Bryan Craddock - Overcoming Guilt and Shame

Have you ever thought about the theology of clothing? I'm not talking about Christian T-shirts. I'm talking about any clothing. Expensive or cheap, clean or dirty, formal or casual, trendy or outdated, modest or immodest--there is a basic theological point communicated by all clothes.

Let me show you what I mean. Turn with me to the second chapter of the Bible, Genesis 2, and read with me the words of the last verse in the chapter, verse 25. This statement describes what it was like to live in a perfect world. It says, "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."

There was no clothing. It wasn't needed. Of course, Adam and Eve were the only two people in existence at this point. With husband and wife and no one else around, why bother with clothes? But the point wasn't that they had complete privacy. The point is found in those last words. They were not ashamed.

They weren't just physically naked. They were completely open with one another. They didn't have anything hidden. There was no secret past. There were no dark corners of their lives. There were no thoughts better left unsaid. They lived in complete and total transparency because they had nothing to be ashamed of. But all of that changed in chapter 3.

 1Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?"

 2The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

 3but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'"

 4The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die!

 5"For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

 6When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.

 8They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

 9Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?"

 10He said, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself."

 

Here's the theological point of clothing. Clothing says that we have something to be ashamed about. Clothing says that we can't live totally open lives anymore. Clothing says that we have experienced evil. We have sinned. We have experienced what it is like to disobey God and to find ourselves stained with guilt. So we not only cover up our bodies--we keep our thoughts to ourselves. We hide away our past. We live in fear that our true self will one day be exposed.

That first sin of Adam and Eve had permanent effects. Even those who try to deny all standards of right and wrong, even those who pretend to be unashamed of showing off their nakedness, still experience the pangs of a guilty conscience.

In his textbook on Christian counseling, Gary Collins, a former professor of psychology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, writes, "Talk with people who are depressed, lonely, grieving, members of violent families, homosexual, alcoholic, terminally ill, struggling with marriage turmoil, or facing almost any other problem, and you will find people who experience guilt as part of their difficulties... [Guilt] has been called the crucial factor in the problems that people bring to Christian counselors." In order to overcome life's challenges like those Collins lists, we absolutely must learn how to overcome guilt.

To answer that question, one key Scripture to which we can turn is 1 John 1:5-2:2. There the Apostle John wrote,
 5This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

 6If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;

 7but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

 8If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

 9If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.


 2:1My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;

 2and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

I think we can summarize what this passage has to say about overcoming guilt and shame with six steps.

1. Seek the Source

Where does our sense of guilt come from? That first verse we read, 1 John 1:5, says it well: "God is Light and in Him there is no darkness." What exactly does that mean?

We often think of light and dark as a symbol of good and evil, but why do we think of it that way? Darkness obscures. Darkness hides. When you want to do something and you don't want anyone else to know, you do it in the darkness. The majority of crimes take place at night. We instinctively know that, even at a young age when we're afraid of the dark.

On the other hand, light exposes. Light reveals. We read in Genesis 2 that before the fall, Adam and Eve were both naked in full daylight, but they weren't ashamed. It wasn't until they sinned that they began to find ways to cover up, to hide themselves from the full exposure of the light.

John tells us that God is light. In a sense that speaks to the purity of His character. But I think the point that John is making is that God is all-knowing. He is revealing. He is truth. His very existence shines so brightly that it exposes our sins. Psalm 36:9 says, "In Your light we see light."

Again, we see this idea in the story of Adam and Eve. They didn't just cover their bodies. They ran away and hid from the presence of God. His presence exposed their sin and made them feel guilty. The light of God's presence--you might even say God's very nature--is what prompts guilt.

Now God isn't the only source of guilt. There are other sources. Sometimes we experience guilt when we go against the standards and expectations of our family or friends. Some people, including churches, excel at making people feel guilty. Some of us may feel guilt over things that someone did to us. We may feel guilt when we fall short of our own expectations for ourselves. That's why I say that the first step in overcoming guilt is to seek the source. You may be judging yourself by some human standard that is actually different than God's standard.

This was a real problem in Jesus' day. One of the Jewish groups, the Pharisees, emphasized very strict obedience. They not only followed God's Law. They created all kinds of additional specific rules. These rules were supposed to help people stay an extra step away from violating God's Law.

That sounds good, in theory, but in practice people kept the minor rules of man and often violated the heart behind God's Law. For example, Jesus once confronted them and said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others" (Matthew 23:23). Mint, dill, and cummin are herbs, small plants. The Pharisees made a big deal about the little things, but neglected the important things.

Jesus said, "[The Pharisees] tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger" (Matthew 23:4). The Pharisees were experts at making people feel guilty. But that guilt was false. It's source was the  legalistic human rules of the Pharisees.

