how to overcome a condemning heart, a guilty conscience

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God, and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

1 John 3:16-24; NRSVue

If we take moral responsibility seriously in this life, we’re going to realize there’s always something that we did wrong and something else that we should have done, and something else we may have not done good enough in our minds. There are a host of ways that we can feel guilty and condemned.

We are told that laying down our lives for the believers in our midst means helping those in material need, doing what we can, be it big or little and everything in between. It is then evident that indeed God’s love resides in our hearts. Through adherence to the simple commandment to believe in the name of Jesus and to love one another, we can indeed overcome our guilty conscience (see helpful NET footnotes in link above), and condemning heart which can often plague us.

The commandments we’re to keep are again simple: believe in Jesus’s name and love one another. As we do that and seek to do all that pleases God, not only is our heart set at rest in God’s presence, but we have boldness in prayer that God will answer our simple, humble prayers. Our hearts set free to live in the love of God in Christ, a love intended for all.

Christ’s sacrifice the end of the false religion of appeasing God (and the gods)

But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy place, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

Hebrews 9:11-15; NRSVue

Christ’s sacrificial death puts an end to the old way of understanding sacrificial atonement. God’s no to that old system in the first covenant; God’s yes to the new covenant which finally takes care of the sins not only of those under the first covenant, but of the world, once for all.

There’s a tension in Scripture between the idea that God has to be appeased by sacrifice, by death, and the idea that God’s forgiveness comes from God’s love and is only a spoken word away in experiencing such. God makes it plain in the sacrifice of Christ, and in doing so, we could argue casts the old way of thinking about sacrifice as in appeasing God and God’s wrath, accepted in religions of old as appeasing the wrath of the gods, casting this way of thinking into oblivion.

It’s not that Christ’s blood and death doesn’t cleanse and free us once for all from our sins, because it does, and one might say from that, it’s the culmination of all sacrifice, what all the sacrifices in the Old Testament were prefiguring, looking forward to, and that’s true. But it also makes it clear that this old way of thinking never satisfied God, and as the writer of Hebrews says, could never take away sins. The adherents couldn’t get rid of their guilt and yearly atonement for all was required.

Christ’s death which we remember this Holy Week ends the false belief that God requires death for sin, for sinners. Sin results in death, figuratively in all kinds of ways and literally in that we are left to our mortal world and life. But in Christ through ironically what was done to him through the priesthood of Israel, not the Jews, as well as the empire of the known world at that time, it is clear that not only is this false notion of appeasing God overturned, but ingeniously, mortality ends up being overturned as well. In Christ’s death comes the end of the old, which in itself is crucial. And from that, the beginning of something entirely new, hinted at and pointed to in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, but appearing over the horizon towards the full light of Day in Christ.

when false guilt is piled on (with maybe a spoonful of true guilt)

Then he showed me the high priest Joshua standing before the angel of the LORD and the accuser standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to the accuser, “The LORD rebuke you, O accuser! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was wearing filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.” And to him he said, “See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel.” And he said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with apparel, and the angel of the LORD was standing by.

Then the angel of the LORD warned Joshua, saying “Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my requirements, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Now listen, Joshua, high priest, you and your colleagues who sit before you! For they are an omen of things to come: I am going to bring my servant the Branch. For on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven facets, I will engrave its inscription, says the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day. On that day, says the LORD of hosts, you shall invite each other to come under your vine and fig tree.”

Zechariah 3; NRSVue

This is a classic passage I’ve referred to before. It seems like what was happening was some false accusations from the prosecutor within the heavenly court (see The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, New Revised Standard notes). There’s no question that it’s not like we’re guiltless. We sin and have sin, though having nothing to do with the teaching of original sin and the sinful nature, which is an interpretation not equal to Scripture, not the Word of God, rooted in the times, thought, and experience of those who taught it (Augustine, etc.).

According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, the charges made were apparently false, though there was ritual defilement. I find this point to resonate with my experience. Yes, there are times when we sin and usually need to confess such only to God (1 John 1:9) or when need be, to others or another we’ve sinned against. But oftentimes at least in my case, what is leveled is at the most making the worst case of things, or simply not true. Isn’t it the case that what often plagues us the most are lies about ourselves, about others and about God? What we do or fail to do which is wrong is oddly enough more easily dealt with since we know that God forgives through Christ. What can torment or at least leave us uneasy is the barrage of false guilt piled on us perhaps egged on by voices from our past and the voice in our own head.

