What is guilt?
To simply define it, guilt is both a cognitive and an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes that he or she has violated a moral standard and is responsible for that violation. In essence, it is the knowledge, or at least the belief, that a person has done wrong. Remorse, or feeling bad about doing wrong, is strongly tied to guilt but doesn’t always accompany it. It is regret for doing what was done and is often accompanied by a desire to make amends.
Guilt can come as a result of something that we actually did wrong. It can come from a desire for something, such as pain or bad circumstances to come to someone else. It can come from sinful thoughts such as lust or coveting.
Jesus, while He taught of forgiveness repeatedly, also broadened the scope of what constituted murder and adultery when He said that thinking evil of your brother was the same as murder and to lust in your heart was the same as to commit adultery. Therefore, guilt can come from sinful thoughts as well as deeds.
While a court will not hand down the same sentence to a person who considers or plots a crime as to a person who commits it, God views guilt quite differently. He starts with the heart and intention(s) of the person and looks out from there.
Guilt can also come from thinking that you did something wrong, even if you didn’t. That’s right, and no one is better at creating this confusion than the devil himself. As much as Satan will try to make you feel that sinning is not wrong, he is also a master of making people feel guilty for things that are not their fault.
I have personally experienced and counseled people who had medical conditions that kept them from being able to do certain things that society as a whole may have expected them to do.
For example, a mother who was once in the hospital following a nervous breakdown was feeling guilty because she was not home caring for her family. She was on the verge of checking herself out against medical advice to go home to the very family that had been toxic to her emotional health, to begin with, in order to take care of them.
A man at the bedside of his dying wife felt that he was neglecting his job because he was “just sitting around”, not working.
Society, and the devil, had made these people feel guilty for caring either for themselves or others in ways that really could not be ignored at the time. There are countless other examples similar to these that I have encountered in my years of ministry, most of them in my time as a hospital chaplain where people felt guilty when duties were calling them in different directions.
There are also children I have talked to whose parents have made them feel guilty because of the money it costs to feed and clothe them, to the point that they are willing to do without necessary items like shoes that fit or needed items for school.
Guilt can also come when loyalty is challenged. When working as a counselor at a residential drug treatment center, more than once I encountered young men who had lived in homes where drugs had been introduced to them by their own parents, siblings, or other family members. In treatment, they had realized that the only way to truly be free of their chains they must sever ties with their families who refused to change.
This often created conflict and a sense of guilt, where some of them felt that they were abandoning their roots, their families who “loved” them, even if these people were destroying their lives. This guilt, however, was not of God but of the devil, who would love nothing more than to see these men return from eighteen months of turning their lives around in a Christ-centered treatment environment, only to fall right back into his pit!
These young men knew that the only way to free themselves from the evils of their life of sin was to sever a toxic relationship but an inherent sense of loyalty to family tugged at them to stay. What a wonderful tool guilt is!
Guilt can send you traversing along a path of uncertainty.
Guilt also hampers our ability to move on after we have been forgiven. This can be the greatest setback to Christians in our ability to move forward. Understanding and accepting that once forgiven, we have no need and actually, no right, to feel guilty and longer!
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30, KJV) (Emphasis mine)
When Jesus cried out, “It is finished”, He was declared that in His death, the forgiveness of our sins and the need to carry guilt for them was gone for all who believed. It was, in fact, finished.
Carrying guilt after we have accepted Jesus’ sacrifice as the means of our salvation, saying that we believe that He died for our sins and that the grace of God cleanses us and grants us freedom from the eternal damnation that we deserve, only to live with the shame and guilt that we may continue to harbor, essentially is saying, “I feel guilty for a sin that I committed because I still carry it with me. Jesus’ death wasn’t enough to wash away my ‘special sins’.”
What a slap in the face to our Lord, who is all-powerful, able to form all creation with His spoken word; able to heal, bring life, death, forgive and hold the fate of all mankind in the palm of His hand.
Is guilt ever good?
With all this said, it may seem that feeling guilty is never good. While holding onto guilt after being forgiven is unhealthy and, as we saw, even sinful, feelings of guilt are actually put in our hearts by God for a purpose.
Let’s face it; isn’t a sense of guilt sometimes the best deterrent to doing wrong in the first place? Perhaps you consider cheating, lying, looking at that attractive girl a little longer than you know you should…the list goes on.
Guilt may be the thing that pinches you and gives you a resounding “Don’t do that!” reminder that you shouldn’t, even before you realize why.
In II Samuel 12, the prophet Nathan confronted David about his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba. In doing so, David, who had lived with this sin for some time, confesses his sin but only because he feels guilt and shame. Had he felt nothing wrong had been done, he may have admitted to what he had done but tried to justify it.
David mentions this guilt and askes God’s forgiveness as we read in Psalm 51. The entire chapter speaks of the transgression but David’s guilt and admission of his sin are spelled out clearly in verse 2:
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:2 KJV)
David, although he was punished for his sin with the loss of the son conceived in adultery, was nonetheless forgiven and able to able to restore his relationship with God and go on to be known as a man after God’s own heart.
Where does guilt fit into your life today?
No doubt, we have all done wrong. We have all felt guilt for things we have done. The question is, are you feeling guilt today for things that have been forgiven? Have you been washed by the blood of Jesus and cleansed as He promised? If so, why are you holding onto that guilt?
If, on the other hand, you have unconfessed sins, are you holding onto that guilt because you are ashamed to go before the King with them? Don’t you know that He already knows about them and is waiting for you with loving arms?
On the other hand, if you have never accepted the remarkable gift that Jesus Christ has to offer, today can be the day that you do it. You can start by confessing your sins to Him right here and now.
Any guilt you are feeling can be let go and you can begin a new life.
If you choose to do this, I would love to hear from you.