Am I Too Hard on Myself?

00:00:00.000 | Today's question is from a listener named Elliot.

00:00:06.320 | "Pastor John, hello.

00:00:07.720 | Would you say there's such a thing as a Christian being too harsh with themselves?

00:00:12.720 | I'm often told by others in my secular job that I'm too hard on myself.

00:00:16.480 | Recently, my wife has mentioned several times that the standards of excellence I try to

00:00:20.820 | achieve at church are too high.

00:00:23.600 | I don't deliberately view life or myself like this, but wouldn't low standards lead to acceptance

00:00:29.180 | of sin in our lives?

00:00:31.180 | I guess more generally, my question is this.

00:00:34.560 | Is it possible for a Christian to be too hard on himself?"

00:00:40.560 | Since I don't know the details of what being hard on himself looks like, I'm going to address

00:00:49.840 | this issue in principle like this.

00:00:53.920 | What might it mean to be too hard on oneself in regard to justification, and what might

00:01:01.240 | it mean to be too hard on oneself in regard to sanctification, and what might be some

00:01:09.080 | guidelines to help us be appropriately hard on ourselves, but not too hard on ourselves,

00:01:17.160 | not sinfully hard on ourselves?

00:01:19.900 | So it is really crucial to nail down in the Christian mind and heart, every believer,

00:01:27.560 | how we got right or get right with God as sinners so that our sins are all forgiven,

00:01:36.340 | our guilt is totally removed, God's wrath is taken away, there is no condemnation.

00:01:44.940 | For him, our consciences are clean, we enjoy peace, peace, peace with God, and we're in

00:01:54.340 | Christ and God is 100% for us and not against us in anything that happens to us, whether

00:02:02.460 | it's the most horrible suffering or the greatest pleasure.

00:02:06.440 | Now that really matters, to nail down how does that happen.

00:02:11.100 | And the answer of the New Testament, the glorious gospel, is that we are justified before God

00:02:18.980 | in that way by faith alone apart from any works of the law of any kind.

00:02:26.460 | In other words, when the Holy Spirit awakens our dead hearts to see Christ crucified, risen,

00:02:35.460 | Christ true and beautiful and valuable and sufficient to cancel all our sins and provide

00:02:40.820 | all our righteousness, when we see him like that by grace, our supreme treasure, our great

00:02:50.880 | love, we receive him like a child.

00:02:55.100 | When we receive him like that, in that instant, we are made right with God on the basis of

00:03:01.780 | the blood and the righteousness of Jesus who died to bear our sins and provide our righteousness.

00:03:08.740 | Jesus is the final decisive basis of our acceptance of God, his being 100% for us.

00:03:17.460 | So what would it look like to be too hard on yourself in regard to justification?

00:03:24.100 | It would mean demanding from yourself that you be the one who earns your justification,

00:03:30.980 | that you be the one who deserves your justification, that you be the one who must suffer sufficiently

00:03:37.380 | in order to bear some of the punishment of your sins, that you be the one who deflects

00:03:42.340 | God's wrath away from you, that you be the one who is brilliant enough in the courtroom

00:03:47.420 | of heaven to get an acquittal, that you be the one who figures out a way to wipe your

00:03:51.900 | conscience clean before God.

00:03:54.220 | All of that would mean you don't grasp the gospel, you don't receive God and what he's

00:04:01.460 | done for you.

00:04:03.620 | You're being too hard on yourself by demanding that you do what only God can do and has done

00:04:12.500 | for his people.

00:04:14.500 | That would be a great sin to load yourself down with that hard burden.

00:04:21.340 | Now, what about being too hard on yourself with regard to sanctification?

00:04:27.420 | That is, not how do I live to get right with God, but how am I supposed to live because

00:04:36.420 | I already am right with God through justification by faith alone?

00:04:43.100 | How am I to bring my life into conformity to what I really am in Christ?

00:04:49.460 | That's the sanctification question.

00:04:52.260 | And Jesus spoke of the Christian life as a life of self-denial.

00:04:58.500 | Is that hard on yourself?

00:05:00.180 | Bearing a cross, is that hard on yourself?

00:05:03.060 | Hating one's own life, Luke 14, 26, that's pretty hard on yourself.

00:05:08.780 | Paul said that in order to enjoy life with God, we must put to death the deeds of the

00:05:14.300 | body, Romans 8, 13.

00:05:16.420 | He said that he gives his body a black eye, keeping it under control, lest after preaching

00:05:21.460 | to others, he should be a castaway, 1 Corinthians 9, 27.

00:05:25.820 | He said we commend ourselves by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings,

00:05:32.540 | imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, 2 Corinthians 6, 4-5.

00:05:38.980 | Now based on those passages from Jesus and Paul, I conclude there's a sense in which

00:05:45.380 | we ought to be hard on ourselves.

00:05:48.820 | And the question then rightly posed by Eliot and his wife and his colleagues is, "Is

00:05:57.220 | there a too hard?

00:05:58.700 | Is there a too hard on yourself?"

