Getting Free from Oppressive Condemnation

man covering his face with both hands

Becoming totally liberated from your guilt, shame, and debilitating self-denunciation

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The awful things that condemnation is doing to you

Nothing negatively affects your personal human behavior more than having voluntarily or most often, involuntarily submitted to the tyrannical self-degrading feeling of being condemned. It deprives your heart from automatically gushing with joy and being filled with that divine zest for living. All the good elements that make it worth being alive are under a deadly life-
threating siege. When you are feeling condemned, you are experiencing a relentless and internally violent assault on:

  • Your Self-Identity:
    (Your Self-Image coupled with your Self-Esteem and Self-Worth begins dying a slow inhumane torturous death).
  • Your motivational aspirations
    (ability to dream future dreams and have those enticing visions for what you could be and for what you were designed by God to do, all vaporize into a dark future of nothingness).
  • Your loss of faith and exciting anticipation in tomorrow
    The knowledge that God had plans for using you in significant and meaningful ways fades. Your future disappears into a morbid oblivion. You have this dreadful feeling that you are not going anywhere.
  • Your willingness to launch into new initiatives and adventures
    You no longer accept a calculated risk and lead forward into God-called projects. All that evaporates into procrastination and do-nothingness. You have become paralyzed by fear.
  • And perhaps, the most harmful of all, it will rob you of your ability to accept God’s personal affection for you
    His love allows you to be involved in a forever satisfying and fulfilling relationship with him. You will be unable to trust and accept the healing and invigorating presence of His unconditional love in and for you every minute of every hour of every day. You will not be able to believe in His individual love for you and His enjoyment of the privilege of talking and working with you. The horrific bondage of condemnation can and will prevent you from that intimate friendship with Him and along with it, sabotage all the wonderful benefits mentioned above. Every day you will be burdened with the belief that you are not good enough to be singled out and adored by God, the Lord of all the universe. You will have, regretfully, forfeited the very purpose of your existence. There can be no greater loss for you in this life.

But before we discuss how you can be liberated from this curse of all curses, the scourge of condemnation, please pause to do a little homework. You will understand its significance later in this whitepaper.

In Acts 1, we are told of that glorious event of Jesus, having now completed His earthly mission, ascends back to heaven to go home to be with his Father God. Verse nine says:

“And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Please allow your mind to imagine this wonderful home-coming event As Jesus rejoins His Heavenly Father and ponder and answer these two queries:

 

When Father God realized His Son had left planet earth and was now heading home, what were the top three feelings that you imagine that Father God was feeling?
1.
2.
3.
Once Jesus came through Heaven’s gate and God the Father and God the Son had lovingly embraced, what were the top three things that you imagined that Father God probably said to His Son during those first few minutes after His arrival home:
1.
2.
3.

 

Now, let’s get to right to the subject of this whitepaper, condemnation and how to rid your life of it. First, there is a best-selling book of all time written all about it – the Bible. It exists for one purpose, to tell us humans how we can liberate our lives of condemnation. The entire account of Jesus can be explained around this one word of condemnation and its deletion from our lives. Jesus said it this way:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him.” John 3:17 (ESV)

The greatest exchange ever

Jesus was straight and to the point. The reason He came to earth and die on calvary and arose on the third day was to eradicate the scourge of condemnation that is a stain and blight on all humanity. Take note of the loving brilliance of this one sentence statement by Him. He could have said, and He had every right to say this, “Boy, you guys really screwed up this perfect earth
that I created and gave to you.” But He didn’t, which says a ton about His love and His mission.

We were in a conundrum from which we had no answers nor way of escape. This was the epitome of being in an ultimate world-of-hurt. And Jesus was on a single-focused rescue mission to extricate us from being guilty and becoming the deserving victims of condemnation. We were without excuse; we had all blown it. We all are deserving of elimination from God’s presence through eternal death which is separation from God. But then came Jesus, and the greatest love story on earth began to unfold.

None of us have ever been loved like this before. The story of Jesus and His redemption of all who claim Him as Lord, is without equal. He was willing to put on my human body and live in my disgusting and disastrous world. He experienced my teenage hormones, heard the demands of my rebellion, the discontent of my greed, the self-pity of my broken heart, the luring temptation of all my selfish wants, the self-centeredness of my misguided ambitions, the exaggerations of my complaints, and most of all, the shallowness of my love.

