10250 North Freeway @ West Road
Houston, Texas 77037
Tel: (281) 447-8484
10250 North Freeway @ West
Road
Houston, Texas 77037
Tel: (281) 447-8484
Christian
Family Principles
Written by Dr.
Lester Hutson
Copyright
- Lester Hutson - 1981
This material is copyrighted and may not be copied or reproduced
without the express written permission of Dr. Lester Hutson.
How to Get Rid of Guilt
Chapter Eighteen
INTRODUCTION: Text * I John 1:8-9
Everybody either has been, or is, suffering from guilt. There is no need for you to kid yourself and say no, for consciously or subconsciously, you know you are guilty of some things that are wrong. Maybe you’ve said some things that you do are not wrong. You’ve resented the fact that those things are called sin and wrong, and you’ve gone ahead and done them anyway, saying there is nothing wrong with it, but, deep down you’ve felt guilty about it, and your conscience has hurt you over it. That nagging sense of guilt has hung over you like a dingy cloud. Try as you have, you’ve not been able to get away from it. You’ve not been able to long hide it in the gay lights, nor in the thrills and pleasures of wine, women or song. You’ve caught yourself meditating and daydreaming about it. You may have had it haunt you in your dreams at night, and, quite likely, you’ve been very worried and afraid that the wrong people are going to find out about it, perhaps your wife, husband, children, parents, friends, church people or even the police. It has given you no real comfort to know that others are guilty, too. You may have comforted yourself with that fact, yet it hasn’t really eased the stress of being found out, nor the ache and sting of guilt that you continue to feel in your heart.
Oh, what you’d give to be free, free of guilt, to know the dingy dark stains were gone! How you’d love to feel pure, wholesome and clean again within your heart. Webster says guilt is "the act or state of having done wrong. It is to have committed an offense. It is conduct that involves crime or sin." When you do what you know is wrong, a sense of guilt settles over you. It is one of the scourges of God. He said, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption," in Galatians 6:7-8. Guilt in wrongdoers is a part of the reaping. It follows you and haunts you wherever you go. It can harass you in a crowd and depress you when you are alone. It can smite you when your children are hugging your neck or when your wife is telling you how thankful she is that you’ve been true to her. It will gouge you while you sit in church and by innocent comments your friends make in casual conversations. Guilt will make you avoid those you respect, who oppose what you’ve done, who might find out and who love you, even though they don’t know you are guilty. Guilt gives people ulcers, strokes and heart attacks, and drives many a one to the insane asylum. David said, "Neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin," in Psalm 38:3.
Who among us can say, "I’m not guilty; I’ve never done anything wrong. I’ve never known a sense of guilt in my heart?" God says, "That what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God," in Romans 3:19. Every man and every woman must bear some guilt. Romans 3:23 says, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, "There is not a just man upon the earth, that doeth good and sinneth not." And Psalm 14:2 says, "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God." His finding is stated in verse 3, "They are all gone aside, they are together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one." Guilty? Yes! All of us are guilty. It is a universal problem among men.
But, there is a way to get rid of guilt. People don’t have to live their lives with a constantly clouded conscience. I am sorry to say that most people never learn how to do it, but every man and woman has the means available to them for getting rid of all the guilt that mars their lives. If you are willing, you can have your records clean and live without that blame or dread that you’ve had so long in your heart. You can be free and pure in your heart regardless of how hideous and ugly the sin and offense you committed may have been.
I. GOD STANDS READY TO FORGIVE YOU OF WHATEVER YOU MAY HAVE DONE.
A. Forgiveness will clear your record and take away your guilt.
1. Webster said "forgiveness" is "giving up resentment against someone and the desire to punish that person. It is to pardon and overlook and offence. It is to cancel a debt." James Strong said to forgive means "to forsake, lay aside, leave, put away."
2. Once you are forgiven, the issue is over. That doesn’t mean you will be proud or happy about the wrong you did, but it does mean you can forget it, put it out of your mind, bury the dead issue and not keep it around to haunt you anymore. Other people who know about it may taunt and needle you with it, but as long as you know the issue is cleared between you and God, you can have peace about it. Once the thing is over, you don’t have to worry about it any more. When it is removed, put away, laid aside, it is not there to dominate your thoughts, cause you to fear and drag you down in depression and despair.