00:06:01.780 | The answer is yes, but I don't think a yes answer necessarily means that the person who

00:06:10.580 | is too hard on himself has set his standards too high.

00:06:14.860 | It's not my diagnosis of what too hard means.

00:06:20.060 | For example, a car salesman might set early standards for himself of selling a car a week.

00:06:27.540 | Then he might up the standard to a car a day.

00:06:30.980 | Then he might up the standard to two cars a day.

00:06:34.620 | Now I would venture to say that neither his employer nor his wife would have any problem

00:06:43.060 | at all with these standards becoming increasingly unrealistic.

00:06:49.180 | What they would have a problem with is whether his failure to meet the standard produces

00:06:56.940 | hurtful, sinful effects toward himself and others, and whether his success in meeting

00:07:06.220 | the standards produces hurtful and arrogant demeanor in him.

00:07:13.940 | Very high standards are not the essence of the problem.

00:07:19.540 | How a person responds to success and failure in meeting his standards is the problem, and

00:07:27.460 | the essence is much deeper.

00:07:30.140 | So what would be the evidence that a person is being sinfully too hard on himself?

00:07:39.180 | And I'll just mention three things.

00:07:40.740 | First, you're being too hard on yourself if your failures to meet your standards result

00:07:47.020 | in a depressed loss of joy in the Lord.

00:07:51.780 | If you become brooding and gloomy and sullen and, in general, lack the hope-filled joy

00:08:01.340 | that Christ gives, you're not handling your failures in a faith-filled, Christ-exalting

00:08:07.740 | way.

00:08:08.740 | You are being too hard on yourself in the sense that the hardness on yourself is producing

00:08:15.420 | sin, not holiness.

00:08:17.220 | Second, it's evidence of a person's being too hard on himself if his failures result

00:08:23.420 | in hurtful anger, hurtful toward himself, inclining him towards habits that are self-destructive

00:08:30.220 | or hurtful toward others, because very often we take out on others our frustrations with

00:08:37.180 | our own sense of failure.

00:08:39.740 | In either case, he's being too hard on himself in the sense that his hardness toward himself

00:08:46.540 | is producing unkind or damaging behavior to other people.

00:08:53.340 | Third, it's evidence that he's being too hard on himself if his failures produce paralyzing

00:08:59.860 | fear or anxiety about approaching the tasks of his life.

00:09:05.620 | If he feels like he's fallen short so often that he loses the capacity to attempt anything

00:09:12.540 | of significance, it's evidence that he's being too hard on himself in the sense that

00:09:18.700 | he's not trusting Christ for the ability to keep him going.

00:09:23.020 | So what would I counsel then?

00:09:25.700 | I would say, look to Philippians 1, 12, and 13.

00:09:29.940 | Paul deals with his own failures and imperfections like this.

00:09:34.940 | Not that I am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus

00:09:42.860 | has made me his own.

00:09:44.540 | One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

00:09:51.700 | I press on to the goal.

00:09:53.300 | So I think what Paul means is this.

00:09:55.580 | In my running the Christian race, the Christian life, I do not burden myself.

00:10:03.500 | That would be the too hard.

00:10:04.580 | I do not burden myself with the paralyzing effects of the memories of past failures,

00:10:12.180 | nor do I burden myself with the killer weight of pride at my past successes.

00:10:19.260 | Anything that would hinder my humble, loving, godly, holy race for the good of others and

00:10:27.260 | the glory of God, I forget it.

00:10:29.500 | I lay it aside.

00:10:31.380 | I don't let it produce sinful effects in my life.

00:10:35.340 | So that's what I would call Eliot 2.

00:10:37.620 | You don't need low standards.

00:10:40.060 | That's not the problem.

00:10:41.340 | You need humble, gracious, loving, kind responses to your successes and your failures in meeting

00:10:50.780 | those standards.

00:10:52.780 | So remember, Christ has made you his own.

00:10:58.220 | That changes everything about how you run your race.

00:11:02.660 | Wonderful.

00:11:03.660 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the great question, Eliot.

00:11:06.460 | You can send us your question via email.

00:11:08.580 | You can do that at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn, and you'll see a button there that says "Submit

00:11:15.940 | a Question."

00:11:16.940 | Click it, and it'll pop open a new email with our address, and you can send us your

00:11:20.620 | question.

00:11:21.620 | We now break for the weekend and return on Monday.

00:11:24.060 | This next question up in the queue is one of the biggest that we can ever ask.

00:11:28.520 | Why did God create us?

00:11:30.100 | Why did God create us?

00:11:33.380 | Not many questions get bigger than that one.

00:11:35.100 | It's up next time when we return.

00:11:36.820 | I'm Tony Reinke.

00:11:38.180 | We will see you back here on Monday.

00:11:40.580 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:11:42.740 | [end]

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00:11:46.740 | 2.

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00:11:48.740 | 3.

00:11:49.740 | What is the most important thing you have learned from the past?

00:11:50.740 | 4.

00:11:51.740 | What is the most important thing you have learned from the past?

Am I Too Hard on Myself?

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