Overcoming Self-condemnation
It’s so sad to see men and women standing for marriage restoration under the burden of self-condemnation, because it kills, steals and destroys the victory, peace and joy Jesus came to give us. And Romans 8:1-2 specifically says Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. However we can’t deny the apparent conflict between the requirement for obedience to receive all of the blessings promised in God’s Word and the idea that we shouldn’t feel like failures when we’re unable to attain the high mark of perfection. So it’s important to understand the Bible verses indicating that God knows that we’re NOT perfect, and that it’s an ongoing struggle to overcome our human weakness as we strive to walk in faith and obedience while we stand for the restoration of our marriages.
Since Paul wrote most of the New Testament and is certainly considered a great man of God, reading 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 is a good place to begin understanding that God can actually be glorified in our weakness, because it says Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And it’s in times of our greatest weakness and trials that we tend to recognize that we can’t do what we have to do without God, so we call on Him and rely on HIS power to get us through. And then His name is glorified when we make it through in HIS strength and not ours. In the same way we wouldn’t need a Savior if we weren’t sinners and there wasn’t a place called hell; we wouldn’t need God’s grace and power if we were always strong and perfect. So we need to stop putting ourselves under condemnation because of our human shortcomings and failures instead of recognizing them as opportunities for Jesus to be glorified as we rely on HIS grace, strength, and power to overcome them. And Hebrews 7:28 even says For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever. Obviously, God does not believe we are perfect or that we can even attain it in and of ourselves. That’s why we have to turn to our Lord and Savior when we are weak and when we struggle with our walk as Christians, because Hebrews 10:13-14 says Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. And 2 Samuel 22:33 very clearly says It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect. Unfortunately, when we take on attitudes of self-condemnation, we are taking the focus off of Jesus, and putting it on ourselves, and ignoring Philippians 3:12, which says Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
So that brings us to the inevitable question of why Christ Jesus “took hold” of us, and when we understand that, we will go a long way toward overcoming self-condemnation. The root of self-condemnation is “self”, because we have taken our focus off of the Lord and His glory, power and purpose, and put it squarely on ourselves. Yet Ephesians 1:6-14 makes it VERY clear that we are CHOSEN by God for the praise and glory of Jesus Christ; that EVERYTHING that happens is preordained by God, when the time is right, for His praise and glory. God wants us to have an intimate love relationship with His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and He wants us to walk in the power of His Holy Spirit so others are led into the same relationship with Jesus. But when we magnify our human frailties instead of the awesome glory and power of Jesus, we can’t be the vessels we’re called to be for the purpose of drawing others into His kingdom. So the bottom line is exactly what Rick Warren says; it’s NOT about us! But we tend to make it all about us, and the reason we do that is because we don’t understand obedience; we don’t understand what it really means to trust and obey. We tend to see obedience as a means to an end; in our case it’s usually the means by which we think we can achieve the restoration of our marriages. So when we have a hard time taking God at His Word and believing that He IS restoring our marriages, or when we fail to walk out the principles of marriage restoration according to what the Bible teaches, we get discouraged and down on ourselves, because we think that means that our marriages aren’t going to be restored; that we blew it, so now God won’t restore our marriages! What a snare of the devil that kind of thinking is! It just sets us up to fail, because it inadvertently rests the ability to get what we want in us and everything we do in that endeavor is totally fruitless and useless, because our motivation to trust and obey is not for the praise and glory of Jesus Christ and the furtherance of His kingdom, but for our own desire for marriage restoration. And James 4:3 makes no bones about that, because it says When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. And 1 Corinthians 4:5 even says Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.
So it’s obvious that not only is faith and obedience important as we stand for the restoration of our marriages, but our motives are even MORE important! And the ONLY motive for obedience that pleases God and releases the supernatural power we need in our situations is spelled out very clearly in the following verses:
John 14:23
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love
him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
John 14:21
Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”
1 John 2:5
But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him:
Unfortunately it’s easy to slip into thinking of obedience as a means to the restoration of our marriages, but that’s not true. Yes, all of the verses we usually refer to about trusting God with all our hearts, acknowledging Him in all our ways and committing to doing things HIS way are important, but we can’t take those out of the context of obedience being motivated by our love for Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That’s why it is so important to keep things in the right order, and Jesus said the FIRST thing is to love God with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength; which means not putting ANY other gods or idols before Him, including our marriages, spouses or even the restoration of our marriages. And when we love Him that way, we will obey Him because we love him and want to please Him, and when our obedience is motivated by genuine trust and love, we will be blessed with every promise and provision found in God’s Word. And when we love Jesus, we will also love the Word, because John 1:1-4 tells us In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. And it’s probably not insignificant to note that most of the time we put ourselves under condemnation, it’s due to a lack of faith and knowledge of what the Bible teaches, which is why Romans 10:17 is so important, because it says Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. And another very important reason to study our Bibles seriously as we stand for the restoration of our marriages is because we are in the spiritual battle of our lives, and 2Corinthians 10:4-5 tells us The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So the only way to overcome attitudes of self-condemnation is to spend quality time studying the Bible, because that’s the only way to truly obey God and have His love made complete in us and to know His Word in order to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. And one thing we can all be sure of; the more intimate our walk is with the Lord, the less condemnation we’ll feel and the more blessed and encouraged we’ll be!