The Gift of Guilt
Lately in our sermons from Pastor Tim’s series on Hebrews, he’s been preaching about the difference between positionally righteous in Christ, our Justification in position, and on a Wednesday night recently he discussed the still need of repentance.
Sometimes this can be confusing, and I must say that my mind is still trying to grasp aspects of this I don’t quite “get.” He demonstrated clearly that we are positionally righteous in Christ, that the righteousness is not our own righteousness but we still need to strive toward Holiness in sanctification and in that process when we sin over and over and over again we must guard our hearts not to grow numb toward repentance and the Gospel. This week we were admonished to continually “hold fast” to the gospel, Hebrews 10. The reason we are called to “hold fast to the gospel,” although we believe in the perseverance of the saints that once God has truly saved a person he cannot be “unsaved,” the only true demonstration of the fruit of a saved person is the fact that they are persevere to the end, and hold fast to the gospel as evidence of ones true salvation and perseverance.
I was with a group of guys a few weeks ago and we were pondering these truths, how sometimes we get so numb because of our failures stop going to God in repentance. There was a strong warning in this weeks sermon, to not stop going to God in repentance no matter how many times, once a person stops repenting that’s evidence for the heart to become hard and it puts up a barrier between you and God.
Another guy says he feels like he has to pay penance after he sins and so it’s good to hear the encouraging words, where we are positionally righteous in Christ and covered in the blood of Jesus so that we are not tempted to try to in our despair over our own sin and self-condemnation to pay penance. These are pitiful attempts to pay for what Christ already paid for on the cross because we will never be anymore clean positonally before or after sinning because all of our sins past present and future are covered in the blood.
A once again demonstration of the tension the bible uses for sanctification and truth. One being the tensions already between our position in Christ against our still ever present “flesh”. We being free in Christ not to sin, in our times of sinning, have demonstrated that in whatever area of our lives which we have not yet repented, that area needs to be brought to submission to our Lord & Savior. How does this process take place?
I have been coming to a greater understanding of guilt and conviction. I have understood at a deeper level the purpose of the conscience as well. There is a sense in which God’s laws are written on the heart of man, but I am coming to understand that the conscience is also trained. What I mean by this is that if you begin to ignore sin then we would consider your heart hardening, or some would say your conscience has been seared as with a hot iron, and if you repent your conscience yields to the “conviction” of the Holy Spirit, of sin. If you ignore it enough times you heart grows cold and seared but if you are soft and feel guilt much of the time you live in condemnation.
It is interesting how some people see their position in Christ as freeing, to the point of license, and other see their inability to truly repent and stop sinning as shackles, to the point of condemnation. The quagmire that I run into often times is when I hear people say “guilt” is from Satan and “conviction” is from the Holy Spirit.
These two terms seem to be part of a false dichotomy between two similar words. The word “conviction” means ” the judgment of a jury or judge that a person is guilty of a crime as charged, or the state of being convinced, ” and the word “guilt” means ” the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law; culpability,” or “the state of one who has committed an offense, especially consciously.”
And “guilty” means ” having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, esp. against moral or penal law; justly subject to a certain accusation or penalty; culpable ” or “justly liable to or deserving of a penalty.”
So the work of the Holy Spirit acts to convict us or “convince us of our guilt” before a Holy God. It is by this act of the Holy Spirit that we then feel guilty for crimes we have committed against our God who saved us. What happens a lot of times and what I become afraid of is when we try to ease the “guilt” of our conscience, by only focusing on our position. If we do this we are skipping the step of repentance. Trying to brush over our sin by thinking of our position without coming to repentance. I believe this breeds pharisees… This gift of guilt we feel when we sin contains a call to repentance and the urging of the Holy Spirit to seek forgiveness from the One we have offended, namely God, and often others. We should not run but respond, answer the call guilt puts on our life, and repent.
Many “non Christians” go around feeling guilty, or wrong in some sense, and this is why we see so many medications trying to produce the “feeling” of freedom in Christ, have hit the drugstore shelves by storm. We again are trying to come up with our own substitutionary atonement for sin but we can’t manufacture it in a pill or the latest psychotropic drug to satisfy or atone for our feelings of guilt, it only comes by saving Faith in Christ Jesus. It is only by the cross of Christ, and trusting the penal substitutionary atonement that our guilty stains are wiped clean. It is only by these actions of guilt, accusation, conviction, repentance, and faith, which you will know and more deeply come to love your savior, that is assuming you know Him.
When you live in condemnation it’s often a result minimally of not having confessed your sin before God. It’s at this moment of repentance, and freedom of guilt called forgiveness that God can demonstrate His grace, and demonstrate to you forgiveness of sin.
All of these things are so tightly knit together it’s difficult to pick them out of one sermon but we sin, we feel guilty, our conscience accuses us, the Holy Spirit brings conviction that convinces us of our guilt, we repent, and see our position in Christ which grants us Hope, not in our self but in Christ.
We must beware not to grow numb or hard toward sin! We must seek God in all things and then move forward in obedience as he shows us, anything less is continuing in sin. May we listen to the call of guilt, allow the Holy Spirit to convict us, and may we repent so that we may be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. So you see the gift of our guilt is purposely meant to bring us to the cross & repentance so that we may enjoy Christ, be satisfied in Him alone!
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Not entirely related, though not unrelated is the debate over whether we should be asking for forgiveness if we are in fact forgiven by virtue of Christ’s sacrifice. If it was paid for and finished on the cross, amd I still to ask for God to forgive me of a present day action that has already been taken care of in terms of the forgiveness itself? Personally, I think so.