“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8)
How has guilt impacted your life? For me, it’s been 1 of 2 extremes: either thinking I could never be good enough or trying so hard to make up for my wrongs. The first made me depressed and prone to addiction; the second made me anxious and self-righteous. Can you relate?
Our Response to Guilt The first humans’ reaction to guilt set the pattern for all of us, as seen here: “They suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves… and hid from the Lord God among the trees” (Genesis 3:7,8).
Cover and Hide… It’s what we all do. Covering is when you try to cover your bad deeds with good deeds. To God, it’s like spraying perfume on manure. Isaiah 64:6 explains, “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.” Hiding is when you avoid God at all costs, afraid of His punishment. I John 4:18 says, “If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced His perfect love.”
God’s Response to Guilt But God neither hides nor makes a fake cover for sin. Instead, He comes to you and offers you a real cover. Imagine your sins as a huge pile of debris in your room. No matter where you sweep them, they’re still there. But God comes in with His own trash bag to sweep them up and carry them out Himself. That’s what He did when He sent His own Son to earth to carry out all of our sins. Isaiah 53:6 says of Jesus, “Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all.”
Today God comes to you with His trash bag. He wants to clear out all of the guilt in your life, so you neither have to cover or hide any longer. Maybe you feel like you desperately want God to come in and do this but you don’t know how to open the door. Next week we are going to talk about just how you open that door and let God in. Getting you guilt-free is God’s greatest priority for you.
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