Guilt and shame banished (II)!

Jesus is alright, but you had better watch out for Father God. Many people seem to have this impression of God, that He is out to get you, that He is just waiting for you to make some mistake, so He can condemn you. In fact nothing can be further from the truth. Jesus tells us, that when we have seen Him (Jesus), truly seen Him, we have seen the father (John 14:9). In other words the character of Jesus is precisely the character of Father God. The story I like the best about this, is the woman caught in the very act of adultery. The crowd, who had wanted to condemn her were shamed into leaving. When Jesus asked her where were those who would condemn her, she replied that they were none. “Neither do I condemn you,” says Jesus “go and sin no more” (John 8:1ff). He does not condemn, but neither does condone the sin. He knows that sin is destructive in our lives.

In fact in “Guilt and shame banished (I),” I suggested that one of the reasons we hide our sin even from ourselves, is that we either don’t know, or don’t believe that we can be forgiven. So we try to hide our sin, pretend it did not happen. But this way of dealing with our guilt simply does not work. In particular as I suggested in the previous post, sin has detrimental effects to our physical, emotional and spiritual health.

Now there is only one cure for guilt, and that is to be forgiven. And in the end God is the only one who can forgive us our sins. In fact, as the Scripture says, in a real sense God is the offended One. David, in confessing his sin of adultery and murder over the Bathsheba incident says “Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4). After having confessed his sin to God he is able to say with joy "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity” (Psalm 32:1, 2).

The price of our forgiveness is costly. Since God is just, sin must be punished. If you ask those who are familiar with Christianity why did Jesus die, you will likely get the correct answer, that he died for our sins. But I have discovered there is very little understanding all what this actually means. If you are taken to court and fined, but you don’t have the money to pay the fine, justice can be served if the fine is paid for by a friend. The Scripture tells us “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 3:23). Wages are what you get for what you did, and the penalty for sin if unpaid, is the death of eternal separation from God. That is, eternal separation from everything that is good, from the source of love and peace and joy etc. The last part of the above verse starts with a “but.” "But" changes everything! We read “but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” In fact the only way to be forgiven, is to receive it as a gift.

1 John 1:9 says “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That is He is faithful and just to forgive us, because of what Christ did on the cross. We have to fulfill the condition of the promise of course, we have to confess our sin, and this of course includes turning from it. But the verse also says that He is faithful to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, from the defilement of it all. Surely when we fully understand this, we will run to Him!

In the words of the hymn “My guilt is gone, I’ve been set free!” Praise the Lord! In the third post in this series we will look primarily at shame banished.

Father, thank You for your incredible gift. Thank You Lord Jesus that You came and died in my place in order that I may be able to spend eternity with You. Words cannot really express my gratitude that not only do I have a place in heaven with You in the hereafter, but that You are giving me life and health and peace in the here and now. I praise and bless Your holy name in Jesus Name Amen