“I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake; And I will not remember your sins.” The Lord (Isaiah 43:25)
When a person becomes a true believer in Christ, he is born into the family of God and out of the family of Satan. Satan does everything he can to keep us blinded to the offer of forgiveness in Christ, but millions have thrown off his shackles and gone from death to life. This has absolutely infuriated Satan, and each time someone responds to the Gospel, it’s a slap in his face.
C.S. Lewis, in his amusing book ‘The Screwtape Letters’, satirizes the daily routine in hell and the foibles and headaches of hardworking demons who just try to put in an honest day’s work fouling up Christians. One of the most successful tactics the demons used in neutralising their enemies (the Christians) was to get them to dwell on all of their failures. Once they began feeling guilty about their performance in the Christian life, they were no longer any threat to Satan’s program.
Things haven’t changed much in Satan’s tactics. Why should they? If you were the captain of an invading army, you would find the weakest spot in your opponent’s defences and go in for the kill. Satan, the archenemy of the saints, is no different. He makes us fall in on our weakest spot and ensures we live a defeated life. There’s nothing Satan likes better than to get a defeated believer started on the guilt trip.
As I look back over my own life, I realize that guilt is a handle that the devil constantly tries to grab to steer me. One classic illustration that comes to my mind: One fellow was a real close buddy of mine. We had had three years of great times together. Then I borrowed some money from him. I told him I would be able to pay back him in about two weeks.
After a week went by, I began to be concerned a little about where the money was going to come from to pay him. But I had another week to work on it, so I wasn’t too worried.
The second week went by, and just couldn’t raise the money anywhere. I felt kind of strained around my friend, but I didn’t bring the subject up because I’d hoped he’d forgotten what the date was.
As the days went by, it seemed to me as though he was looking at me with an accusing expression every time I saw him, and I did the best I could to stay out of his way. After the deadline had passed by two weeks, I began planning my day so I wouldn’t run into him. It was awful. I felt terrible to have lost such a good friend, but on the other hand, I couldn’t see why he wasn’t more understanding of my problem. Mind you, not a word had passed between us regarding the money, but I felt so guilty that was sure he written me off as a friend.
Finally one day, to my horror; I saw him coming toward me in the hall. There was no place to hide! He cornered me and said, “Okay, what’s the matter with you?”
“Well, it’s about that money I owe you,” I answered defensively.
He laughed and put his big hand on my shoulder and said, “Brother, I thought that was it. Look, I haven’t changed. I don’t feel any different toward you than I did a few weeks ago. If you had the money, I know you’d pay me. Your friendship means a lot more, and I’m still your buddy.”
For three weeks I had been going around thinking he was condemning me. But that wasn’t true at all - he was still my best friend.
That taught me an unforgettable lesson. If we think someone is holding something against us, we become alienated and hostile toward them. It’s simply an inevitable reaction, a defence mechanism.
I believe this is the number one reason why Christians fail in their relationship with God. Because we’re always aware that in many ways we fall short of what we should be as Christians, it’s only natural to assume that God must be displeased with our performance. The more we let God down , the more we assume His anger, until such alienation sets into our minds that it is virtually impossible for us to enjoy a fellowship with God.
And the pitiful tragedy is that all this is just in our minds. God isn’t mad at us!
I know what some of you are thinking. You can hardly believe that what I’ am saying is true. On the human level if we let people down or offend them, it does produce alienation on their part. And besides, if you have been riddled with guilt, then you have a gnawing suspicion that you really deserve God’s hostility.
I want to say something loud and clear, in no uncertain terms: “He has now reconciled you in his fleshly body, through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Colossians 1:22)
When do you become “holy and blameless and beyond reproach”? The minute He reconciles you to the Father and that happens the moment you believe in Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death on your behalf.
Let’s substantiate this from the scripture.
There are several words in the original Greek New Testament for reconciliation. One is found in Mathew 5:24: ‘diallasso’, which means that two parties are at enmity with each other and need to reconcile by removing the cause of the enmity. This word is used strictly of human relationships in the Bible.
There is another word, however, which is always used in connection with God and Man: ‘appokatallasso’, meaning that only one party has enmity in his heart and needs to have the barriers separating fellowship removed while the other party has no enmity. You see, God has no hostility toward us. He has always loved man. This is why He became a man, so that as our substitute he could bear the judgement due us and in so doing remove every barrier that our sin had erected between himself and us. God never needed to be reconciled; man is the one who needs it.
As the Scripture puts it, “...God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them...”, for “he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:19, 21).
It doesn’t seem like an even exchange; He gets our sin and we get His righteousness. But there you have it. It was God’s incomparable plan to reconcile man back into fellowship with Him. This is why God can say in effect to all who receive Christ, “you are now holy and blameless in my sight” (Colossians 1:22; Ephesians 1:4). Can you think of another human being, including yourself, who views you as totally holy and blameless? I can’t! Yet in God’s eyes we are already perfect; not will be, but are!
