Got Guilt?
TCF Sermon
June 20, 2010
The Apostles Paul and John, in most of their New Testament epistles, began with a greeting that included something like this one in
1 Corinthians 1:3 (NIV) Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In fact, it’s the exact same greeting in 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians, Romans, and 2 Thessalonians, and almost the exact same wording in Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon and 2 John.
So, on Father’s Day, we see it clearly stated that grace is from God our Father. And apparently, grace was pretty important in the scheme of things – why else would it appear in the greeting of 13 letters?
Now, unlike Mother’s Day, when I feel a genuine sense of obligation to focus the Sunday morning sermon on some sort of Mother’s Day theme, I feel no such obligation on Father’s Day.
So I began this morning’s sermon with an idea expressed in scripture that’s loosely connected to fathers, and to what we’re going to explore this morning, and that’s it. So, Happy Father’s Day.
Though the gospel is the Good News of God’s salvation by grace through faith, we tend to think of the gospel almost entirely in terms of what it means for our salvation.
Yes, we all know the basics. We’re all sinners, unable to earn our way into heaven. Because of that, we need the sacrificial gift of Jesus, God’s own Son, who loved us and gave Himself for us, and shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins, making a way for us to the Father, giving us eternal life with Him. So we, as Christians, have the desire to tell unbelievers this good news, so that they can receive this free gift of salvation, and spend eternity with God. All well and good, and perfectly appropriate.
But something we sometimes forget, and need to be reminded of, is this:
The gospel is just as much for Christians as for non-Christians.
We need the Good News of His grace after we’ve received Christ, just as much as we needed it to come to Him in the first place. The reason is somewhat different – after we’re saved we need the gospel to change us into the image and likeness of Christ, and that’s a lifelong process that theologians call sanctification. But the truth is, we still need the gospel of grace.
I know that we need to be reminded of this because of several things it’s easy to observe in almost any group of Christians. Perhaps the most telling observation is that we seem to carry around guilt, like we carry cell phones, or purses or wallets – in other words, guilt is almost always with us. It’s not always a crushing, debilitating guilt. In fact, for most of us it isn’t that at all. But it’s a low-level, almost shadow of guilt that follows us around during most of our lives.
Guilt over things like these (source: Kevin DeYoung blog)
• We could pray more.
• We aren’t bold enough in evangelism.
• We like sports too much.
• We watch movies and television too often.
• Our quiet times or our devotional life are too short, or we don’t do it often enough.
• We don’t give enough.
• We bought a new couch, or car, or TV.
• Our kids eat Cheetos and french fries. Or we eat Cheetos and French fries
• We don’t recycle enough.
• We need to lose 20 pounds.
• We could use our time better.
• We could live some place harder, or in something smaller – we could live more sacrificially, like some of our missionaries.
The bottom line is that we feel a sense of guilt for the things we don’t do often enough, well enough, or perfectly enough.
What do we do with all this behind the scenes guilt? We don’t feel stop-dead-in-our-tracks kind of remorse for these things. But these shortcomings can have a cumulative effect whereby even the mature Christian can feel like he’s rather disappointing to God, maybe just barely Christian. Kevin DeYoung
Here we are, followers of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Saved, not only from death, but saved from the power of sin. Headed for eternal life. Yet we carry this sense of failure around. I wonder if that’s what God really wants for us?
Now the challenge is that guilt can be a good thing. We’re supposed to feel guilt about sin in our lives, and we all sin. If we never feel a sense of guilt, we’ll never repent and we’ll just wallow in our sin, and we won’t experience the transformation that scripture assures those who follow Christ.
The other reality is that it’s easy for any of us to grow complacent – it’s part of our human nature to drift and we must resist that. Sometimes guilt can be an indicator that something’s wrong, something’s wrong with our attitudes or behaviors. It can bring conviction, and a genuine desire to change, and this is good and often necessary.
But instead, it often brings enough hints of condemnation rather than conviction, that we seem to be carrying around a sense of not being good enough, not doing well enough.
