Chapter 26
When You Don’t Feel Forgiven
You’ve repented. You believe you’re forgiven because the Bible says so. But you don’t feel forgiven. Is God’s forgiveness something that must be felt? Yes!
Healing Your Side of the Broken Relationship
As we found in the previous chapter, forgiveness is much more than just having the Judge of the universe issue a pardon or to let you off with time served. Forgiveness is personal. It’s the full restoration of the broken relationship. So if you don’t feel forgiven, then on your end the relationship isn’t fully healed. The aim of this chapter is to help you find that healing by contemplating God’s nature.
The Certainty of Forgiveness
After reading the previous chapter, you might say, “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t be so quick to assure me that I can be forgiven.” God would respond, “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t doubt it.” I pray this chapter will help you know God better. 
God’s Promise
Confidence in God’s forgiveness begins with trusting God’s promise, which is as clear as it can be.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
If you have a hard time believing that promise, remind your soul of it every time you confess a sin. Listen to how David did it.
“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalms 51:7).
Why does David tell God that he will be clean and whiter than snow? Does God need to be informed about how his own forgiveness works? No. David says it because much of what we say in prayer is to remind ourselves of the truths we struggle to believe. So whatever it is your heart doesn’t seem to truly believe, affirm that truth often when you’re speaking to God.
God’s Dominant Feeling Toward You
In addition to affirming God’s promises, the next step is to understand how God feels about you when you seek forgiveness. 
Are there times when God is displeased with what you do? Yes. But if you imagine that displeasure to be God’s dominant feeling toward you, you have a distorted view of God. 
When my children were little, they did things that displeased me. But if you caught me at the moment when I was the most unhappy with them that I’ve ever been, still, in that moment there aren’t even words to describe how precious they were to me.
Is God like that with us? Yes!
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust” (Psalms 103:13-14). 
God’s delight in you is greater, more dominant, and longer lasting than any disfavor he might have toward you. 
“His anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime” (Psalm 30:5). 
God’s Feelings
Sometimes, people imagine that God forgives them, but reluctantly. That’s impossible. If it were grudging or reluctant, then it wouldn’t be forgiveness because that reluctance would indicate there is still a rift in the relationship. And where there is a rift, forgiveness hasn’t happened. 
Remember how happy the father was when the prodigal son came home?
“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
Every time God forgives you, it’s with those same wide-open arms and over-the-top happiness.
Jesus could have saved a lot of words had he simply stated the principle directly. Rather than tell a story, he could have simply said, “God forgives enthusiastically.” Why use so many words to communicate that? 
It goes back to why God gave us the gift of imagination. Jesus wants you to use that gift to import yourself into the story so you not only know the principle, but you feel that bear hug from the father. You are the broken prodigal being squeezed by the arms of the father’s love.
God’s Motive
Why is God so enthusiastic about it? It’s because he loves forgiving you after you’ve sinned. One of the best ways to overcome doubts about God’s forgiveness is to remember that God thoroughly enjoys forgiving sinners.
“Who is a God like you? … You … delight to show mercy” (Micah 7:18).
Forgiving you is such a pleasurable experience for God that his desire to forgive you is even stronger than your desire to be forgiven.
“This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation … but you would have none of it. … Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. … How gracious he will be when you cry for help!” (Isaiah 30:15-19). 
Isn’t that an amazing truth? Even when you resist God’s forgiveness, he doesn’t say, “You don’t want it? Fine—you won’t get it.” Instead, he continues to draw you until he overcomes your resistance. And if he wants your restoration that badly, imagine how gracious he will be when you finally cry for help.
If you think God is reluctant to forgive you, consider the extreme language he uses.
“You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalms 103:12). 
Are there any words God could have used that would more strongly convey the opposite of reluctance? Instead of just saying, “He set your sins aside,” he hurls them into the depths of the sea. Instead of simply putting a wall between you and your sin, he separates them as far from you as the east is from the west. There are no words that could convey it more strongly.
God’s Compassion 
It’s that strong because God’s desire to forgive you is driven by the intensity of his feelings of compassion for you.
 “’For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back” (Isaiah 54:7).
God’s compassion is so deep, it overwhelms even his own anger. 
“Great is your love, higher than the heavens” (Psalms 108:4).
His feelings of compassion for you after you have sinned are so vast, so deep, so high, so wide, not even the most expansive reality we can conceive of (the heavens) is adequate to describe it.
Though your sins outnumber the hairs on your head, his compassion outweighs the stars in the sky. 
God wants us to know what he feels when he forgives us. He sees the damage we inflicted on ourselves by our sin and it breaks his great heart. And when you have feelings of compassion that strong, it feels good to forgive. That’s why God loves forgiving you. It’s also why David, when he sought forgiveness for his worst sin, appealed to God’s compassion. 
“According to your great compassion blot out my transgressions” (Psalms 51:1).
God’s Happiness
Go back to the Prodigal Son parable. Who is the happiest character in that story? It’s the father. That’s the main point of the entire chapter, which contains three parables—the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son. And the climax of all three is the same:
The Sheep:
“When he finds [the sheep], he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be … rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:6-7).
The Coin:
“'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:9-10).  
The Son:
