Eric writes and asks this, Pastor John, I've heard many times how we are to forgive ourselves,

but I can't find a biblical text to back this statement up. Where are people getting this idea

of forgiving ourselves from? Well, I share Eric's perplexity about the language of self-forgiveness.

I've never preached that anybody should forgive themselves, at least I don't remember ever saying it,

and I've never used it as a way of dealing with my own self-hatred or condemnation or whatever

that it's supposed to deal with. And the reason is mainly, I don't think it's in the Bible,

and the reason I don't think it's in the Bible is that I think it would be intrinsically

confusing about the nature of forgiveness if it were. Maybe the reason the Bible doesn't

think in these categories of self-forgiveness is that to have forgiveness, you need a person

who has been wronged and a person who did the wrong. So I insult you, you are insulted,

now apologies and forgiveness can happen. I can say to you a different person, I'm sorry,

and you can say to me a different person, I forgive you. But when we talk about forgiving ourselves,

who's the one doing the wrong and being wronged? Or nearly when someone talks about forgiving

himself, he means forgiving himself for something he did to somebody else. So Jack insults me

and then apologizes and I forgive Jack, then why would Jack forgive Jack when Jack didn't insult Jack?

That's how forgiveness works and that's what I mean when I say it would be intrinsically confusing,

it breaks down the clear categories of what forgiveness really is about. It starts to muddy the

waters of what forgiveness really is, a wronged person, forgiving a person who wronged him,

not a wronging person, forgiving a wronging person. That doesn't make sense, but

those who use this confusing way of talking are really dealing with something real. They're trying

to get at something, right? And what is that? Well, when I search biblically to try to find where's

a biblical paradigm to deal with what these folks I think are really trying to deal with, the closest I

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