One thing that I have been thinking through lately is how people deal with thier guilt. It is especially amazing how those of us who call ourselves Christians (and in some cases are) find other ways to deal with their guilt instead of resting in Jesus. People retreat to the acts of doing good things like praying more, bible study, church attendance, social justice and serving others in hopes that these good deeds will put at peace their guilty conscience. Other people (though they may include religious types) try to suppress those “guilt feelings” by retreating from the activities mentioned above and run to entertainment, personal success, accumulation of more things or finding one’s identity in anything other then the truth (and I mean the only truth of how God has chosen to deal with guilt which is a result of sin).
Guilt (true guilt as a result of sin and not man made manipulated guilt) before God is something to be taken serious. It is the conscience responding to the Holy law of a personal God who says we are guilty of idolatry. When internally in our thinking we place our self, someone else (other than God) or something else at the center of our thinking and declare it by our own authority something worthy to be worshiped, we commit idolatry. This is a sin against the holy and righteous God who really is there and has said “you shall have no other gods before me.” The result is a guilty conscience saying “wrong.”
As one who without shame believes in the Jesus of the Old and New Testaments (not the therapeutic relative Jesus constructed in the 21st century), God has given people a real way (I really mean a true and only way) in which my idolatry and guilt in turn be dealt with. If my guilt is a result of my idolatry, and my performance (ex. social justice, attending church, praying more, entertainment etc…) can not truly remove from me the idols of my heart (including the exaltation of me in performing good deeds), then what can?
Briefly consider some options that are lengthy blog posts in themselves. If the bible is not true then you are left with the authority of the ethical (what is right?), epistemological (how do you know?) and ontological (says who?) “experts” in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Do not get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with these fields of study. However, only the Jesus of the Old and New Testaments can supply the true answers (that make rational and experiential sense of what really is) to the major questions in these fields of study. The reality of who Jesus is and what he has done really gives the basis for studying these subjects as we seek to answer the questions in these various fields of study. Apart from the authority and reality of Jesus, ones only option is the relative authority of himself, society and state (no matter what party or form of government). The question becomes “by whose authority?”
There is good news for those who believe in the authority of the Jesus of the Bible. We can have freedom from the tyranny of a guilty conscience. It is not running to people or things with an attempt to suppress our conscience. It is believing and thus resting in Jesus. It was Jesus, as God and man, who came and lived on this earth to please God the Father in perfect obedience to the point of death on the cross in order to pay for our idolatry. After satisfying the Justice that a holy, good and righteous God demands on our behalf, He resurrected from the grave to live not only as King over all things, but as intercessor before His Father for us. Through Jesus I am declared righteous before God. Through the person and finished work of Jesus the loving and gracious Father has pitied and accepted me as his own. I have nothing to add. I simply with the empty hands of faith receive Jesus as King and redeemer of my life who was judged and then resurrected on my behalf.
So, what do I do I when experience true moral guilt before God? Call sin what it is. I confess to God what He says it really is (1 John 1:8-10). It is me thinking and acting upon the lie that something or someone else other than God is to be worshiped. However, I must not continue to live in this guilt. As a believer, to do so would minimize the work of Jesus on my behalf. Further, I would not be living in what He has accomplished for me. We often run into 2 dangers. We sometimes do not call sin what it really is. Second, we (as believers) do not often rest in what Jesus has really accomplished for us. We minimize sin and the cross. As we equally call and confess sin as sin, so we must also simply call on and confess Jesus as our only hope.
To conclude, Jesus is the only way in which God has chosen to deal with sin and our guilty conscience as a result. Jesus is the only way I can be reconciled to a God that I have rebelled against. This is very good news. It makes sense of what I am as both a fallen and a redeemed man. Through Jesus I may now live by faith in Him as I experience peace with and enjoy God. Through Jesus my relationship with God has been restored. Paul put it this way. He said in Romans 5:1-2 that, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” I am no longer a condemned man. Yes, I am a man who still struggles with sin. I am also a man standing before God through Jesus loved and accepted. I am not standing on what I can or cannot do. Rather I am standing and resting in who Jesus is and what he has done. If this is not true, then you are left to find an authority who can sufficiently explain to you a cause and solution as it pertains to guilt. I submit to you. To do so would be a vain and very cruel search.