must come from a heart that is overflowing with the love of Christ. Inappropriate self-loathing of not only our dying flesh but also our God-loved selves, now bought by His shed blood, will effectively quench that overflow. It is vital we come to know the blessing of Godly self-denial over the self-inflicted curse of self-condemnation. Over time, by the grace of God, we can come to live in the blessing of this truth if we are only willing to let Him love us into seeing ourselves as we truly are in His Son, Jesus Christ.