Not Guilty!
Stuff Jesus Changed, part 2 – Guilt
Wildwind Community Church
David K. Flowers
April 15, 2007
A defendant was on trial for murder. There was strong evidence indicating guilt, but there was no corpse. In the defense’s closing statement the lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, resorted to a trick: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all,” the lawyer said as he looked at his watch. “Within one minute, the person presumed dead in this case will walk into this courtroom.”
He looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked on eagerly. A minute passed. Nothing happened. Finally the lawyer said, “Actually, I made up the previous statement. But you all looked on with anticipation. I therefore put it to you that there is reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed and insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.”
The jury, clearly confused, retired to deliberate. A few minutes later, the jury returned and pronounced a verdict of guilty. “But how?” inquired the lawyer. “You must have had some doubt. I saw all of you stare at the door.” The jury foreman replied: “Oh, we looked. But your client didn’t.”
I want to talk to you about guilt today. We’re in part 2 today of our series “Stuff Jesus Changed.” Basically I think people fit into one of three groups with regard to guilt. First there are the people who never feel guilty. Interestingly enough, they’re usually the ones who have most to feel guilty about, but they have antisocial personalities and no conscience and no amount of wrongdoing leaves them feeling guilty. Second, you have people who feel guilty sometimes – they have fairly healthy guilt mechanisms. The problem is they don’t always feel guilty about the right things! Third is those people who feel guilty all the time whether they’ve done anything wrong or not! These are your Charlie Browns. I want to talk to group two and group three people today, since there’s little point in talking about guilt to people who never feel guilty. Besides, most of those folks aren’t exactly regular church-goers, so I don’t think anyone will be getting left out today.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines guilt as "feelings of culpability, especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy; self-reproach." The definition tells you something important about guilt, doesn’t it? Nowhere does it say that guilt is related to things you actually did wrong! So let’s begin there, with the guilt many people feel for imagined offenses. The guilt you might feel for not mowing the lawn on the only day last week when it didn’t rain. The guilt from not joining that committee at work you were asked to join. The guilt from not giving to your church as much as you wish you could give. The guilt from not providing for your children in the way you believe you should. The list is endless. Let’s address this guilt from a Biblical perspective.
Actually, the only way to address this kind of guilt from a Biblical perspective would be to ignore it, because any time the Bible speaks of guilt, it speaks only in the context of sin. Most guilt we experience is related to social faux pas and situations, and scripture doesn’t have much to say about that. Still it’s a constant force in the lives of some people. So we’ll address this before moving on to what we might call legitimate Biblical guilt.
Where does guilt come from? Folks, this is huge, please listen carefully. I believe guilt comes from three places. First is a failure to live up to your standards for yourself. You failed to get the lawn mowed on the only clear day last week. What do you tell yourself? “I’m a terrible father. A good provider would have taken better care of his family. I’m not handling this single mom thing very well.” Your standards for yourself are basically a list of shoulds. A good father should be like this. A good mother should be like that. A good employee should be this way. A good church attender or member should do these things. A good husband or wife should do this or that. Anytime you fail to live up to your standards for yourself in one of these areas, in other words, anytime you violate one of your shoulds, you tend to feel guilty. After all, you didn’t do it, but you SHOULD have. You should have attended that class, or paid that money, or mowed that lawn.
Second is that false guilt comes from a failure to live up to the standards of others. The funny about this is the situation can be the same, but the guilt can come from a different place. Perhaps you don’t feel all that bad about not mowing your lawn, but you have a neighbor that keeps a stellar lawn, and you know HE thinks good homeowners mow their lawn every two days. In not mowing the lawn, you didn’t violate your own standards, but you violated HIS, and you feel terrible. You feel guilty, like mommy or daddy is going to be let down. You probably feel embarrassed about your yard. Maybe you feel lazy, or worry that he might think you are lazy.
Third is that false guilt comes from lack of confidence in our ability to make the best decisions for our lives. The problem with decisions is they can always be questioned and disagreed with. You might choose not to serve on that committee, but you know your girlfriend thinks that was a bad call, and you kind of wonder if maybe she’s right – maybe you don’t do enough for the school. You’re not confident that you made the right decision, because there is always another way of looking at things. When you make decisions for your life, and you lack confidence in those decisions, guilt will be the resulting feeling when you are around someone who you know disagrees with you.
Fourth and very important is that guilt comes from a desire to please other people. If you knew your neighbor’s standards for lawn care, but just didn’t care about them, it wouldn’t bother you if you failed to mow your lawn once in a while. Violating the standards of another person – not measuring up – will only bother you if you care about measuring up. Or how about serving on the committee? Even if you were confident that you did the right thing for you, maybe you just really care what your girlfriend thinks about you, and it bugs you that she might think you don’t do enough for the school.
So those are the sources of false guilt. Now let me make a few other observations about false guilt before we move into the scriptural stuff. Understand folks, I’m discussing this right now because some people don’t understand the difference between true guilt and false guilt, and we can’t really deal honestly with true guilt if we don’t distinguish it from false guilt.
