Handling Guilt or Shame



The Most Tortured Conscience Can Find Peace







She had been a stripper, prostitute, drug addict and demon-possessed witch. It was hard to imagine a perversion or Satanic form of depravity she hadn’t wallowed in. Two thousand years ago, Christ agonized on a Roman cross, shedding his life-blood for those very sins. She continued in her extreme degradation. Finally, she joined herself to Jesus, by faith trading her wickedness for Christ’s holiness. One day Jesus appeared to her and said, ‘You are a chaste virgin in my sight.’

None of us have an infallible conscience. In fact, most of our consciences are at times wildly inaccurate. If you want Scriptural proof of this, you’ll find plenty.

So when facing guilt feelings, the most important thing is to establish whether your guilt is real or imaginary. Tragically, most people stand guilty before God and are hardly aware of it. They wrongly imagine that if there is a heaven, they have a good chance of going there. On the other hand, there are countless thousands whom God regards as spotlessly pure and innocent, and yet are riddled with guilt feelings.

We must clearly differentiate between deceptive feelings and spiritual reality.


You have every right to feel guilty and fearful before God if:

1. You have not asked God’s forgiveness for your sin, trusting Jesus to have paid the full penalty for your sin by dying on the cross for you. Christ alone is capable of the divine miracle needed to wipe out all guilt.

2. You do not want God to take your sins from you. To refuse to be delivered from your pet sin is like a drowning man stubbornly refusing to let his rescuer drag him from the water. If you have no intention of giving up a particular sin, you’ll die in that sin. The sins you love are as deadly as the sins you despise.

Everyone who is not trusting Jesus for forgiveness, or does not want a sin-free life, is guilty before the Judge of the universe, regardless of how they feel.

If, however, you have met these two conditions, God’s smile is upon you. Any pangs of guilt or fear you suffer are simply an illusion – like fearing there’s an intruder in the house when it was only the sound of the wind. The feelings might exist, and they might be most unpleasant, but they are groundless. They have no correspondence to reality.

Just to be sure, let’s briefly expound these conditions for spiritual cleansing. Then we’ll move to some exciting facts.

1. You must believe the Scriptures that teach that Jesus, and only he, can remove your sin. (He alone can pay sin’s penalty because he alone has no sins of his own for which he must suffer.)

2. Once you put your faith in God, trusting that he is infinitely wise and good and always has your best interest at heart, [more] the only logical thing is to resolve to follow his leading on every matter, regardless of how scary and costly it may sometimes seem. This is simply a decision. A state of mind. It means that despite some sins still seeming attractive, you decide that God’s way is best and sign over to him control of your life. It means refusing to enjoy the ‘benefits’ of past sin. You will repay money you have stolen, not let people to continue believing a lie you have told, and so on. And it means shunning the hypocrisy of wanting God’s forgiveness while refusing to forgive someone else. (The issue for forgiving others is so crucial that it is dealt with in detail in a special webpage.)

Sin’s full penalty is death, and the sinless Son of God died for you. Why punish yourself? He’s already taken your punishment! Are you morally bankrupt? No way! Paid in full is stamped over your every account. By joining yourself to Jesus, a divine exchange takes place in which Jesus takes your sins upon himself (that’s what killed him) and his perfection becomes yours. The holiness of Jesus floods your entire being, flushing out every trace of sin. That makes you spotlessly pure and perfect in God’s eyes. Almighty God can embrace you and delight in you as intimately as he does his own eternal, sinless Son. Every whiff of sin is obliterated because Jesus died for your every sin. This central spiritual truth is expounded over and over in Bible. Scripture repeatedly promises this to you, but no where does it say you will feel that it has happened. The whole of Christianity is about choosing to believe spiritual reality instead of your inner feelings.

It is worth prayerfully studying, and even memorizing, the Scriptures listed in the above link, because this is a crucial area of spiritual attack. Just as Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and he overcame by believing and quoting the Scriptures, so you will be tempted over this matter and you can overcome by clinging to the dependable Word of God. Satan will disguise the true nature of the temptation, but it is actually a temptation to believe God is a liar. The Deceiver is trying to fool you into believing that God lied when he said that all your sins are forgiven, when Jesus said that all that come to him he will not cast out, etc. Don’t blacken God’s name by entertaining such a thought.


No one can be any more guilty than the nicest person

No matter how horrendously evil you might have been, by God’s standards, you are no more guilty than anyone else. We were all dead in our sins, says Scripture. You can’t get any deader, than dead! Without exception we were all a total write-off.

Relative to each other, some of us seem fairly innocent and some seem very guilty. But this is by our sinful standards. It’s like someone who has murdered twenty people feeling superior to someone who killed two hundred people. Perfection is God’s only standard. We get just one shot at living a perfect life and we have all blown it. We have all missed the mark. Whether we missed the mark by a millimeter or a kilometer, means nothing. We all missed, and that’s all that counts.