We need to recognize that, call it what it is, and go on in the grace and calling which is ours in Christ Jesus.

sin, guilt and death gone

For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:53-57; NRSVue

Unless the Lord returns beforehand, death is certainly something we must all pass through. There are few things more fearsome than death. The passage quoted above does not see death as a friend.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15:26; NRSVue

Christ through his death and resurrection ends death. That is part of the heart of the gospel, the good news of God in Jesus.

…our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

2 Timothy 1:10b; NRSVue

The only thing that can burden me down more than the fear of death for loved ones or myself is guilt, whether unreasonable or deserved. But again, we need to dwell on the first passage quoted above and I’ll quote it again, here, but this time from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase.

In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true:

Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?

It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ. Thank God!

1 Corinthians 15:53-57; The Message

Sin has a certain hold on us humans in our twisted existence. The law helps us understand that but leaves us there. Hence, guilt sets in. But in one fell swoop Christ takes care of and ends all three. For us who have faith, we can and should live as if such is the case, the new reality that is in Jesus for us and for the world.

The law is good for what it does to help in every way needed before Christ came (Galatians 3:24-27). That surely has ramifications for us now, even though different than God’s people who lived through a different period of time before Christ came. Christ’s coming actually enables what the law itself could not do. We fulfill the heart of the law only through Christ by the Spirit in loving God by loving our neighbor as ourselves (Romans 8:3-4; 13:8-10; Galatians 5:14). No more fear of death, either, or at least we can be assured that death doesn’t have the final say (Hebrews 2:14-18).

Sin, the guilt that comes with that, and finally death itself are all taken care of in Christ. Even though we still experience all three in this present existence, we somehow are beyond them through Christ. We want to live accordingly and by God’s grace and help, to some measure we do. And none of them has the final word. Through Christ’s atoning death, resurrection and by the Spirit’s amen and implementation and the result, we don’t have to be held down by any of that. God will help us by faith to live to some true extent beyond sin, guilt and any fear of death. As we await the consummation and completion of all things.

one of the devil’s many but most effective lies

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,
scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
set these once-broken bones to dancing.
Don’t look too close for blemishes,
give me a clean bill of health.
God, make a fresh start in me,
shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don’t throw me out with the trash,
or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
I’ll let loose with your praise.

Psalm 51:7-15; MSG

I don’t know why this is not included online, but this is Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message Bible of the ascription given to the psalm, part of the inspired text or not, but certainly steeped in tradition: “A DAVID PSALM, AFTER HE WAS CONFRONTED BY NATHAN ABOUT THE AFFAIR WITH BATHSHEBA.” This may well have been written by David during that time (2  Samuel 11-12). Whatever the case, the psalm itself lends its voice to whoever and whatever. It is general enough, that it includes all who have sinned grievously in big ways, as well as perhaps small yet willful acts which also need repentance and God’s cleansing, saving work.

One of the devil’s big lies, which we need to learn to recognize and reject is the lie that certain sins put people beyond the pale of usefulness to God. I know when a pastor falls there is disagreement as to whether after repentance and time for restoration he or she can be reinstated to their pastoral position. I tend to think so myself, but that’s not specifically what we’re dealing with here. There’s no doubt that such sins can haunt the one who is guilty as is evident in Psalm 51 itself, and that there will be fallout or consequences from it, as we see in the case of David (see 2 Samuel 13-15, also 12:10-14).

But we need to get rid of the notion and again outright lie for sure that such a person can no longer be useful in God’s service in love to others. I know this is old covenant, but David himself was not stripped of his position as king, nor of honor as we see Jesus himself called “the son of David” as not just a fact, but as likely an honorific title. How much more in the new covenant can such a one be restored?! I think of this passage about an erring sinner in the church:

Now, regarding the one who started all this—the person in question who caused all this pain—I want you to know that I am not the one injured in this as much as, with a few exceptions, all of you. So I don’t want to come down too hard. What the majority of you agreed to as punishment is punishment enough. Now is the time to forgive this man and help him back on his feet. If all you do is pour on the guilt, you could very well drown him in it. My counsel now is to pour on the love.

The focus of my letter wasn’t on punishing the offender but on getting you to take responsibility for the health of the church. So if you forgive him, I forgive him. Don’t think I’m carrying around a list of personal grudges. The fact is that I’m joining in with your forgiveness, as Christ is with us, guiding us. After all, we don’t want to unwittingly give Satan an opening for yet more mischief—we’re not oblivious to his sly ways!