“He ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. … Let's have a feast and celebrate” (Luke 15:20-23). 
That’s a lot of happiness in one chapter, and all of it—the shepherd, the woman, and the father— all that happiness illustrates what God feels when you repent and he forgives you.
Forgiving for His Sake
God loves forgiving you so much, he can honestly say he does it for his own sake.
"I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25).
God loves nothing more than to put his glory on display, and forgiving sinners does just that. When God revealed his most essential nature to Moses, the essence of his glory, he described himself as a one who abounds in love, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin (Exodus 34:6-7). That’s his glory, so the more he forgives, the more is glory is revealed.
What if You’ve Gone too Far?
Does it feel like your sins are so massive, so ugly, so many, that it’s too much to ask God to forgive? Are you overwhelmed with guilt? That is the very moment God’s heart is moved to draw you back to him.
“When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions” (Psalms 65:3).
Greater sin doesn’t make God less eager to forgive. It makes him more eager. Notice David’s logic for why God should forgive him in Psalms 25.
“O LORD, forgive my sin, because it is great” (Psalms 25:11 NET).
We might have expected, “Forgive my sin despite the fact that it is great.” That’s the logic of merit. But David uses the logic of grace. He understood that the greater the sin God forgives, the more glory it brings to his name. 
“For the sake of your reputation, O LORD, forgive my sin, because it is great” (Psalms 25:11 NET).
More guilt; more grace. More grace, more glory to God.
God is good and he loves goodness. So it’s in his nature to bring about more and more goodness in his creation. The most logical place for him to begin, then, is with someone who needs an increase in goodness—a sinner. 
“Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways” (Psalms 25:8).
Note the word “therefore.” The fact that God is good is what drives him to restore sinners, which means your sinfulness attracts God’s goodness. It moves him to bring you along on that path of goodness.
Reluctance to seek mercy and grace from God after a failure rises from a warped understanding of his nature. The greater your sin problem the more of a candidate you are for his mercy. 
Does this mean it’s okay to go ahead and sin because God will forgive more? Would you intentionally break your leg because you know it can heal? 
Someone who says, “I’ll sin now and be restored to God later” is like a husband who says, “I’ll have an affair now and then fall back in love with my wife later.”  That’s not how love works. Forgiveness is available to those who repent, but the process of repentance is a painful ordeal. The pleasure of sin is never worth it.
Nevertheless, after the evil deed is done, forgiveness and restoration are available.
Your Advocate
If it’s hard for you to imagine God really, truly, fully forgiving you, it may help to remember how Christ’s sacrifice is applied to you. It happens through his intercession. Jesus pleads your case before the Father.
“If anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2).
Why does Jesus have to constantly plead your case before the Father? Are the Son and Father at cross purposes—one for you and the other against you? No.
Think of the purpose of intercessors in the Bible. Why does God have a system of intercession—responding to requests from one person on behalf of other people? Why not just have everyone pray for their own needs? Why not just have everyone pray for their own needs?
One reason is that very often, the people who need God’s mercy don’t have the sense to ask for it. So God moves someone else to ask on their behalf. Jesus knows to ask the Father for blessings on your behalf that wouldn’t even occur to you to request. He prays for you when you’re too busy to pray, too lazy to pray, or so confused you don’t even know what to pray for.
Another reason for the system of intercession is for God to show his favor on the intercessor. Why did God show mercy on the people only when Moses asked for it? God wanted to show the people how much he favored Moses. Why did God tell Job’s friends he would only forgive them if Job prayed for them? God wanted them to know that Job had his favor. 
Jesus’ intercession is the same way. It’s not that the Father is reluctant and has to be persuaded by the Son. The Father is eager to forgive you and shower blessings on you, but honoring Christ is such a high priority that he will not give any blessing to anyone except as a favor to his Son. That’s how much the Father wants to bring honor to the Lord Jesus Christ. 
This means when you ask for forgiveness and restoration from the Father, the answer depends on how much the Father loves Jesus. How worthy is Jesus to receive answers to his requests? That’s how certain your forgiveness is when you repent.
Can you see why this doctrine of Christ’s intercession is so important for you in those moments when you doubt God’s forgiveness?
When You Don’t Feel God’s Forgiveness
Now, suppose you know all that, but you still feel guilty. You’ve repented and sought God’s forgiveness, you realize God is eager to forgive, but you’ve made such a habit of always beating yourself up that you can’t seem to stop. Your own heart attacks you relentlessly and won’t rest. Then what?
The answer is in 1 John 2:19-20.
“This then is ... how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20).
Your heart is condemning you. This isn’t the word for condemning to hell. It’s just a word that means to point out someone is in the wrong. 
Your heart just keeps bringing up your failures and rubbing your face in it and giving you this feeling that maybe you’re saved, but you’re just a really lousy Christian. 
John provides a two-part solution. You put your heart at rest by understanding two attributes of God.
God Is Greater
The first is God’s greatness. Specifically, the fact that his greatness surpasses your heart’s greatness.
“This … is how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:19-20).
When God says you’re forgiven and your heart says you’re not, it’s your word against God’s. Which is greater? God is greater than your heart.
Your heart is a local magistrate; God is the Supreme Court. Your heart’s ruling has been overturned. Vacated. It doesn’t stand. God’s verdict stands.
When your heart gets so puffed up with self-importance that it tries to elevate its own judgment about you above the judgment of Supreme Court of the universe, your heart needs to be put in its place. 