A few other observations about guilt, and this these are true of both false guilt, where you’ve done nothing wrong, and true guilt where you have. First, no one can make you feel guilty. When you say, “I went to that church and the pastor made me feel super guilty,” that’s not actually true. You felt guilty for a reason totally unrelated to the pastor. It could be because you discovered during the sermon that you are violating your standards for yourself. It could be because you discovered you are violating someone else’s standards. It could be because you lack confidence in the decisions you have made for your life. It could be because you care what the pastor thinks of you. Or it could be, and probably is, some combination of those things. But one thing is certain. No one else can make you feel guilty. Feelings of guilt, as we have just seen, come from your own vulnerabilities, your own lack of confidence, your own “stuff.” Which leads to a second observation about guilt.
Second, each person should be careful not to try to use guilt to manipulate others, and each person should take responsibility for his/her own guilt. Perhaps your mother-in-law always finds a way to make you feel guilty about not visiting more often. It’s true that she shouldn’t do that. At the same time, you should take responsibility for the guilt you are feeling – the only reason she succeeded is because of a vulnerability that’s already in you. Maybe you are violating not only her standards of how often you should visit, but your own as well, and maybe you really need to listen to your own conscience. In other words, maybe there’s some truth in this guilt! See what I’m saying? She has no right to try to make you feel bad, but you have to own it if you do. After all, making you feel bad might not have been her intention – perhaps she just wanted to express how much she loves and misses you and that she is lonely. If you were in her position, you might feel the same way.
As a pastor I try to live by this. My job is to speak what I believe is the truth as clearly and consistently as I can. I am aware that people are going to walk out of here sometimes thinking, “Man, he made me feel hugely guilty.” All I can do is my very best to make sure that my aim is not to manipulate, but to put truth out there for people to act on however they might need to. I can’t guilt-proof a message, for the reason I mentioned earlier. We feel guilty because of some kind of vulnerability in ourselves, so no matter what a pastor says, and what his/her intentions, someone might end up feeling guilty. Our job is to stay away from consciously playing the guilt-string, and then ask people to be responsible for their own guilt. Let me give you some great examples in the church, so you can see the difference.
Truth: Your church needs money to keep operating, and you have an opportunity to play a part. We hope you will do that.
Guilt: How is your church supposed to keep operating without money? If you don’t give, you must not really care.
Truth: As Christ-followers, we must be in the Word. Here are ways to pursue that.
Guilt: If you are not in the Word, I guess that shows what you really think about God.
Truth: I miss you when you don’t come to small group. It makes me feel like you don’t value our relationship.
Guilt: You miss small group all the time. You must not value our relationship.
Hopefully you see a clear difference there, in each of those. You see where I’m going with this? Truth is something we state clearly, factually, and as gently as possible, laying it out there and allowing people to come up with their own response. Guilt is when we try to control the response – we intentionally steer what we say to make them feel bad. Realize that sometimes people may feel bad in response to truth. If you tell somebody you miss them when they skip small group and it makes you feel they don’t value the relationship, the other person might well feel bad about that. But hopefully that was not your intention. Whatever they say next might make you feel bad as well, but again, they’re responsible to lay out an honest response and to not try to manipulate your feelings. This is tricky. It’s a balancing act where every speaker in a relationship tries not to use guilt, and every listener takes responsibility for guilt when they feel it, precisely because guilt can often come in response to truth.
So when you feel guilty, what do you do? Remember that anytime you feel guilty, it’s because of a vulnerability that’s already in you. You’re not meeting your standards for yourself, you’re not meeting the standards of others for you and you care about that, maybe you don’t feel confident in your ability to make the right decisions for your life. What you do first when you feel guilt is try to identify whether there’s truth in it. Are you really not visiting your mother-in-law often enough? If there’s no truth there, let it go. My guess is you’ll feel much better having come to that conclusion. If there is truth in it, decide what you can reasonably do, and then do it. That’s within your control. And then simply ignore guilt from that time on. You’ve made a plan, and guilt will eat you alive if you let it. Heck, feel guilty between 7 and 8 in the morning, then let it go. Make a plan, and then work the plan. And believe it or not, you’ll feel much better when you stop thinking that other people are making you feel guilty. If they can make you feel that way, that’s beyond your control. But if guilt comes from within you, you can decide what to do with it. Examine your vulnerabilities, look closely at your standards for yourself, ask yourself why the opinions of others matter so much. Increased self-awareness can really help break the hold things have on us.
There are many other things you can do to deal with guilt, but I want to get into scriptural guilt issues at this point. We don’t have much time left, but guilt in scripture is not that complicated. In scripture guilt always comes as a result of wrongdoing, and our guilt is simply assumed.
John 3:19 (NIV)
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
The verdict? C’mon, can we get much clearer than that when we’re talking about guilt? Light has come into the world, but human beings chose darkness instead of light. Sounds like a guilty verdict to me.
