No charge against God's chosen, not even the voices in my head

Last week, I spent an emotionally exhausting but spiritually insight-filled morning writing about repentance and forgiveness.  I like the form of the Litany, the repetitiveness which is intentional and which drives a thematic evolution.  I needed to spend time thinking about the feelings of guilt, self-defensiveness and self-justification which too frequently drive irrational, panicked and angry responses. I started with Psalm 51, knowing that I needed to meditate on what true repentance looked like.  That is where I settled on my refrain, “Against You, You only have I sinned.”  This phrase initially felt very intimidating and burdensome—my sins are all against the God of the Universe, every single wrong-doing is against God and only against Him.  But that truth was unavoidable and that is where I started.  

My prayer focused on recognizing my sins aright; on being honest with myself and knowing God’s will and how I had broken His commands and defied His perfection.  Many of the things that trigger guilt and anger in me are pseudo-sins—they are wrong-doings which are societal indiscretions or social faux pas, things which more drive awkwardness or embarrassment, rather than endanger my eternal soul.  These things cause me grief and anxiety because I am “sinning” against other people, “sinning” against a worldly standard and not against God’s holy standard. When I give something other than God that authority to describe sin; and when I therefore give someone else the power to withhold forgiveness for those perceived sins, I am removing that ultimate authority from God, which is the only location where it is appropriately placed.  Against God and God alone are all sins committed.  He is the one Who defines sin and Who grants or withholds all forgiveness.  This recognition was the first revelation for me.  Against God and God alone are all sins committed; there is no other “bill payer”, no one else to whom I owe a debt of sin.  

This revelation drove me to Romans 3 verse 26 which declares that God is both Just and the One Who Justifies.  I love this passage because it describes so clearly how Christ was the perfect solution for sin; in His sacrificial death—the death of God’s Son—the wrath of God is satisfied against sin, and this sacrificial death is sufficient to absolve all sin, the sin of the whole world.  God does not simply “excuse” sin—as one would allow a minor typo on what should be a perfectly written memo.  God does not simply “ignore” sin—as one would ignore a child stomping on one’s toe.  God is perfectly Just and His perfect Justice demands that sin be dealt with perfectly, not excused or ignored.  His plan of salvation balances those scales of Justice perfectly, in that the death of Christ is the perfect and complete ransom for sin.  The atonement of Christ’s death means that the debt of sin which I owe God has been perfectly and completely paid—against God and God alone have I sinned.  I am doubly wrong if I give anyone or anything else authority to declare something a sin, and if I attempt to reconcile myself for my sins.  

This brought me further into the book of Romans, Romans 8 verse 33 which tells me “Who will bring any charges against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies.”  When I allow horrible, negative voices in my own mind to accuse me; when I allow other people to impose guilt on me for things which are not sinful but may have only been silly or stupid—I am allowing those voices to bring false charges against me.  Any sins which I commit are against God and Him alone; He defines all sin and holds the balance sheet.  Those voices attempting to charge me with sin outside of God’s Law and His plan of redemption are false accusations, they carry no weight.  God is the One, the only One, who justifies.  

“What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?  Who will bring any charges against those whom God has chosen?  It is God Who justifies.  Who is he that condemns?  Christ Jesus Who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”  (Romans 8: 31-34)

This passage was miraculously liberating for me.  I have many voices in both my own mind and that I hear (or interpret) around me from other people.  Voices that say I am stupid, that I have done something awkward and silly and foolish and ridiculous.  Something damaging and unforgiveable. Voices that tell me I would be better off dead, that I’m just too horribly stupid and awkward to be allowed to live and function. I doubt that anyone can tell these are the voices in my head, that I am frequently surrounded by, enveloped, immersed and soaked-through with a cloud of negative thoughts and feelings that originate in my own mind, are magnified by my own mind and reverberate in the echo-chamber of my mind. Romans 8: 31-34 speaks not just against accusing voices of other people, but speaks against the accusations which I manufacture and repeat to myself.  Not even I have the power to accuse myself, I whom the God of the Universe has declared righteous and forgiven for Jesus’ sake.  

Against God, God alone have I sinned; He, He alone has all power and authority to forgive sins; all sins are atoned for by Christ Jesus.  There is no condemnation left for me because I am in Christ Jesus, not even condemnation in my own mind.  

This truth reverberates through my mind like the waves of the ocean, with power and strength and depth.  The vastness of God’s mercy in Christ, the scale of the debt and of His forgiveness, sweeps me up like a powerful undertow.  It overwhelms me.  It is a feeling like being awarded a multi-million dollar lottery seconds after having been informed of some crippling debt.  It is a liberty that is crushing in scope and scale.  The magnificent, gigantic generosity of God’s mercy is incomprehensible to me, it does not fit into my mind; it is like trying to see the entire sky all at once. 

I know that I cannot immediately banish the accusing voices in my mind.  I may never be able to free myself from self-doubt, self-imposed shame, self-recrimination.  The voice that tells me I am stupid and worthless is most often my own voice.  But the rebuttal against this voice comes from outside of me, it comes from God’s word in Roman’s 8 where He tells me that those voices are false because those voices condemn one of His elect, a child whom He has declared righteous.

Who shall separate me from God’s love in Christ Jesus?  Not trouble or hardship or persecution; not the negative voices in my head, not self-doubt or self-imposed guilt.  I have one who intercedes perfectly for me. When I hear those accusing voices, I can speak God’s word against them—get behind me, Satan.  The voice that tells me I am stupid and worthless; the voice that tells me it would be preferable to be dead, to in fact kill myself; the voice that tells me I can never make things right, never fix a mistake I’ve made or reconcile a relationship I’ve damaged.  The response to that voice is “I have victory because Christ loves me, because I am His redeemed child”; it is “There is no condemnation against me because of Christ Jesus”; it is “Nothing can separate me from God’s love”; it is “Nothing can make God stop loving me.”

No other human voice—not my own or that of another person—as power to convict me of sin.  God alone is the one to whom the debt of sin is owed, and in Christ Jesus the entire debt is paid.  

This was no antinomian revelation.  I still believe in the power of God’s law to convict me of sin and failure, and I know that there will be times when God’s truth will come to me through the wisdom of others.  When I sin against others, I sin against God.  I must repent, turn away from that sin, try to be reconciled to that other person and reject future sin.  But I cannot wallow in guilt and I cannot attempt to justify myself; I cannot justify myself before God nor to other people.  I am already justified by Christ and attempts at self-justification or justifying myself to others are worthless wastes of energy.  

Nothing can separate me from the love of God. Not death, not life, not angels nor demons, not the present nor the past nor the future; not the condemning voices of others nor the condemning voice manufactured by my own mind nor the condemning voices which reverberate in my memory from past wrongs and past interactions.  The debt of my sin—all of it, the sin inculcated into the very fabric of my humanity, to the sin committed by a fleeting unconscious thought, to the sin I revel in, to the sin committed by accident—has been forgiven in Christ.  It does not stand between me and God, not now in time nor in eternity.  

Amen, Amen, Amen.  Against You, You alone have I sinned.  Praise God.