3. Once the issue is gone, you can rejoice. That’s the reason David could say, "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered," in Psalm 32:1. That is why Jesus could say to a man sick of the palsy, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee," in Matthew 9:2.
4. There is a particularly striking example of the joy that can replace grief and sorrow in the heart once forgiveness occurs found in Luke 7:36-50.
a. A woman who was a notorious sinner in the city of Nain came to Jesus. Verse 38 says this woman "stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wet his feet with tears." No doubt this woman was consumed with guilt, and guilt can pierce your soul with many sorrows. You who would follow the ways of sin and rebellion, thinking you will be free and happy, had better consider this woman who thought just like you do. She found to her sorrow that sin makes slaves out of those who follow it. Guilt can fill the heart with misery and grief, so she stood there weeping with a life that was twisted and gnarled and miserable.
b. Then Jesus said to the woman in verse 48, "thy sins are forgiven," and in verse 50, "go in peace." Where sins were forgiven, misery was replaced with peace. When He forgave her, the guilt was gone, and that will be just as true with you as it was with her.
5. God said through Isaiah the prophet, "Come now let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; and though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Of those whose sins are forgiven, David says of God, "as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us," in Psalm 103:12.
6. Yes, I tell you that forgiveness from God takes care of guilt. It gets rid of it once and for all.
B. God is willing right now to forgive you of your sins.
1. God promises to Israel in the future what is true of all who will believe Him today, when He says in Jeremiah 31:34, "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
2. King David said, "For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee," in Psalm 86:5, and in Psalm 130:4, he said, "There is forgiveness with thee."
3. Daniel said, "To the Lord our God belongeth mercies and forgiveness though we have rebelled against him," in Daniel 9:9, and the Levites of Nehemiah 9:17 said, "but thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious, and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness."
4. It is upon the strength of this kind of God, who is ready and willing to forgive, that David, who sinned grossly before God, could pray, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions," in Psalm 51:1.
5. I know that every one of you has sinned. You are guilty, but I am here to tell you of One who is willing to forgive you and put away your guilt forever. You won’t ever have to face it again. It won’t be there to haunt and torment you anymore. The God whom I serve will clear your slate, purge your record and get rid of the stains and blemishes. In fact, He wants to do that for you.
II. YOU ARE PROBABLY WONDERING JUST HOW THIS CAN BE. JUST HOW CAN HE DO IT?
A. The answer is that He can forgive your sins and take away your guilt by the strength of the blood of His own Son, Jesus Christ.
1. Of Jesus, Peter and the other apostles, under divine inspiration, said, "Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins," in Acts 5:31.
2. This Jesus Christ actually bore the penalty of your guilt in Himself. Though He had no guilt, He was willing to bear the misery and punishment of your guilt so that you wouldn’t have to bear it yourself. Isaiah said, "He was wounded for our transgres- sions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him," in Isaiah 53:5. When Jesus Christ died there on that cross, He died to clear your guilt, to put it away forever so that you will not have to face it again.
3. In view of what Christ did, guilt doesn’t have to linger in your heart to haunt and torment you. He can forgive your sins because He has already born the punishment of your guilt. In His own body on the cross, He felt all the scorn of God upon your lying, cheating, greed, immorality, slothfulness, deceiving and selfish ways. Paul spoke of Him in Ephesians 1:7 and said, "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." He repeated this truth in Colossians 1:14. And, remember from Isaiah 1:18 that it doesn’t matter how gross our sin may be.
4. Yes, God can forgive you and take away your guilt upon the strength of the shed blood of His own Son. Paul therefore preached, "Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified from all things..." in Acts 13:38-39.
B. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ can take away your guilt regardless of whether you are lost or saved.