Now, I have to tell you that I believe this is a risky message for me to preach. It’s risky because the Word of God does bring conviction to us, and often, I feel a sense of direction to bring to you those parts of God’s Word that are convicting – convicting about our behavior, convicting about our attitudes. I don’t want to blunt those things we’ve heard preached from the pulpit in the past, nor those things we’ll no doubt hear in the future. This is a risky message because, if you don’t listen carefully, or if I don’t do a very good job outlining these ideas, I could be accused of teaching that it doesn’t matter how we live our lives, because God’s amazing grace covers all our shortcomings and our sins.
And His grace does cover our sins. But it also does matter how we live our lives, as we’ll see this morning.
As in many things spiritual, there is often a sense of both/and, and not just either/or. In this case, sometimes the scales get tipped too far toward the range of guilt and condemnation we can feel, and we live our lives, saved by God’s grace, but living by our own failed efforts.
We must remember what Romans 8:1 tells us:
Romans 8:1 (NIV) Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
And if we are, in fact, in Christ Jesus, then any sense of guilt we feel is meant to be used as part of our motivation - conviction toward needed change, and not a sense of condemnation because we can’t measure up.
Because the truth is, we can’t measure up – we can’t be good enough. How good is good enough for us to deserve salvation? There’s no such thing as good enough. And after we’re justified in Christ, after we’ve received that gift of salvation that’s only found in His sacrifice for us, we still can’t measure up. We’re still unable to be good enough, or change ourselves by our own efforts, although now we’re equipped by the Holy Spirit to change.
So why do we feel guilty because we can’t measure up? I found some possible reasons we often have this low-level sense of guilt in an article by a writer and pastor named Kevin DeYoung.
1. We don’t fully embrace the good news of the gospel.
We forget that we have been made alive together with Christ. We have been raised with him. We have been saved through faith alone. And this is the gift of God, not a result of works, as it tells us in Ephesians 2.
We can be so scared of antinomianism, which is a legitimate danger, that we are afraid to speak too lavishly of God’s grace. But if we’ve never been charged with being antinomian, we probably haven’t presented the gospel in all its scandalous glory. Kevin DeYoung
Let’s take just a quick sidebar to explore this idea of antinomianism. It’s a good theological word you may not be familiar with, but it relates to what we’re exploring this morning. Antinomianism is the idea that we are under no obligation to obey any laws of ethics or morality. Antinomianism is the polar opposite of legalism, which includes the idea that obedience to specific rules is necessary for salvation.
It is the unbiblical practice of living without regard to the righteousness of God, and using God’s grace as a license to sin. In other words, since grace is infinite, and since we are saved by grace, then we can sin all we want and still be saved.
Antinomianism is wrong because even though as Christians we are not under the Law, we still fulfill the Law in the Law of love.
Romans 13:8-10 (NIV) Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
We are to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves, and thus avoid the offense of sin which cost God His only begotten Son. Paul addresses this heresy of antinomianism quite clearly in Romans:
Romans 6:1-4 (ESV) What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Billy Graham’s grandson Tullian Tchividjian wrote:
There are two “laws” we can choose to live by other than Christ: the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules” or the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” If most people outside the church are guilty of “break the rules” legalism, most people inside the church are guilty of “keep the rules” legalism.
Another reason Christians seem to carry a low-level guilt is:
2. Christians tend to motivate each other by guilt rather than grace. Instead of urging our fellow believers to be who they are in Christ, we command them to do more for Christ. So we see Christlikeness as something we are messing up bigtime, when we should see it as something we already possess but need to grow into.
3. Most of our low-level guilt falls under the ambiguous category of “not doing enough.”
Let’s remember the list we just looked at – those things we tend to feel guilty about. None of the items are necessarily sinful. They all deal with possible infractions, perceptions, and ways in which we’d like to do more. These are the hardest areas to deal with, because no Christian, for example, will ever confess to praying enough. So it is always easy to feel terrible about prayer (or evangelism or giving or any number of disciplines). We must be careful that we don’t insist on a certain standard of practice, when the Bible merely insists on a general principle.
Here’s another example of this. Every Christian should give generously and contribute to the needs of the saints.
