Forgiving yourself is what you will naturally do when you accept and receive God’s forgiveness.  When you are forgiven by Him, His forgiveness flows to you and gives you the strength you need to forgive yourself.

The reason why we don’t always forgive ourselves is because we fail to see that God loves us and cares for us and that He really wants to forgive us.  And so we fail to truly repent of our sins—thus the guilt of our sins remains with us.  Accordingly, because we are unable to trust the sacrifice of Christ for us, we feel the need to punish ourselves, to tell ourselves how dumb and stupid we are, to restrict ourselves from fellowship, and to wallow in our guilt.  Some have tried to starve themselves, and to cut themselves; some viciously mutilate themselves.  I think one of the more common ways people punish…