1. Those of you who are lost need only to believe in Jesus Christ in order to have your sins forgiven.
a. In simple terms Acts 20:21 defines belief to be "repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." Repentance means to completely turn to an opposite direction. Belief, then, is deserting the world, its ways and your own ways in favor of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a turning from all things to Him.
b. My dear lost friend, if you will give up on yourself and on the powers of this world to save you, and will put your trust in Jesus, who gave His own blood for you, you will receive the forgiveness of sins. John 3:18 says, "He that believeth is not condemned." There is no condemnation, and thus no guilt that hinders a right relationship, to those who are in Christ.
c. That is not to imply that you will never again do any wrongs or commit any sins. You will, but even when you do, those sins will not have the slightest bearing upon your relationship to God. You will know that all things that have anything to do with whether or not you belong to God have been forgiven, put away, taken completely off the scene, out of the way. You have the promise of God in John 5:24, "He that believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."
d. I John 5:1 says, "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," and that the spiritual birth in believers corresponds with the natural birth of all men. All those who experience a natural birth are, by that birth, established as members in God’s family. Everybody who has a natural family does things that offend and are wrong, but none of these have any bearing upon the person’s family relationship, because all things pertaining to family membership were settled and established by birth. Likewise, all spiritual family members do things that are wrong and sinful, but none of these have any bearing upon the relationship of those members in the family, because all things pertaining to spiritual family membership were settled at the new birth which occurred the moment that person believed.
e. Do you realize what a relief from guilt and condemnation that is? That means you don’t have to live with the dread of guilt over you. You don’t have to live in constant dread of that day when you must face God and have your guilt exposed and punished, for all that guilt has been removed and already punished in the person of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to dread dying and going to hell, for the condemnation that sentenced you to hell has been lifted by Christ’s intercession on your behalf. You don’t have to live in constant fear and dread of what you may do, for all things that have to do with your eternity with God have been taken care of by Christ. You are safe and secure in Jesus. He’s the rock of ages, the shelter in a weary land. He’s the captain of our salvation, the one who cannot fail.
f. There is a song that says,
O soul are
you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Turn your
eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
g. I’m telling you that condemnation and guilt vanish away when you, in true and genuine belief, get to the end of your self and place your faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself for you. If you are lost and guilt-ridden, wanting relief and peace in your heart, then come to Jesus. He is the way, the only way to get guilt and condemnation out of you. If you will trust Him, guilt and misery will be replaced with peace and joy in your heart.
2. Let me now talk to those of you who are saved.
a. Even though you know no offence you commit will have any bearing upon your membership in the spiritual family, you also know that all of your offenses displease God, who is your Father, and destroys good fellowship with Him, while at the same time causes hurts, alienations and confusions with your friends and fellow Christians.
b. Thus many of God’s people begin to find their hearts clogged and troubled with guilt. They do things that are shady, questionable and wrong, and they begin to feel the guilt of it. Their conscience hurts. They don’t feel the cleanliness and purity they once felt. They try to submerge the guilt in pleasure and material involvement, but it is still there. They try to justify what they’ve done and excuse it by reasoning that others do it too, that it is common practice. Yet the guilt and dirty feelings keep creeping in. Though it ought not to be so, many a Christian’s life is riddled with guilt and blame.
c. Fellow Christian, there is a way for you to get rid of that guilt that is sapping your joy and filling your life with misery and depression.
(1) The first thing you need to do is face up to the facts of God’s Word. Hear what it has to say about the thing you’ve done. David said to God, "The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple," in Psalm 119:130. The Bible also says, "Let God be true, but every man a liar," in Romans 3:4. Now, you just as well quit arguing about it and trying to excuse the wrong you’ve done as O.K. If God says it was wrong, then it was wrong. Regardless of what you think about it, you are guilty.
(2) Now, if you are guilty of wrong doing, you ought to be sorry about it. No child of God should ever be happy or proud of his sins. David said, "For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin," in Psalm 38:18. When you realize a thing is wrong before God and injurious to the cause of Christ, when you see how it hurts innocent people and robs you of your spiritual strength, it ought to break your heart with a Godly sorrow. I am not talking about and emotional sorrow, or an artificial sorrow that is not genuine. Some times people act sorry when they really aren’t because they can get more sympathy and off the hook if they appear to be sorry about what they’ve done. But their sorrow is not true, it is just "put on" as a selfish means of saving their own hide. God forbid that you would ever be so hypocritical as to pretend sorrow when it is not genuine. The reality of sin in your life should produce genuine, Godly sorrow.