2 Corinthians 2:5-11; MSG

We need to get rid of the notion, yes the lie, once for all that when a person sins bigtime there’s nothing left for them, except forgiveness of their sin when they confess it. Surely they should live in deep humility the rest of their lives. But they also need “to inhabit [others’] forgiveness and God’s forgiveness,” to accept that as a matter of fact and reality.

This truth must never be abused to mean that I can do what I please, even though it’s sinful, knowing that in the end full restoration will happen. That is both dangerous to the person doing it, who may in fact not see fit to repent, not to mention the damage that occurs. We can’t have both our way and God’s way. At the same time, we also must not set aside God’s amazing grace for all sinners, including those who have abused this truth, who return to him in genuine repentance, not just sorry about the consequences of their sin, but that they sinned against God and against others.

In and through Jesus.

accepting one’s guilt (to receive forgiveness)

Without airing one’s guilty laundry, which is hardly ever appropriate, and if done should be done with much care looking for the needed wisdom with prayer, one ought to accept the fact that they are guilty when such is the case, and forget about trying to smooth the way so as to lessen or avoid consequences. That can be easier said then done since people often are not merciful. Of all people on earth, Christians or followers of Christ should be merciful. We do know that our heavenly Father is merciful, which is evident in and through the revelation of his Son, Jesus Christ.

The cross is our pardon in and through Jesus, upon our repentance and faith. Mediated to us through Christ and even through Christ’s body, the church. Jesus’ death is for the forgiveness of our sins; in that death atonement for our sins and for the sins of the world was made. So our forgiveness is grounded in a salvation that is in Jesus himself through his Person as the God-Human, and his saving work for us. And so our sins can be forgiven as we confess them; God being faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

There is only one way we can receive forgiveness from our guilt. We need to accept our sin for what it is. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that we air it for all to see, or allow it to beat us down. Instead we accept the fact of our guilt as well as accepting God’s forgivness through confession to God and when appropriate to each other, especially to one we sinned against. As we look forward to the day when all sin will be gone forever and true righteousness and justice will reign in the love of God through King Jesus.

the Lord’s convicting work

Oftentimes many of us humans are more than ready to simply mark ourselves off as “no good,” and therefore perhaps unwittingly render ourselves outside the pale of God’s good convicting, correcting work. Or we may be quick to accept any thought of correction to us, whether from someone else or more likely from within ourselves, as viable. So that we are quick to accept it, make a point of doing so, and then go on with little or no change. Or we may struggle over pride, not wanting to give into something we’re either too proud to admit, or else not completely sure of. Whether or not what we’re thinking or being told holds water. It may be that our entire context is skewed, and what concerns us should be of no concern at all. The good that could come out of this is that we’re brought to reflect on the error of our ways in comparing ourselves with each other, which Paul tells us is not wise.

The Lord’s convicting work may take some time, and come over time. But it will become clear. We will not be taken on some guilt trip, in which we feel guilty, but are unclear as to what we’re to do about it. God’s word talks about a repentance that is worldly and leads to death. Judas would be a case in point. He even confessed his sin to the religious authorities who wrote him off. Something was wrong.

The Lord’s convicting work clarifies, and we won’t be left wondering. I am one of those people who naturally critiques what I do as well as what I fail to do over the course of a day. And I can end up on some sort of guilt trip. But one in which I only have some vague sense of what is wrong. I have found that I need to go to God in prayer, spend some time in the word, and keep at it. The Spirit in time will make something clear to me, even if it is that I should have no concern at all over some matter.

Of course the Spirit’s convicting work will always be in line and in harmony with the word that came by the Spirit (i.e., God’s word, scripture). But the Spirit will give a sense of clarity and peace, no less than the Presence of God himself. Or indeed the Lord may convict us so that we are clear as to our wrongdoing, and confess it to him, as well as to anyone we may have offended, or hurt.

This is not to say we are ever sinless. But it is to say we must beware of the accusing finger of the enemy, who is called the accuser of our brothers and sisters, accusing them day and night before God, and we can be sure accusing them to others and to themselves as well.  The Lord’s convicting work is one of love in which we are grieved over our sin, drawing us in, in love. A matter of the heart. And one that is clear. We should act only on the Lord’s convicting work, and on nothing else.

And we should covet and seek that convicting work, especially if and when we’re uneasy about something. But I believe on a regular basis as well. An important part of the tradition of Christian worship is to pray a general confession of our sins, during which we can become specific before God, and to another. And receive God’s forgiveness. Even pronounced over us by another. We need that, and my tradition is the poorer for not practicing it, though I’m thankful we do so in our church.