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 in my secular job that I'm too hard on myself. Recently, my wife has mentioned several times that the standards of excellence I try to achieve at church are too high.

I don't deliberately view life or 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. For him, our consciences are 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 to us, whether it's the most horrible suffering or the greatest pleasure.

Now that really matters, to nail down how does that happen. And the answer of the New Testament, the glorious gospel, is that we are justified before God in that way by faith alone apart from any works of the law of any kind. In other words, when the Holy Spirit awakens our dead hearts to see Christ crucified, risen, Christ true and beautiful and valuable and sufficient to cancel all our sins and provide all our righteousness, when we see him like that by grace, our supreme treasure, our great love, we receive him like a child.

When we receive him like that, in that instant, we are made right with God on the basis of the blood and the righteousness of Jesus who died to bear our sins and provide our righteousness. Jesus is the final decisive basis of our acceptance of God, his being 100% for us.

So what would it look like to be too hard on yourself in regard to justification? It would mean demanding from yourself that you be the one who earns your justification, that you be the one who deserves your justification, that you be the one who must suffer sufficiently in order to bear some of the punishment of your sins, that you be the one who deflects God's wrath away from you, that you be the one who is brilliant enough in the courtroom of heaven to get an acquittal, that you be the one who figures out a way to wipe your conscience clean before God.

All of that would mean you don't grasp the gospel, you don't receive God and what he's done for you. You're being too hard on yourself by demanding that you do what only God can do and has done for his people. That would be a great sin to load yourself down with that hard burden.

Now, what about being too hard on yourself with regard to sanctification? That is, not how do I live to get right with God, but how am I supposed to live because I already am right with God through justification by faith alone? How am I to bring my life into conformity to what I really am in Christ?

That's the sanctification question. And Jesus spoke of the Christian life as a life of self-denial. Is that hard on yourself? Bearing a cross, is that hard on yourself? Hating one's own life, Luke 14, 26, that's pretty hard on yourself. Paul said that in order to enjoy life with God, we must put to death the deeds of the body, Romans 8, 13.

He said that he gives his body a black eye, keeping it under control, lest after preaching to others, he should be a castaway, 1 Corinthians 9, 27. He said we commend ourselves by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, 2 Corinthians 6, 4-5.

Now based on those passages from Jesus and Paul, I conclude there's a sense in which we ought to be hard on ourselves. And the question then rightly posed by Eliot and his wife and his colleagues is, "Is there a too hard? Is there a too hard on yourself?" The answer is yes, but I don't think a yes answer necessarily means that the person who is too hard on himself has set his standards too high.

It's not my diagnosis of what too hard means. For example, a car salesman might set early standards for himself of selling a car a week. Then he might up the standard to a car a day. Then he might up the standard to two cars a day. Now I would venture to say that neither his employer nor his wife would have any problem at all with these standards becoming increasingly unrealistic.

What they would have a problem with is whether his failure to meet the standard produces hurtful, sinful effects toward himself and others, and whether his success in meeting the standards produces hurtful and arrogant demeanor in him. Very high standards are not the essence of the problem. How a person responds to success and failure in meeting his standards is the problem, and the essence is much deeper.

So what would be the evidence that a person is being sinfully too hard on himself? And I'll just mention three things. First, you're being too hard on yourself if your failures to meet your standards result in a depressed loss of joy in the Lord. If you become brooding and gloomy and sullen and, in general, lack the hope-filled joy that Christ gives, you're not handling your failures in a faith-filled, Christ-exalting way.

You are being too hard on yourself in the sense that the hardness on yourself is producing sin, not holiness. Second, it's evidence of a person's being too hard on himself if his failures result in hurtful anger, hurtful toward himself, inclining him towards habits that are self-destructive or hurtful toward others, because very often we take out on others our frustrations with our own sense of failure.

In either case, he's being too hard on himself in the sense that his hardness toward himself is producing unkind or damaging behavior to other people. Third, it's evidence that he's being too hard on himself if his failures produce paralyzing fear or anxiety about approaching the tasks of his life.

If he feels like he's fallen short so often that he loses the capacity to attempt anything of significance, it's evidence that he's being too hard on himself in the sense that he's not trusting Christ for the ability to keep him going. So what would I counsel then? I would say, look to Philippians 1, 12, and 13.

Paul deals with his own failures and imperfections like this. Not that I am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on to the goal.

So I think what Paul means is this. In my running the Christian race, the Christian life, I do not burden myself. That would be the too hard. I do not burden myself with the paralyzing effects of the memories of past failures, nor do I burden myself with the killer weight of pride at my past successes.

Anything that would hinder my humble, loving, godly, holy race for the good of others and the glory of God, I forget it. I lay it aside. I don't let it produce sinful effects in my life. So that's what I would call Eliot 2. You don't need low standards. That's not the problem.

You need humble, gracious, loving, kind responses to your successes and your failures in meeting those standards. So remember, Christ has made you his own. That changes everything about how you run your race. Wonderful. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the great question, Eliot. You can send us your question via email.

You can do that at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn, and you'll see a button there that says "Submit a Question." Click it, and it'll pop open a new email with our address, and you can send us your question. We now break for the weekend and return on Monday. This next question up in the queue is one of the biggest that we can ever ask.

Why did God create us? Why did God create us? Not many questions get bigger than that one. It's up next time when we return. I'm Tony Reinke. We will see you back here on Monday. Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. 1. What is the most important thing you have learned from the past?

2. What is the most important thing you have learned from the past? 3. What is the most important thing you have learned from the past? 4. What is the most important thing you have learned from the past?