2 Corinthians 9:6-11 (NIV) Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: "He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
So we’re supposed to be generous with our possessions. But, what this generosity looks like – in other words, how much we give, how much we keep– is not bound by any formula, nor should we compel people to give certain amounts. As it says in verse 7, “each should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. “
So if we want people to be more generous, we’re better off using Paul’s example in 2 Corinthians, and emphasize the blessings of generosity, and the gospel-rooted motivation for generosity, as opposed to shaming those who don’t give much.
4. When we are truly guilty of sin it’s vital that we repent and receive God’s mercy.
Paul had a clean conscience, not because he never sinned, but, I would guess, because he quickly went to the Lord when he knew he was wrong, and rested in the “no condemnation” of the gospel (Rom. 8:1).
If we confess our sins, John says, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
I don’t believe we are meant to feel borderline miserable all the time. We are meant to live in the joy of our salvation. So when we sin–and we all sin –we confess it, get cleansed, and move on.
This underlines one of the great dangers with constant guilt: we learn to ignore our consciences. If we are truly sinning, we need to repent and implore the Lord to help us change. But if we aren’t sinning, if we are perhaps not as mature as we could be, or are not as disciplined as some believers, or we are making different choices that may be acceptable but not extraordinary, then we should not be made to feel guilty. Challenged, stirred, inspired, but not guilty. Deeper grace will produce better gratitude, which means less guilt. Kevin DeYoung
Some of us tend to take an almost Muslim view of how to keep people from sinning. Let’s take for example the biblical admonitions to keep our thoughts pure, and not give in to lust.
The way Muslims deal with this is an example. In many Muslim cultures, women are completely covered up. I know some men here who care about personal holiness, and who might prefer burqas to what we have to deal with at the mall or when watching television, or worse yet, at the beach.
So, the Muslim approach to resisting sin is to make tougher laws.
But the Biblical approach is to appeal to God’s grace.
…the fact is, the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical acceptance of sinners. The more Jesus is held up as being sufficient for our justification and sanctification, the more we begin to die to ourselves and live to God. Those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly understand that their standing with God is not based on their obedience, but Christ’s. Tullian Tchidividjian
So, the idea here is that, under the New Covenant, we don’t motivate obedience by giving people more laws. We motivate by giving them the gospel. That’s not to say that God isn’t concerned with obedience. The message of obedience to God is a hallmark of TCF’s teaching from this pulpit as long as I can remember.
But what kind of obedience does God want from us? Does He want Abel’s obedience and his heart attitude, which made his sacrifice acceptable to God, or Cain’s?
The obedience that pleases God is obedience that flows from faith—faith in what God has already done, and trust for what he will do in the future. And even though we need to obey even if we don’t feel like it, long-term, sustained, heart-felt, gospel motivated obedience can only come from faith and grace; not fear and guilt. Behavioral compliance without heart change, and only the gospel can change hearts, will be shallow and short lived. Tullian Tchividjian
We’re not seeing here that the law of God is unimportant, or that it’s not in any way good. The law serves a vital purpose. It reveals sin. It shows us the standard of righteousness. But the law cannot remove sin. Only the blood of Jesus, by faith applied to our lives, can remove sin. Only the grace of God has any power to keep us from sin.
The law shows us what God commands, what He expects from us. But it doesn’t have the power to help us do what it says. The law shows us what a sanctified life, a life changed into the image of Christ, looks like, but it doesn’t have the power to change our hearts, and make us different, in and of itself.
What does have that power is the gospel – the Good News of God’s grace, the reality of what Jesus has already done for us.
So, when we find the ability to obey, it comes from being compelled by the love of Christ, the completed work of redemption accomplished on the cross for us.
The law may be able to direct our paths, but only the gospel can drive us forward in Kingdom service and obedience, and in truly changed lives.
I found this word picture:
the law is like a set of railroad tracks. The tracks provide no power for the train but the train must stay on the tracks in order to function. The law never gives any power to do what it commands. Only the gospel has power, as it were, to move the train.
TCF has always been a church that challenges…challenges in the sense that most Sundays, we hear something that challenges our faith and motivates us. We’re challenged to be serious about our walk with Christ, to live sacrificially, to give, to serve, to be obedient.