And as he felt and experienced it all and more and remained quietly sinless giving no excuses when He was on trial and being
mercilessly condemned. The reason He was quiet and gave no excuses when being harassed with a torrent of prosecution condemnations, is because I have no excuses and He was representing me, I repeatedly fell into sin, again and again and again. He could not defend himself, for if He would have done so, I would have been pronounced guilty and my condemnation would have been sealed forever. Jesus now wore and accepted my total condemnation as He carried that heavy cross up Calvary’s hill to be murdered in my place.

My horrible and disgusting confession, I chose Barabbas over Jesus. And it gets worse, much worse. It’s recorded in Matthew 27 where it says this:

“Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So, when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.”

That was me, I was one of those comingled in the mob who chose and yelled out Barabbas, “take Jesus and kill him and give me Barabbas.” I did it because when compared to Barabbas, I don’t look so bad. Jesus makes me look like a sleazy mess. But, compared to Barabbas, I look like a good church-going Christian. But when compared to Jesus, who loves everybody and has compassion such as the world has never seen before, I pale in comparison and become a miserable disgusting sinner.

I can’t even come close to living up to God’s perfection standard when compared to Jesus. To save my own skin, I yelled out “Barabbas!” I’ve been totally and completely humiliated, the scum of humanity, a disappointment to God and myself. It couldn’t have gotten any worse for me. I was now officially at the bottom of the barrel, totally and forever irretrievably lost.

The turning point of all history and the turning point of my life

And then, Jesus felt the abandonment of our world as it turned against him because we humans became jealous of His unmatchable innocence and convicted by His matchless Love and we felt condemned by His peerless righteousness. And because of this holy comparison to Jesus, we all became belittled and angry at being exposed as the moral weaklings we are.

We suppressed our guilt and expressed our hatred by nailing him to the cross and thereby killing the only sinless man who mirrored back our awfulness. For a moment, it caused us to think we would be successful when we killed that indicting ugly reflection that was condemning us when we were being compared to the beautiful and pristine innocence of Jesus, the God-Man from Heaven and Galilee. The man who befriended the outcasts, loved the losers, forgave the sinners, and strengthened the weak.

And Jesus began breathing in all my awfulness making him condemned for all my knuckleheaded stupidity and my self-centered sinfulness. And every pain on that cross and every cruel remark screamed by that ruthless mob of murdering killers was met for me for the condemnation of my wickedness. And for the swapping of places to be completed by his taking upon himself my condemnation and for him to give me his perfection, I had to join that mob of murderers in crying out “crucify Him.”

Until I see it for what it is, I cannot understand the magnitude of grace it takes for me to be pronounced innocent after killing Jesus.

Until I identify with the putrid ugliness of calvary, I cannot receive and embrace the fragrant freshness of innocence for becoming heaven bound to the exclusive home open only to the innocent and perfect. We call that Salvation, a miraculous gift of being born again and becoming a new creation in Christ. It is a gift totally and completely undeserved, gift-wrapped in mercy and grace and placed under the crosstree on Golgotha’s hill waiting for all who will, to come and claim it as their very own.

A gift that I was privileged to go back 2,000 years symbolically in Christian Baptism when I closed my eyes and stopped breathing (Because a dead Jesus could not see or breath), and I was lowered into my watery grave (As Jesus was buried in a tomb.) and raised up out of the water (As Jesus arose victorious over death on the third day) to live in a newness of life
destined to Heaven! I’ve been saved and I will celebrate it for all eternity!

Paul Takes the news of the Obliteration of Condemnation Global

It started in Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified by an angry mob. And now, anyone and everyone who are humble and honest enough to admit that they were both a contributing factor and benefiter of His murder can cash in and obtain the exoneration of their condemnation. People, who were experiencing the resulting forgiveness, their excitement and joy of the total eradication of their condemnation, couldn’t be keep quiet. The sheer exuberance of their newly found freedom from condemnation began echoing throughout the land.

But there was one problem, the crucified Jesus, was a Jew, so the good news that one could obtain the destruction of one’s condemnation was deemed only as a potential benefit for those who were Jews. That’s when God tapped on Paul’s shoulder (then called Saul) and delegated him to deliver this unbelievable life-changing news to the whole world. His adventures for
doing so recorded in the Bible are thrilling to read. One of the Biblical epistles he wrote reads:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1 (ESV)

That’s it, the good news is out! The whole world now became eligible for receiving the removal of condemnation from their records. And once they accepted what Jesus did on calvary as His having done it personally for them, they immediately are presented a passport, bought, and paid for by Jesus, declaring their eligibility for passing through the gates of heaven and on into eternal life for ever and ever! Their condemnation has been irreversibly revoked and replaced by the perfect, sinless life record of Jesus!

