Today's question is from a listener named Elliot, Pastor John Hello.

Would you say there's such a thing as a Christian being too harsh with themselves?

I'm often told by others my secular job that I'm too hard on myself.

Recently, my wife has mentioned several times that the standards of excellence I tried

to achieve at church are too high.

I don't deliberately view life for myself like this, but wouldn't low standards lead to

acceptance of sin in our lives.

I guess more generally, my question is this, is it possible for a Christian to be too hard

on himself?

Since I don't know the details of what being hard on himself looks like, I'm going to

address this issue in principle like this, what might it mean to be too hard on oneself

in regard to justification, and what might it mean to be too hard on oneself in regard

to sanctification, and what might be some guidelines to help us be appropriately hard

on ourselves, but not too hard on ourselves, not sinfully hard on ourselves.

So it is really crucial to nail down in the Christian mind and heart every believer

how we got right or get right with God as sinners so that our sins are all forgiven.

Our guilt is totally removed.

God's wrath is taken away.

There is no condemnation before him.

Our conscience is our clean.

We enjoy peace, peace, peace with God.

And we're in Christ and God is 100% for us and not against us in anything that happens

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