Guilt is one of the biggest issues among Christians today. I can make a lot of interesting comments about that… but I won’t. The simple fact is that most believers just don’t know what to make of guilt, or how to manage those feelings. The difficulty of guilt has led some to fundamentally change essential doctrines of scripture, lessening the gospel message in the process! Not good.
The truth is that most of us have things in our past that can be a source of some level of guilt— it’s normal; it’s natural. There’s nothing wrong with you, or unique about your situation in that regard. What we do with those feelings of guilt is what makes all of the difference— and you don’t need to guess about that. The scriptures describe the incredible way that Jesus sets us free from guilt, and far from lessening the gospel message, it’s magnified through Christ.
Battling the Burden of Guilt
Few emotions are more destructive than guilt. As believers, we want to do the right thing, and when we fail, we often feel the weight of that failure profoundly. The situation intensifies when legalistic pastors add fuel to the fire with ideas about losing salvation, missing blessings, or divine punishment.
If you believe these ideas, things can quickly spiral out of control and become frightening. Every little misstep becomes a catastrophe if your salvation hangs in the balance, or it calls for divine punishment. I lived that way for years, and it made me so focused on myself and my behavior that I missed out on God entirely. And a lot of people are in fear of losing their salvation, or even think that God has already given up on them. These are all symptoms of guilt.
Jesus Carried the Weight
1st Peter 2:24 provides the foundation of freedom from guilt, in saying that Jesus Christ bore our sin in His own body on the cross, that we would die to sin and live to righteousness.
There are two critical points in this verse. First, that Jesus carried our sins in His body. Think about this— Jesus didn’t carry His sins (he didn’t have any) but He carried yours and mine. So if He carried them, then you shouldn’t have the burden anymore.
The second point from the verse, is that He carried your sins and mine for a specific purpose: so that we would die to sin and live to righteousness.
Remember what we learned about holiness from last week? Here’s where it connects, and how it happens. We don’t die to sin through our own performance and behavior, but through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and realizing this fact is the beginning of releasing the burden of guilt. You don’t earn your righteousness; you can do nothing to keep your righteousness; and you cannot lose your righteousness either.
Though Jesus’ accomplishment on the cross, you have died to sin— that’s the noun, the place of sin where your old spiritual identity existed. That old identity is dead and gone. Now, as the verse says, you live to righteousness; namely the righteousness of Christ. Remind yourself of that every day, because it’s very easy to forget who you are in Christ.
God Is Not Disappointed
Another struggle of guilt for us to confront is disappointment. Oftentimes we feel as though we have let God down, or that He is disappointed because we failed in some way. In fact, based on what we’ve read from first Peter, we know that Jesus already dealt with our sin problem, and that we do not even live in that place any longer!
God wants us to be completely sure about this, and so He doesn’t leave this up for debate. The scriptures are explicit in stating that God will never be angry with us or rebuke us (Isaiah 54:9). This promise is astonishing for many people, and they have difficulty believing it because they don’t know the truth about our spiritual identity and position that we saw from first Peter!
What we usually do is evaluate our behavior, see all the ways that we have failed, and then conclude that God must be disappointed with us because of our inadequacies. But again, we should remind ourself that none of our failures catch Him by surprise. If we could perform perfectly as the Law of Moses requires, then we wouldn’t need Jesus at all!
Leaving Guilt Behind
Today, you can be confident in the truth that Jesus has dealt with your sin, and paid that debt in its entirety. As Isaiah 53:5 says, the punishment for our peace was laid on Him. If you truly believe that, then you should have peace.
Finally, you can proceed without guilt and fear, knowing that God will never be angry with you or rebuke you, not because you behave perfectly, but because He has perfected you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:14), and you now live in His righteousness.
Remind yourself of these things daily, and you will thrive in Christ, and guilt will no longer have a grip on you.
Be blessed