Seek the source of your guilt. Go to the Scripture. See if the things you feel guilty about really line up with God's revealed values and standards. If the guilt you are feeling is not truly from God, then you need to work at ignoring it. The best way to do this is to draw near to God so that His light outshines all the other expectations that people try to force upon us.

On the other hand, if the guilt you are feeling is true guilt, a violation of God's commands, then you need to take a second step.

2. Take Responsibility

There are all kinds of games we play to avoid true guilt. We blame other people. That's what Adam and Eve did. We look for all kinds of reasons to justify our behavior and explain why it's really OK. Sometimes we get angry. Sometimes we lie and say that we didn't do it. Sometimes we cover up. Sometimes we try to escape by avoiding people or avoiding anything to do with God. Sometimes we try to drown out our guilt with other things - alcohol, food, entertainment, work, or anything to keep us busy. Sometimes we even try to silence our guilt by openly engaging in more and more sinful behavior. None of these tactics ever work. They may serve to sear our consciences on the outside. But the pain of guilt is still there eating away at us on the inside.

John recognized our tendency to avoid our guilt. He confronts it three times in the passage we read. Verse 6 says, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." Verse 8 says, "If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us." Verse 10 says, "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us." John says that it comes down to this. Either you have sinned and are guilty before God, or God is a liar because God's Word says that,  "All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

Now we're not talking here about taking responsibility in the generic sense of saying, "Yes, I'm a sinner, we're all sinners." Verse 9 speaks of confessing our sins. As I have said on other occasions, the Greek word for "confess" refers to saying the same thing about our sins as God says. That means that we must see each sinful deed for what it is, an act of rebellion against God's authority and a gross violation of God's perfect standard.

We find a good example of confession in David's prayer after he had committed adultery. In Psalm 51:4 He said to God, "Against You, You only, I have sinned and done what is evil in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge." David was taking full responsibility for the sin he committed. He acknowledged that he was worthy of God's judgment.

The same principle applies when we have sinned against people. We shouldn't offer excuses. We need to take responsibility. I'll say more about overcoming conflict and forgiveness in our relationships with people in future messages in this series.

It's not easy to take responsibility like this. It requires us to humble ourselves to bow before God. But we don't like to do that. It seems weak to us. We like to think of ourselves as strong and unbending. That reminds me of an old fable comparing a big old tree and a reed. The reed seems weak because it flaps around in the wind, while the tree stands firm. But when a powerful storm comes, the stubborn tree can be broken or even completely uprooted. The reed's humility before the storm is what saves it.

Will you gladly bend when you feel the winds of conviction blow? Or are you stubborn and proud? Take responsibility and acknowledge your guilt. Humble yourself before God. Cast yourself upon His mercy.

3. Believe in Christ

The true solution to guilt is found in Jesus Christ. John spoke of this in verse 7: "The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin." He speaks of Christ in those first verses in chapter 2: "And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world."

In the Old Testament, God established the principle that every sin deserves punishment. Guilt is not just a feeling. Many people today try to discount and ignore all feelings of guilt. That doesn't work because guilt is a spiritual and legal reality before God.

God also introduced a solution for guilt in the Old Testament--animal sacrifice. God accepted the sacrifice of an animal as a substitute for the punishment of an individual or a group. But animal sacrifice wasn't really enough. It was only symbolic. Plus, people had to do it over and over again. The blood never stopped flowing.

Think of how many times we sin during a day, a year, a lifetime. Every time we sin, we are offending our infinitely pure and holy God. The punishment for sin couldn't be anything less than an infinite, eternal punishment - spiritual death, separation from God forever. And that's just for an individual. Multiply that for every person who has ever lived. The substitute for our punishment would have to be equally infinite.

That is what we find in Jesus Christ. As God, the Son, it is unfathomable that He would become human in order to suffer and die - not just physically, but spiritually being separated from God the Father. Yet that is what Jesus did for us. That is what John means by the word propitiation. Jesus' death is the true sacrifice that makes forgiveness and spiritual cleansing possible for the entire world.

There is only one condition if you would like to receive this salvation. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). You must believe in Jesus. You must entrust yourself to His care.

In one sense the feelings of guilt and shame that we experience are a great blessing. They help us to see our need for Jesus Christ. When we deny our guilt, we are actually hurting ourselves. Don't deny your guilt before God. Accept it, and see that in His great love for you God has provided a way for you to be truly set free from guilt through Christ.

4. Accept Forgiveness

At times I speak with people who have sensed their guilt before God. They have taken responsibility for it and have believed in Jesus Christ. But they continue to feel ongoing guilt over their sin.

1 John 1:9 speaks so powerfully to this situation: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This forgiveness takes place in the mind of God. It's not something we see or even feel. God simply makes this incredible promise. And we have to accept His promise by faith.