Who Are You to Judge?
One reason we tend toward self-condemnation instead of repentance is that it’s easier. Complaining about a problem is always easier than solving it. And that’s what self-condemnation is—grumbling to yourself about yourself. 
It’s judgmentalism turned inward. Self-condemnation usurps God's role as judge. 
“There is only one … Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you--who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:12).
You could fill in “yourself” in place of “your neighbor.” Who are you to judge yourself?  There’s only one Judge—the one who’s able to save and destroy. If you’re not able to save and destroy, then you’re not in a position to judge even yourself. Like Paul in 1 Corinthians  4.
“I do not even judge myself. … It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians  4:3-4).
If your heart tries to tell you you’re worthless, just say, “I don’t care what you think. You’re not my judge.”
Living by Feelings
When your feelings don’t line up with what God has said, who are you going to trust—God or your feelings? Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are bound by how you feel. You have the power to turn your attention away from how you feel and fix your thoughts on what God has said.
If you allow your guilt feelings to dictate what you believe about yourself, you’re making an idol out of your own feelings, placing them above God. You care more about how you feel than about how God feels.
Living by feelings will destroy your life. In the search for truth, nothing is less reliable than your feelings. They will tell you the truth about what your beliefs really are, what you value, and what you fear, but they are not a reliable way to discover truth outside of you. 
Isn’t this exactly what we tell unbelievers. We warn them that they are guilty before God and need forgiveness. If they say, “I don’t feel guilty,” what do we tell them? It doesn’t matter what you feel—if God says you’re guilty, you’re guilty. We need to give ourselves the same speech—if God says you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven, regardless of how you feel.
	Self-Forgiveness	
The world’s solution to self-condemnation is self-forgiveness. They pat you on the back and say, “You’re too hard on yourself. Cut yourself some slack. You have to learn to forgive yourself.”
Sounds reasonable at first. But why don’t we ever read that in the Bible?
First of all, because it doesn’t work. If you’ve ever tried it, you know that. When friends say you’re too hard on yourself, the self-loathing heart thinks, You say that because you only see the tip of the iceberg. If you saw the whole iceberg of my sin, you’d say I’m not nearly hard enough on myself.
More importantly, the Bible doesn’t offer self-forgiveness as a solution because self-forgiveness will only make the problem worse. The reason self-condemnation is bad is that it usurps God’s place as judge and elevates your own judgment to the place of supremacy. It says, “It’s my judgment that matters.” If you look to self-forgiveness as the solution, it only perpetuates the problem of relying on your own judgment. 
The goal is not to win your own favor. The goal is to disregard your own disfavor and seek God’s favor.
God Knows Everything
You can and should judge individual actions. If the Bible says something is sin, then it’s sin. The kind of judgment we are not equipped for, however, is making an overall assessment of how well you’re doing as a Christian.