That’s one reason I’m here – because I know I need these kinds of admonitions. I have a sense that that’s a reason many of you are here, too – because you take your faith seriously, and have a real desire to live wholeheartedly for the Lord.
We see and hear these challenges in a wide variety of contexts, from doing missions, to outreach, to our missions giving, to the call to live sacrificially.
However, we must be careful always to keep these challenges rooted and grounded in the grace of the gospel. We need to remember that our obedience to God grows out of the sacrificial obedience of Christ – all that God has done for us through Christ.
One author calls this
gospel-driven, grace-saturated, God-glorifying obedience.
David Platt
This is the kind of obedience that doesn’t leave us wondering if we’re good enough, because we know we’re not. This is the kind of obedience that doesn’t leave us wondering if we pray enough or give enough or serve enough.
Only Jesus has done enough. He said on the cross, “it is finished.” We, on the other hand, are still a work in progress, and the process of sanctification, changing us into the image and likeness of Christ, is still ongoing.
We don’t want to live our lives with guilt taking priority over gospel, or our ability to measure up being more important than God’s grace. Paul wrote this to the Christians in Galatia:
Galatians 2:21-3:5 (NIV) I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing--if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
The key verse in the context of what we’re looking at this morning is verse 3:
Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
Paul had some pretty strong words about human effort. When we think we’re doing pretty well, doing lots of good things,
Paul points out that we’re not the hot stuff we think we are. In comparison to God’s holiness, he writes in Romans:
Romans 3:10-12 (NIV) As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one."
So much for our lists of rules. So much for our human effort. Despite this biblical understanding of our human effort being as, it says in Isaiah, "filthy rags," we sometimes continue on in the Christian life as if our efforts will earn us something toward eternity, or even our sanctification.
That’s why we get trapped in the performance mentality. That’s why many of us believe if we’ve performed well and had a "good" day, for example, if we read our Bibles this morning, or if we’ve performed some selfless act of service, we are then in a position for God to bless us.
This means that although we believe we’re saved by grace, we act as if we believe we can earn, or forfeit, God’s blessing in our daily lives by our performance. The reverse is also true. When we blow it and we know it - - when we’ve had a "bad" day with God - no Bible reading, no prayer, kicked the dog, cussed out the driver who cut us off in traffic, stuff like that, we might almost expect everything to go wrong.
The truth is, though, that there is never a day when we are worthy enough to receive His blessings. The fact remains, however, that He blesses us anyway – it’s about His grace.
What it all comes back to is our response to God’s love and grace. What God wants is not a good performance. He wants my heart. And from my heart’s response to His amazing grace, good works, yes, even good performance will flow.
It’s the idea that we’ve been marvelously saved from sin and death - at a tremendous cost to God and His son Jesus. We’ve been rescued from an eternity apart from the living God by His amazing grace. How can we do anything but love Him, follow Him, please Him?
Not because we’re repaying a debt, but because we love Him.
2 Cor. 9:8 says:
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
So, living by God’s grace does not mean we shouldn’t go to church, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be faithful in serving, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be faithful in reading the word, faithful in prayer, faithful in all the spiritual disciplines - careful in guarding against, and rooting out, sin from our lives.
But, as author Jerry Bridges wrote:
" the pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God, otherwise it is doomed to failure" He says, "the pursuit of holiness must be motivated by an ever-increasing understanding of the grace of God, or else it can become oppressive and joyless."
One commentary noted:
"The Galatian Christians, like you and I, stand always at just such a fork. We must either take the path of relating to God through Law, or of relating to God by grace through faith. We cannot have it both ways. If we are trying to relate to God through the Law, we are not living by faith, and being a Christian will make no practical difference in our lives. Our hope for transformation now will be replaced by futile self-effort, for "the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Galatians 5:6)."
In closing, let’s remember that guilt-driven motivation is a far cry from the freedom we have in Christ and in His grace. Let’s read this passage from Galatians:
Galatians 5:1-6 (NIV) It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised (or be bound by any set of rules), Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Let’s be the kind of Christians who express our faith through love for God in gospel-driven, grace-saturated, God-glorifying obedience.
Pray