I would suggest that you commit this verse to memory. Whenever you are tempted to feel guilty or to feel unworthy of God, remind yourself of these words. When you have believed and are confessing your sins, then your forgiveness is guaranteed by the faithfulness and righteousness of God.

5. Pursue Sinlessness

John speaks of this in 1 John 2:1: "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin." That is our goal. Once we've been forgiven, we should strive to not sin anymore.

I've been thinking over the past few weeks that sometimes we get so focused on not sinning, that we lose sight of the positive characteristics that we are supposed to pursue. This letter from John maintains a helpful balance. As opposed to sinning, John called us to love. Over in 1 John 4:11-12, John wrote, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us." That is what we live for, to see God's love perfected in us.

6. Keep Confessing

Even after John speaks of not sinning, he says, "And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." We will fall into sin again, but we do not lose our salvation. Once you believe in Jesus Christ, he continues to be your Advocate. It's as if he reminds God that He has paid for all of your sin.

Many people since the time of Christ have argued that if forgiveness is that easy, then people will take advantage of it to disobey God. When people say that, I don't think they understand the real nature of believing in Christ.

When you entrust your life to Christ, the Holy Spirit enters into you to convict you of sin. Certainly it's possible to ignore the Spirit. Paul mentions in Ephesians 4 that some of our actions grieve the Spirit. But generally speaking, believing in Christ requires a humility that tends to change the way we think about sin forever.

One indication of this change is seen in 1 John 1:9.  When John spoke of confessing our sins, he used the present tense in the original Greek wording. This means that the action is ongoing. John wasn't speaking about a one-time confession. He was talking about a life-long confession.

We often call Christians "believers," because that is an ongoing characteristic of our lives. The same is true about confession. We are confessors, who desire to be righteous, yet fall short. So whenever we sin, we confess that sin to God.

We don't do this to get forgiveness again. We don't believe as Catholics do that Christ has to be sacrificed for us again in some way. He paid the price for our sins, once and for all. As those who have been forgiven, we keep confessing our sins in gratitude that Christ has paid for them.

Conclusion

So this is the biblical approach to overcoming your guilt: seek the source, take responsibility, believe in Christ, accept forgiveness, pursue sinlessness, and keep confessing.

Adam and Eve's makeshift clothing in Genesis 3 provides us a memorable picture of guilt. Paul provides a picture of the answer to our guilt in Galatians 3:27. He wrote, "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ."

Jesus is the perfect robe for us--the only one available.  He covers over our nakedness so that we don't have to fear the light. He makes us presentable. He makes it so that we can stand before God without being ashamed.

Are you clothed in Christ? Have you come to embrace the real solution to your guilt? If not, I invite you to come to Christ today.

If you are clothed in Christ, would you renew your commitment to being a confessor? Would you renew your pursuit of sinlessness--your pursuit of love?

More Thoughts on Believing Forgiveness

Many of you indicated on your response cards last week that even though you have been a Christian for some time, you still find it hard to believe that God has forgiven you. I barely touched on that subject last week, so as we begin this morning, I thought it might be helpful to say a few more thoughts on it.

I think we find it hard to believe in forgiveness, not because we doubt God's faithfulness, but because we doubt our own. It's terribly frustrating to find ourselves committing the same sins time and time again. We begin to wonder, "Have I really repented? If so, why do I continue to fall into this sin?"

You're not the only one who feels that way. The Apostle Paul himself expressed similar thoughts. In Romans 7:14-25, Paul wrote,

 

14For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.

 15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

 16But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.

 17So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

 19For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

 20But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

 21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

 22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,

 23but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

 24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Why does Paul give thanks? This struggle is extremely frustrating. It doesn't seem like something to give thanks about.

It may help us to understand by thinking of our spiritual lives as a war. When war first breaks out, you never know who is going to win. Both sides are fighting for the same territory. But at some point, one side gains the upper hand. They seize the capitol and take control. A new king is on the throne. Enemy forces are still scattered throughout the territory. Battles are still taking place. But ultimate victory is certain.

That is what similar to what happens in our lives. We are saved when we invite Christ to take the throne in our lives. At that point, He frees our minds to desire obedience. But sinful desires and habits are still entrenched in our lives. Battles still take place as we seek to bring every part of our lives under Christ's lordship.

If there are no battles going on--if you're just coasting through life with no awareness of sin, then that is a serious problem. It probably means that Christ isn't really on the throne in your life. But when those tiresome and frustrating battles with temptation and sin are taking place day after day, be encouraged. The battles wouldn't be happening unless Christ were on the throne. And if Christ is on the throne, then ultimate victory is certain.

That's what Paul wrote in the next verse, Romans 8:1: "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." At the end of chapter 8 in verses 38 and 39, he expressed the certainty of our victory by saying, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Praise God for His great love for us!