God is the Ultimate Victim of my Sin

Mary and I have been learning some lessons about accepting God's forgiveness. There is a common phrase, "you have to learn to forgive yourself". I've started to react negatively to that. There seems to be too much focus on me as the starting point. I think it's more accurate to say, "you have to learn to accept God's forgiveness." The idea comes up when I think about forgiveness for sin without punishment. I readily console myself by saying that sin has consequences, so sinners still get some measure of punishment. Written down in black and white, I see how ridiculous that is. I'm really saying that I don't feel worthy to be forgiven by people I have hurt with my sins and my pride wants to hang on to my guilt as a twisted form of control.

If a murderer is paroled by a judge he is forgiven in a sense. We recoil at the idea that a judge, who has no skin in the game, can forgive without considering the family of the victim, so parole hearings include victim statements. But even if there is no forgiveness from the family, a judge can decide to grant parole and free the murderer. It feels wrong, wrong, wrong. The judge could be fooled by false contrition. He isn't affected by the decision. He is only indirectly offended as a member of society.

But God is the ultimate Judge. He isn't fooled, he forgives out of love, and most importantly, he is the most directly and completely offended by the sin. The problem isn't that I can't forgive myself or that I feel guilty because of someone else's unforgiveness. It's that I don't really see how powerful God's forgiveness really is. It trumps any human unforgiveness, even my own. Because He is the Ultimate Victim.

Further, God does not just forgive us. He, in Christ, takes our sin. This means He is the one paying the penalty. The analogy with human justice starts to break down, here. I am eternally forgiven, I am eternally guiltless, I do not need to eternally do anything more than what Christ did. But temporally I need to ask forgiveness, pay a penalty, reconcile when I can, forgive myself. But even if none of that happens in this life, Christ has already taken my sins and penalty.

I'm not there yet, but I think this growing awareness of God's forgiveness will resolve problems I have in forgiving myself.

As an aside, this gives me more insight into Calvinism. If Christ's atonement applies to all my sins, past and future, then sin is still forbidden because of the temporal affect, but it has no bearing on my eternal salvation. As a card-carrying Wesleyan, I have to distinguish (s)ins from (S)in, but that's another post.