(3) Godly sorrow in your heart over wrong-doing will bring about true repentance. Paul said, "Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of," in II Corinthians 7:10. Repentance is a complete turning to an opposite direction. Real sorrow over what you’ve seen from God’s Word to be wrong will lead you to a change of directions, and that is what you need to do when you are wrong. You need to change what is wrong and start doing what is right. Paul, the apostle, wrote a letter of scripture to the Corinthian Christians that made them very sorry over their sins, but this led to their repentance from the wrong, and that resulted in great joy. Listen to how Paul put it in II Corinthians 7:8-9. "For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent: for I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing." Without the word of God, there’d have been no sorrow, and without Godly sorrow, there’d have been no genuine repentance. Thus Paul told those Corinthians, "I wrote this same unto you, lest, when I come, I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice," in II Corinthians 2:3. Repent is what every child of God ought to do when he is wrong. Repentance is vital to the removal of guilt. You cannot continue with no change of heart and no intentions of change and still feel guiltless and right about it.
(4) God’s word will lead you to sorrow over sin, and Godly sorrow will work repentance. Then, repentance will lead to confession of sins. Acts 22:16 exhorts us to "wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." That is why when Israel sinned, Ezra the priest said to them, "Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers..." in Ezra 10:11. We love this tremendous promise of God regarding true confession of sins, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness," in I John 1:9. God promises to forgive us when we confess, and He does it upon the strength of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. John stated that in I John 1:7 when he said, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Oh, sinning child of God, confess your sins to God in Jesus’ name. When you’ve done wrong, you are guilty, and guilt will rob you, torment you and haunt you day and night, but honest confession from a repentant heart will get that guilt out of you.
(5) The reason the guilt goes away when you truly confess it to God is because God forgives the sin or offence. Yes, that is what He promised there in I John 1:9. Remember that forgiveness means they are put away, gone, canceled, laid aside. Remember that King David said they were put away from us "as far as the east is from the west," in Psalm 103:12. Go north, and when you pass the North Pole, you will be headed south again. Go south, and when you pass the South Pole, you will be headed north again. But go forever to the east and you will never be headed west, or forever west and you will never be headed east. Folks, when you confess your sins to Jesus, they are gone forever, gone, never to haunt you and condemn you again. Jesus forgives them and cleanses us. No wonder David wrote, "I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin," in Psalm 32:5.
(6) Forgiveness of our sins results in fellowship with God and His people. John stated that in I John 1:7, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another." That is a wonderful state in which to exist. Remember that David wrote, "Blessed is the man whose transgressions is forgiven, whose sin is covered." What a joy to live with a clean, pure heart, one that is not guilt ridden and miserable. How sweet to have a clear conscience, and to know that even though others belittle and condemn you, it really doesn’t matter, for it is all straight and clear between you and God. How excellent to have sinned, but not to be holding it against yourself because you know it has been covered, canceled by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that through confession you’ve put it under the blood.
C. Once your guilt has been forgiven, taken away, canceled, you should forget it.
1. Many people these days go through the process that eliminates guilt, yet keep on blaming themselves and holding themselves guilty.
a. Especially as Christians, they repentantly ask God to forgive them, yet they keep on thinking of the sin and blaming and punishing themselves for it.
b. This is particularly true in those sins that seem to recur often.
c. You may have committed a sin or several sins. It may have been long ago or recently. I say unto you that if you have taken it to the Lord, forget it. It is gone, removed, canceled. Your continued worry and fretting and guilt over it is useless. It is like continuing to worry about and hit a rattlesnake after he’s already dead, like cleaning the ashes out of the fireplace when it is already clean. You can’t burn up a gallon of gas once it is already burned, and there’s no more need for guilt of sin once the sin is already forgiven.
2. To continue to blame yourself and hold yourself guilty once you’ve taken the steps to get rid of the guilt is to disbelieve God.
a. When you bring it to Him, He says you are forgiven. Whether you are a lost man believing in Him that you might have a right relationship to Him, or a saved man repentantly confession to Him that you might have fellowship, He says He forgives and takes the sins away!
b. What I am telling you to do is believe that! Believe what God says. He cannot lie, according to Titus 1:2, and He will not fail, according I Corinthians 10:13. If God says your guilt is gone, that surely ought to be sufficient reason to forget it.
c. I tell you today that if you will recognize your guilt, and do what God says for you to do to get rid of it, it will be forgiven, and you can forget it and get it off your conscience. You can be free of that haunting and fear and depression that guilt brings into your life.
"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"