On the other hand, when you receive divine forgiveness through Jesus, no one can be more forgiven than you. Although outside of Christ, we all stand condemned, in Christ, we each stand spotlessly pure before the Holy One.

Simple logic suggests that our spiritual enemy, whom Scripture calls the Deceiver and the Accuser, would muster all his evil cunning to distort this simple truth. If the Evil One wanted to keep people from the wonderful forgiveness that Jesus offers, he would try to convince them that they are not bad enough to need forgiveness. Or failing that, he would try persuading them that they are so bad that they cannot be forgiven. Either way, the result is the same. If he utterly lost that battle, and people became Christians, he would then try to get them to feel less sinful than others – producing bigots, arrogant fools and hypocrites. For those resistant to this attack, he would try the opposite lie, hissing that they are too sinful to be fully blessed by God or be mightily used of God. Either way, it would render them powerless. So it’s obviously to the Deceiver’s advantage to make you feel that total cleansing is impossible for you. Don’t let him get away with such lies.

If, after God has forgiven us, we won’t forgive ourselves, we are implying we have a higher sense of justice than the Holy One. Anyone having the impertinence to make such an accusation is on dangerous ground. We are also implying that Jesus is inadequate - that he didn’t suffer enough for our sins, or that his sinlessness cannot swallow up our sinfulness. There is no shame in a forgiven person feeling guilty. That is simply the Deceiver at work. For a forgiven person to believe he or she is guilty, however, is a concern.

The rest of this webpage assumes you have made the decision referred to above, yielding to Christ your present life and your eternal destiny. If you are undecided about this, you’ll appreciate the following webpages:

You Can Find Love
What’s in it for Me?
I’ll think about it

Enjoy!

Some dear people are so aware of the seriousness of sin that they don’t feel it’s right that God should let them off scot-free and so they try to punish themselves! The most common self-imposed punishment is to deliberately feel miserable and deny oneself certain legitimate pleasures for a period of time. (This generally includes not allowing themselves the right to enjoy their relationship with God.)

On the surface, it seems a noble thing to punish oneself for sin and it indicates a strong desire to please God. However, it is important to realize that your life is not your own (1 Corinthians 6:19). You’re God’s child (John 1:12) and you belong to him. The way a parent disciplines his child is solely the parent’s concern. Just as it would be wrong for you to interfere and punish someone else’s child, so it’s wrong for you to play God and try to punish yourself for your own failings.

Some people even punish themselves in the vain hope that it may help to secure their Lord’s approval. But this only insults Jesus by implying that his death wasn’t sufficient to gain your full forgiveness. Furthermore, believing you can help gain the Lord’s approval by punishing yourself, puts yourself in a spiritually dangerous situation. It is vital to your forgiveness that you place your complete faith in Jesus alone. Only Jesus is able to obtain God’s approval of you, and so you must place no faith in your own futile attempts to please God.

Unforgiven sin separates us from our Holy God (Isaiah 59:1-2). The sooner this rift is healed, the better. So if you happen to sin, return to God straight away, sincerely ask his forgiveness and trust him for the strength to overcome that sin, so that you will not commit it again. Once God has forgiven you, you are obligated to forgive yourself, because you should have God’s attitude towards all things. To refuse to forgive ourselves is to imply we have holier standards than God!


Exciting facts

Let’s explore some of the many wonderful word pictures the Bible uses to describe forgiveness. It could prove the most thrilling experience of your life.

Some of these word pictures are from the Old Testament, penned because in God’s sight Christ was ‘slain before the foundation of the earth’ (Revelation 13:8). They were written under the inspiration of Almighty God, who knew how all sin, throughout all human history, would be finally dealt with by his eternal Son.


Your sins have been removed / taken away [Scriptures]

If you had a limb surgically removed you might still suffer pain that seems to come from the missing limb. Phantom limb pain is the medical term. You could remember having that limb, but it is gone forever. It could still cause you pain, and yet it is no longer a part of you.

You can also remember your sins. Their presence can seem so real as to actually cause you pain. But despite what you feel, those sins are no longer part of you. They are gone forever. This is an important concept to grasp. Let it soak into the deepest part of you by taking time out to think about it.

In contrast to the removal of a limb, Jesus’ removal of your sin does not leave you crippled. On the contrary, it heals you, like the removal of a tumor.

If you had a cancerous tumor, you would be alarmed. But if a surgeon said it had all been removed, you could have peace. You could not personally verify that every trace of cancer had been removed. You would have to take the surgeon’s word. Your sins, more deadly than a tumor, have all been removed. The only way you can know this for sure is to take your Savior’s word, and that makes it not just more certain than any surgeon’s word, but more certain than anything in the universe. Jesus’ word has more authority than that of any other being in any world. It is his word that spoke the galaxies into existence. He is truth. He, like no other, is utterly trustworthy. If he says your sins are removed, they are removed!


