I Can’t Forgive Myself
Days of Awe 5781
Rabbi Russ Resnik
A young man I’ll call Jerry was sitting across from me in my counseling office, struggling to tell his story. He had immigrated to the USA with his family about 15 years earlier as a young teenager. His family stuck together, worked hard, and expected a lot from the kids. Jerry earned good grades throughout high school, got into a good university, and married a young woman from his community before he even graduated. They soon had two children; Jerry was working at a good job; they went to church together . . . and then Jerry left it all. He got into heavy drinking and was unfaithful to his wife and finally lost her to divorce.
Now, he was sober, getting his life back together, and tormenting himself with regret. “I asked my ex-wife to forgive me, and she did. My family forgave me too, and I know God forgives me, but he has to—he’s God. But I can’t forgive myself.”
When I teach or counsel about forgiveness, this is a question I hear more than any other: How do I forgive myself? I’ve searched the Scriptures for verses on forgiving yourself and can’t find any. You can repent (with God’s help) and you can receive God’s forgiveness, but you can’t forgive yourself.
And realizing this fact can be liberating, an essential step in the right direction.
I’m hesitant to speak of steps, though, because it might make this sound like a self-help exercise, and the truth is we can’t help ourselves. If we don’t realize that during the Days of Awe, we’re missing the whole point. But some of you might still feel like Jerry, even on Yom Kippur. And even if you don’t, you can probably think of a friend or loved one who does, who struggles with self-unforgiveness, not just during these days of repentance, but throughout the year.
So the first thing is this: Give up. You cannot forgive yourself. You can stop blaming, second-guessing, tormenting yourself with regret—at least for a while—but the deep, cleansing, life-giving forgiveness—that can come only from God.
That leads to our second component: Receive God’s forgiveness. We receive it as a gift, undeserved and paid in full. One contemporary rabbi captures the paradox well:
Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. That’s why we need heaven. That’s why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God . . . because we cannot forgive ourselves. (Alan Lew, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared)
Accordingly the liturgy of Yom Kippur highlights our need to receive what we can’t give ourselves. As we recite the litany of our personal and communal sins, we interrupt the list again and again to call out, “For all these sins, God of forgiveness, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.”
God is always a God of forgiveness, always ready to forgive. Jerry told me that God forgives, “but he has to—he’s God.” Of course, that’s not quite right. God doesn’t really have to do anything, and he doesn’t forgive just because he is God, but because of the kind of God he is. Furthermore, we believe that through Messiah Yeshua he has granted atonement as the basis for his forgiveness once and for all time. This reality points to a third component of receiving forgiveness.
God’s forgiveness is once-for-all, but it’s hard for us to receive it once-for-all. We need to renew our hold on it continually, perhaps even every day. We do this by thanking God daily for his compassion, just as we do every year on Yom Kippur. Pray from the traditional Siddur or the Psalms and you can make thanking God for his forgiveness a daily habit.
In addition to giving thanks we might also need to seek God’s forgiveness repeatedly because we transgress against him repeatedly. Our Master taught us to pray like this:
Give us the food we need today.
Forgive us what we have done wrong,
as we too have forgiven those who have wronged us. (Matt 6:11–12)
Just as we need food every day, so we’re likely to need forgiveness every day, or at least most days.
We receive God’s forgiveness once-for-all, then, and we renew our hold on his forgiveness daily through giving thanks, and through clearing out any sins that might have sprung up since.
This brings us to a final point. We express our gratitude for forgiveness not only in words but also through action. In his model prayer, Messiah Yeshua points us to one way of responding to God’s forgiveness, which is to forgive those who have wronged us. He makes a similar point later on: “And when you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive your offenses” (Mark 11:25).
We need to hear these words in balance with the rest of Messiah’s teaching, as well as the rest of Scripture. The Father’s forgiveness isn’t conditional on our acts of forgiving others. It’s a free gift, but we can’t lay hold, or keep hold, of that gift as long as we’re hanging on to the charges we have against others. I can’t forgive myself, but I can forgive others, and in doing so I receive God’s forgiveness and begin to live in a climate of forgiveness and compassion. “Be kind to each other, tenderhearted; and forgive each other, just as in the Messiah God has also forgiven you” (Eph 4:32).
So during this season of repentance and forgiveness, let’s remember four essentials:
Give up: you can’t forgive yourself, so
Receive forgiveness as a gift from God, and
Renew your hold on that gift each day, and
Forgive others as an expression of thanks.
The Torah sums up its instructions for Yom Kippur like this: “For on this day, atonement will be made for you to purify you; you will be clean before Adonai from all your sins” (Lev 16:30). “Atonement will be made for you” is Yikhaper aleikhem in Hebrew, literally, “He will make atonement for you,” but it’s not clear who the “he” is here. It might be the High Priest, as in some translations, but the sages don’t all agree. I like Rabbi Akiva’s reading:
Happy are you, O Israel. Before whom are you made clean, and who makes you clean? It is your Father who is in heaven, as it says (Ezek 36:25), “And I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.” (m.Yoma 8:9)
Amen. Thank you, Father, that you have designed things so that we can’t forgive ourselves, but must come to you to receive forgiveness. And thank you that you provide the cleansing water of forgiveness in full measure, once for all and renewed each day, through the atoning sacrifice of Messiah Yeshua.
All Scripture references are from Complete Jewish Bible (CJB).
Jerry’s story is based on actual counseling sessions with details changed to protect privacy.