Carefully notice that text in Romans where is says the removal of my condemnation is only “for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Take note of those last three words, “in Christ Jesus.” The implication is startlingly clear, when my records are looked at, all that can be seen are these words, “Paid in full by Jesus Christ on Calvary.”

Less I ever overlook it, there was a huge price tag for the consequences of my accumulated sins. And for the payment for their removal and for me to become condemnation free, it took the payment of the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the Alpha and Omega to deliver a just payment of death that enabled me to be in the exclusive presence of my Heavenly Father surrounded by perfect sinless people who also have no condemnation because Jesus Christ paid their debt as well.

Can we even begin to imagine what it will be like in Heaven when all of that accumulated gratitude and adoration of all those of us who have been redeemed, is all collectively focused-on Jesus? Oh my, oh my. I get the chills just thinking about it! That is going to be one gigantic celebration unequalled in all human history about which words cannot capture and to which we humans cannot do justice in our descriptions.

What was Satan doing when all of this was going on?

The short answer is that he is the one who caused all of this to happen, he was the instigator, the mastermind, and the architect whose planned and beguiled damage that he had successfully succeeded on inflecting on the backs of the human race, caused Jesus to come to earth to lovingly save the people He created.

Before we begin describing Satan’s role, let’s clear up this one rather over-rated thing about each of us. You and I are simply not that important of an impediment to Satan and His minions in their diabolical destructive plans to wreak painful havoc in people’s lives. In truth, we are barely a “bump in the road” in Satan’s forceful plan to ruin planet earth and all of us who are
within it.

Satan couldn’t give a rat’s hind-end about any one of us individuals. In his obsessive hatred, he is totally incapable about caring about any of us lowly peons. We matter to Satan only for one reason, we matter to God. Because each of us are important to God, then each of us becomes important to Satan.

We, as Christians, must be destroyed in Satan’s devilish scheme only because we have become significant players in God’s love scheme. When God adores us, Satan scorns us with equal vengeance. The best way Satan can hurt God is by hurting one of us. Satan can torment God by tormenting us. The more God loves us, the more Satan hates us. The more we are being used by God, the more we will be abused by Satan. Satan uses us to get to God. It’s not us, that Satan is after; it is God, who He is after.

Therefore, we must know that we can become a knife stabbed into God’s heart because that is where we live – in God’s heart. By letting Satan’s stick it to us, we are letting Satan stick it to the heart of God. Therefore

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, be firm in your faith.” 1 Peter 5:8 (ESV)

That all being said, Jesus had to do what He did because of the damage Satan had done to us in getting us to sin and each of us becoming condemned because of it. Now that Jesus has paid our condemnation’s full price on hill calvary and it is currently available to each of us, there is only one thing left for Satan to do. The “father of lies” has the power of deception to wield against us. And even though the work of Justification, the work of Sanctification, and the work of Redemption of Christ have all been lovingly completed. And more than that, the work of Christ has all been completed to the total satisfaction and appeasement of the pure holiness of God in what the Bible calls our “propitiation.” But Satan can still deceive us about its very existence. Of all the things the Devil can do, perhaps this is by far, his most devilish!

Satan’s ultimate condemnation trap into which he tricks many of us into falling It was a heart-wrenching sad and an unnecessary tragedy when an elderly woman died of malnutrition and it was discovered she owned an uncashed lucrative winning lottery ticket. Or the farmer who lived a life of abject poverty only to find out too late that his dry dusty farm was perfectly situated on top of an ample oil field. As terrible as these preventable tragedies were, it pales in comparison to the Satan’s orchestrated tragedy about which I’m about to tell you. It is more shockingly unjust than that innocent man imprisoned for over 40 years, only to find out that he was cleared of all wrongdoing from a DNA sample after his death.

The sheer magnitude of the freedoms that you may at this very moment be needlessly missing are gut-wrenching. I wish I could scream through this text to grab your attention, so I could be absolutely sure that you are not missing out on the biggest blessings in your lifetime due to the cleverness of Satan’s deception.

Because I was one of them, my heart breaks for the legions of people, many that you personally know, that are imprisoned by self-doubt, or the people you know who are currently living suboptimal lives of boring mediocrity because of Satan’s dirty condemnation tricks.