The second attribute that can set your heart at rest is God’s infinite knowledge. 
“This then is ... how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20).
How does God knowing everything put your self-condemning heart at rest? If God knows all your thoughts, motives, lusts, attitudes, and all your private sins, wouldn’t that make you feel even worse? 
Not if you realize God has always known those things. God knew every sin you would ever commit, before he chose you. This sin that has you so discouraged—he saw that before you were born, yet he made you his child knowing that was coming. He knows more about the bad side of you than you will ever know, and he still accepts you and delights in you. Why? Because he also knows more than you do about the sacrifice of his Son on the cross and the vastness of his forgiving love. 
When you really love someone, it doesn’t take much for that person to do something that pleases you. Your child takes his first steps and you’re all excited, you clap your hands, give him a big hug, call your spouse and say, “He walked!” 
Then your child says, “No mom. I only made it three steps and then fell in a heap. Other children have walked months sooner than I did. I can’t bring myself to believe you’re actually pleased with me.” And you call your spouse and say, “He talked!”
The point is, you decide when you’re pleased, not the child. And the child should enjoy that, not second-guess it.
You know things he doesn’t know. Maybe he took two months longer to learn to walk than his sister. But what he doesn’t know is that he had an injury that his sister didn’t have, and the doctors said he would never walk. 
God not only knows all the bad things about you, he also knows things that are in your favor that you don’t know. He knows how much leash he has given Satan to go after you in a particular moment. Someone at church seems to be doing so much better than you, but God knows that he gave that person more grace in that area than he gave you. He knows the effect the combination of contributing factors has on you.
If you knew what God knows, you wouldn’t question anything he does, including being pleased with you.
Godliness Training Exercises

1)	Prayerfully read meditations 78,79,86, and 90 in Deeper Knowledge of God.
2)	Pick the one or two of the following verses you find most helpful for fighting your brand of self-condemnation:

•	Micah 7:18
•	1 John 2:1-2
•	2 Corinthians 7:10
•	Psalms 30:5
•	Isaiah 57:15-19

3)	To fight pride in your heart, pray this way:

Father, You are the Creator; I’m a creature. You are God; I am not. You are the solution to my problems; I am not. You are the source of all blessedness; I am the source of none. You are the only lawgiver and judge. You are supreme in every way; I am subordinate to you in every way. You are the provider and the generous giver; I am always the needy recipient. You are the guide, the teacher, the protector, and the controller of providence. I am none of those. You are able to protect my interests; I am not. I trust in You, not in me. I contribute nothing to my own wellbeing apart from you. I depend on you alone for forgiveness, salvation, restoration, acceptance, validation, and everything else I need.

4)	Each time you ask God’s forgiveness for a sin, follow your request with an affirmation of how clean you will be when God forgives you.
5)	When thoughts of self-condemnation arise, preach to your soul. Don’t merely think of abstract concepts. Put it into words, reminding your soul that God’s judgments are greater than your feelings.