Your sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west
(Psalm 103:12)

To the Hebrew mind, you could travel east forever and never touch west. You were once in your sin. It was once part of you. But now, God has placed an infinite distance between you and your sins. The memory might still be with you, but the sin itself is no where to be found.

. . . search will be made for Israel’s guilt,
but there will be none,
and for the sins of Judah,
but none will be found,
for I will forgive . . . (Jeremiah 50:20)


Your sins have been thrown into the depths of the sea
(Micah 7:18-19)

Almighty God trampled your sins under his feet, thus destroying them, then banished them forever by hurling them into the ocean depths. The Israelites’ technology was such that anything below a few meters of water was utterly inaccessible. Anything dropped into the ocean depths was lost forever. No one would ever see it again. That’s like what has happened to your sin. It’s gone forever.

The Holy Lord has given his word to never remember your sins [Scriptures]

You no longer need try to justify your past, or apportion blame, because it is totally erased from heaven’s data banks.


Retaining the blessing

The screams of a tormented conscience can be transformed into contented sighs. I’ve prepared more for you to ensure this becomes your experience. If your troubled mind is already so soothed that you feel no inclination to read further, that’s wonderful. I beg you, however, to copy or print off this page and those listed below, in readiness for when the attack resumes.

The Evil One does not give up easily. No matter how much you feel the matter has been resolved, I assure you, the truths you have just read will gradually fade from your mind and a new round will commence in the fight for your spiritual peace and enjoyment of God.

I also suggest having in readiness many Scriptures on this subject. Mark them in your Bible. You might choose a chain reference system whereby you write next to one verse the Scripture reference to another related verse and keep adding cross references until you are back to the first one. That way, once you find one verse you can find your way to all the rest. I also suggest writing the references in the back of your Bible, displaying some on your wall, and also memorizing some.

Easter - Joy of the Season

Easter - Joy of the Season
By: Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio

The serpent’s bite was a deadly one. The venom had worked its way deep into the heart of humanity, doing its gruesome work. The anti-venom was unavailable till He appeared. One drop was all that was needed, so potent was this antidote. Yet it was not like Him to be stingy. The sacrifice of His entire life poured out to the last drop at the foot of the cross – This was the Son’s answer to the Problem of Sin.


Three days later came the Father’s equally extravagant answer to the Problem of Death. For Jesus was not simply brought back to life like Lazarus. That would be resuscitation, the return to normal, mortal life. Yes, Lazarus ultimately had to go through it all again . . . the dying, the grieving family, the burial. Jesus did not “come back.” He passed over, passed through. Death, as St. Paul said, would have no more power over him.

If you said that physical death was not the worst consequence of sin, you’d be right. Separation from God, spiritual death, is much more fearsome. But enough of this talk of physical death as beautiful and natural. It is neither. Our bodies are not motor vehicles driven around by our souls. We do not junk them when they wear out and buy another (that’s why reincarnation is all wrong). Rather, our bodies are essential to who we are. For human beings, body and immortal souls are intimately intertwined, making us so different from both angels and animals. Death separates what God has joined. It is natural that we shudder before it. Even the God-man trembled in the Garden.

So Jesus confronts death head on. The ancient Roman Easter Sequence, a traditional part of the Easter liturgy, highlights the drama: “Mors et vitae duello, conflixere mirando. Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus.” (“Death and life dueled in a marvelous conflict; the Dead Ruler of Life reigns Alive!”).

Jesus endured the wrenching of body and soul for our sakes and came out the other side endowed with a new, different, glorified humanity. How does the Bible describe it? Well, Mary Magdalene did not recognize the Risen Christ at first. The disciples walking to Emmaus didn’t recognize him either. But Doubting Thomas shows us that his wounds were still evident. And though he could pass through locked doors, he proved he was not a ghost by asking for something to eat. Paul speaks of a “spiritual body” in I Cor 15, which sounds like an oxymoron to me. But we have to take off our shoes here, realize that we are on holy ground, and that we do not have words adequate to describe the awesome reality of the new humanity he won for us.

For resurrection is not something that He keeps for Himself. All that He has he shares with us: His Father, His mother, His Spirit, His body, blood, soul, and divinity, and even His risen life. And we can begin to share in this Life now, experiencing its regenerating power in our souls and even in our bodies. We have access to it in many ways, but especially in the Eucharist. For the body of Christ received in this sacrament is his Risen, glorified body, so that we too will live forever (read John 6:40-65).

Each of us will pass through physical death, but not alone. He will be with us, just as the Father was with Him as He made his perilous passage. And while we will experience indescribable joy when our souls “see” him face to face, this is not the end of the story. He will return. Then His resurrection will have its ultimate impact. Joy will finally be full when he makes our bodies like his own, in glory. “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen!”