Or how about the thousands of people who have given up and committed suicide or all the people who are living in the daily anguish of hating themselves or are self-imprisoning themselves in solitary lives of isolation because they are plagued with a false sense of unworthiness.

In 1 John 1:4 He tells us why John wrote this book. It says, “We are writing these things so that your joy may be complete.” I love that clear and noble objective. He then proceeds to uncover the things that are joy killers. And that entire first chapter is about how to keep “condemnation” out of our lives. For instance, in verse eight, he shares that when we sin, we can immediately confess it and remove condemnation. It is abundantly clear that forgiveness is the key for keeping us out of the dark joy-killing pit of condemnation. Although it is difficult for me to do, let’s jump on over to Chapter three.

Allow me to take a second to set this truth up. After all the things we have discussed about the harm of condemnation on and in our lives, and the great extent to which Jesus went to provide us a pathway by which we could eliminate it from our lives. Satan had one final card yet to play.

If he could not stop the descent of Jesus to earth to rescue us and if He failed at tempting Him in the wilderness, and if He couldn’t get Jesus to throw all of us under the bus when He was on trial for His very life, and if he were unable to keep Jesus locked in His grave, he was now down to this one last card that he could play. Jesus has solved our problem of condemnation, period.

So, all that is left for Satan to do is to prevent us from either not knowing about it or not applying it to our personal lives. Let’s see how exactly He does this. You will probably be very surprised and unnerved at Satan’s craftiness. Let’s put this scripture on the table and we will unpack it together.

“By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him.” 1 John 3:19-21 (ESV)

As you read this, does Satan’s strategy jump out at you. Can you believe this? He actually partners with our own heart to get us to feel condemned. We are warned about this in numerous places in the Bible. In Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things.” Or Proverbs, 4:23 where we are commanded to, “above all else, guard our own heart for everything we do flows from it.” Satan partners with our own sinful deceitful and unguarded heart to get it to constantly murmur false condemnations to us that chain and bind us squelching us from initiating God’s calling to undertake noble actions. Have you heard your own heart pronounce any condemnations like these in the chart below?

Self-Denunciation Lies Chart

Examples of how Satan’s partnership with your own heart can constantly whisper self-defeating condemnation lies to you to suppress your incentive for going forward and being used by God.

 

Competency Self-Denunciation Lies Failure Self-Denunciation Lies
I can’t do that I’m a total loser
I’m too ugly I will never be as good-looking as they are
I will never amount to anything I’m just a nobody
I can never do what they do People don’t / won’t like me
I’m unimportant The world doesn’t know that I even exist
God loves other people more than me God can’t be bothered with an idiot like me
Why even try? Don’t even waste your time on me
I’m too young I’m too old

 

The problem is that we tend to listen to our hearts instead of talk to our hearts as this scripture commands. And when that happens, the door is opened wide for Satan to partner with our own hearts to get us condemned through Self-Denunciations. He gets our very own heart to do his bidding. Satan is amazingly clever. He gets us to condemn ourselves putting on our own chains of limitations!

So, what has your heart been telling you lately? Or, more importantly, what have you been telling your heart lately. Read that passage from 1 John again. We are to reassure our hearts” whenever our heart condemns us. It then promises us that once we begin doing that, we will have our confidence restored before God. That’s a “wow” promise worthy of grabbing! Or said another way, “do you believe what your lying heart says about you, or do you believe what God says about you in verses like Jeremiah 29:11?

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

But the reason very few people have these self-chats with their own hearts is that they do not know what to say to their deceiving hearts. We have planned ahead for you, please go back to the very beginning where you filled out your answers to those two questions as to what God was feeling when he heard Jesus was coming home. And remember what we learned in that Romans passage that we have no condemnation in Jesus. When we go to God, he sees the perfection of Jesus and feels the same love of us that He feels for Jesus. You need to tell your heart that and you will need to do it often and give it those specific emotions to feel.

And question number two was, “what did God say to Jesus when He came back home to heaven?” Whatever you wrote down as an answer to that question, allow it to jumpstart your conversation with your heart. Remind your heart as to exactly how God feels about you which is exactly how He feels about Jesus. And as the 1 John passage promises, your confidence with God will be restored, and you can ask him whatever you want, and you can be confident you can receive it.

My prayer right now for you after reading this, is that you will aggressively accept your God- given liberty to live a life that is:

Forgiveness-Rich
+
Condemnation-Free
=
____________________
Gratitude Galore

(These are God’s best gifts to you. Bought and paid for by Jesus Christ)

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