Romans 3:23 (NLT)
23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
Biblically speaking, we are all guilty. We have all sinned. Jesus teaches that our sinful actions and attitudes come from a sinful personality, a sinful orientation, a sinful disposition. That’s why the Bible teaches there is nothing you can do to set things right with God. No matter how hard you try to conceal a sinful heart, it will invariably leak into sinful attitudes and actions – it cannot help but do so. Therefore we all stand guilty.
I want to point out a few things about sin-guilt. First, sin-guilt is independent of emotion. You may feel guilty before God, or you may feel innocent before God, or you may not feel either way, but factually you are guilty of sin. If you are married, some days you may feel married, some days you may not, some days you might not be paying much attention either way – but factually you are married. Your feelings have nothing to do with the fact. Scripturally we are guilty of sin regardless of our feelings. Sin-guilt is a spiritual state, and a spiritual fact, and has nothing to do with feelings.
Second, because sin-guilt is not dependent on feelings, we must use God’s Word as the standard for measuring where we are with God. How healthy could your marriage be if you figured on some days it was okay to act married and other days it was okay to not act married, based on how you happened to feel on a given day? How much stability could there be in that relationship? You know the answer to that. For there to be stability that leads to connection and intimacy, there must be a standard that does not change. In marriage that standard is called a legal contract. Because of that contract, you are married whether you feel like it or not, and if you want the marriage to be healthy, you’d better remember that you’re married – and you’d better act like it. For there to be stability in our relationship with God that can lead to connection and intimacy with him, there must be a standard that does not change. In the Christian faith, that standard is God’s Word. Because of God’s Word, you can know for sure where you stand with God, regardless of your feelings. And if you want your relationship with God to be healthy, you’d better remember that it’s God’s opinion that counts here, and you’d better learn to act like it.
Third, God’s Word pronounces us both guilty and not guilty! The Biblical story is that all of us have sinned, we are all sinners at heart, we are all guilty. But because of Jesus, because of his life and death and resurrection, God is willing to lift the burden of our guilt. That’s the good news today, the freedom-bringing stuff in all of this.
Romans 8:1-2 (NLT)
1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 For the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you through Christ Jesus from the power of sin that leads to death.
Because of Jesus we do not have to live under the guilt of sin. Though all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ. That is God’s Word to us on sin-guilt. Christians understand that getting out from under the guilt of sin involves acknowledging our sin and repenting from it, in other words deciding to pursue God’s direction for our lives instead of our own. So the most important step in dealing with true spiritual guilt is to confess your sin to God and commit your life to him.
Now what if we have allowed God to come into our lives and forgive our sin, but we still find ourselves plagued with guilt over past sins? After all, guilt is complex. We can feel guilt when we are not guilty, or we can not feel guilty when we really are! What do we do when we find ourselves feeling guilty for things that we know God has forgiven us for?
The answer is that we must forgive ourselves. Ongoing guilt feelings usually signify that you have not let go of the issue. Realize that ongoing guilt will keep you from living in freedom and being an effective witness in the world for God. You simply must forgive yourself. Like so many spiritual things, this battle takes place in the mind. Forgive yourself. Every time guilt creeps up, remember you have been forgiven by God and by yourself. Learn to live in that forgiveness – like I said last week, learn how to live without those chains. Do not wallow. Do not allow it to overtake you. Do not believe that you should not forgive yourself because what you did was unforgivable. After all, if God has forgiven you, what right do you have to not let it go?
Romans 8:33 (NIV)
33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
Some people think that their guilt feelings come from God. There is only one kind of godly guilt and that’s guilt over real, actual, unconfessed sin. That is legitimate guilt. Once it is confessed and we have received forgiveness, guilt over it brings only further suffering and bondage.
So we must forgive ourselves. This is a learned thing. You learn to see yourself as worthy of forgiveness only by experiencing the forgiveness of others. If not much forgiveness was shown to you growing up, then you will need to retrain your mind away from the unforgiveness of parents, siblings, or friends, and toward the forgiveness and mercy of God who DOES think you are worth forgiving, who DOES extend grace to you, and who DOES, in the final analysis, ask you to accept his forgiveness and get on with the business of serving him.
And so we end here today, with forgiveness. We need forgiveness to eradicate our guilt. But once we receive forgiveness (from God, from ourselves, from the person we may have wronged), we must leave guilt behind. Where do you stand today with regard to sin-guilt? Are you aware that you stand guilty of sin before God? Do you want to receive God’s forgiveness? Have you received forgiveness from God but not forgiven yourself? I close with a promise from God’s Word, and then we will pray based on this promise.
1 John 1:8-9 (NLT)
8 If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.
Let’s pray. God, I pray today on behalf of those who have sin to confess, those who right now need your mercy, your grace, your forgiveness. Thank you that they can have it through Jesus. I pray your Holy Spirit would cleanse them, that they would commit their way to you and allow you to be not just the forgiver of their sins, but the leader of their lives. I pray for those today who need to forgive themselves. Let them turn away today from that voice and hear your voice instead – your voice that says I love you, and I forgive you. Follow me. Amen.