This is not a status which is given on a temporary basis while we try to become worthy of it as Christians. Once God puts us into union with His Son, we become clothed with His righteousness and from then on God sees us as holy and blameless because that’s the way He views Jesus Christ. Experientially we may be quite imperfect, but our acceptance in God’s eyes is never based on how we perform, but rather on the fact that we are ‘IN’ Christ and that God accepts Him perfectly.
Knowing these liberating facts and counting them true on a moment-by-moment basis is the most important factor in living a life pleasing God. You can’t help but respond with love and obedience to someone who loves and accepts you.
Now Satan is dedicated to keeping Christians from finding out what I’ve just told you, and he’s done a pretty good job in the Christian world today. He lets them have a little taste of victorious living and then he moves in on them with his artillery. He will get them to fail God and get their eyes on themselves. After a series of failures, Satan gets them into a pattern that I have called “the sin syndrome”.
THE SIN SYNDROME
First, we knowingly sin. The inevitable result, if we don’t relate the sin to the Cross is that we develop guilt. And guilt always leads to estrangement. There’s the syndrome: sin, guilt, estrangement.
Now man can’t live with guilt. So he tries to deal with guilt in one of two ways – both of them wrong.
If he is the type who doesn’t have a particularly sensitive conscience, he tries to justify himself. He makes excuses and offers valid reasons why he did something:
“It was only a little lie, and it was easier on everyone involved.”
“After all, the government spends my tax money on things I don’t agree with anyway.”
“But we really love each other, and everyone is doing it.”
When we justify our actions the result will be a feeling of loss of fellowship with God, because deep down inside we know that we haven’t been honest with ourselves or God. We sense we have offended God by our deviousness. And when we feel that God has been offended, then we will also feel estranged from God. Remember, God isn’t mad, but we think He is.
Another way man deals with guilt and it’s equally wrong, is to condemn himself. He sins over and over in the same area, guilt sets in, and then he begins the self-condemnation trip.
Satan loves to get his hands on one of these “sensitive” Christians. With no trouble at all, he can get them to feel like no-good worms before God. He will convince them they couldn’t possibly expect God to hear them when they pray, and surely He wouldn’t answer their prayers even if He did hear the prayer. He gets their eyes so focused on their shabby Christian lives that they’re sure God couldn’t possibly use them.
Satan just sits back and relaxes when he gets us going on self-condemnation. We’re out of the ball game as far he’s concerned.
At this point you may ask, is there any kind of bona fide guilt in the life of a believer in Christ?
There is what I call “legal” guilt. This is everyman’s curse as he comes into the world. It is his inherited culpability for sin, and this is what Christ removed as a barrier between God and man when he went to the Cross for us. I have a lot more to say about this a little later.
Then there is the “emotion” of guilt. This is what Satan delights in heaping upon believers who feel they have failed God. This kind of guilt is Satan’s tool and has no place in the life of a child of God.
Finally, there is convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit described by the Apostle Paul in Second Corinthians 7:8-9 as “sorrow” which leads to repentance. If the “godly sorrow” caused by the Spirit’s conviction doesn’t lead to repentance or turning around, then it well may go into the second kind of guilt , the emotion of guilt, which is deadly to a Christian’s walk with God.
There is a need to acknowledge to God when we are guilty of sinning, and we freely can if we know for sure that God will keep on loving and accepting us. When we continue to feel un-forgiven after we have acknowledged or confessed our sin, it’s an indication that we have turned our focus away from God’s forgiveness to ourselves. Then we are saying that our sinful weaknesses are more powerful than God’s forgiving power. Either He is not big enough to forgive us or He doesn’t want to forgive us.
In either case, when there is unresolved guilt in the life of a person, he will feel estranged from God. He will not trust God to work in his work through the Holy Spirit and deliver him from the temptations of the flesh and the cunning wiles of Satan. He just won’t come to God for help if he believes God is angry with him.
A Christian caught in the guilt trip will begin to seek to do things for God in the energy of the flesh to appease Him for his sense of guilt. This results in more frustration because, as the Bible says, “...the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the Law of God, for it is not even able to do so” (Romans 8:7).
Listen to this particularly: “If Thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou may be feared”. (Psalm 130: 3, 4).
In the original Hebrew the word “mark” meant to keep an itemized account of something – to write it out. David is saying here, “Lord, if You were a Celestial Bookkeeper keeping an itemized account of my sins, I’d be in big trouble!”
What did David learn from God’s dealings with him? He learned that “there is forgiveness with (God) that (He) may be feared.” That word “fear” in Hebrew means to be able to reverently trust someone.
David put his finger on a fantastic truth here, one of the most important things we can ever know about God. If we think God is keeping an itemized account of our sins and holding them against us, we can’t really trust Him; it’s impossible to have a dynamic, bold faith in Him. Why? Because you can only trust someone whom you believe really loves and accepts you completely in spite of all your faults.
Learning what Christ accomplished at the cross is the most important truth you will ever absorb in your lifetime. It should saturate your mind every day.
Counting as true the absolute forgiveness which Christ accomplished at the cross is the foundation of having a power-packed faith. You can’t really respond to God in faith unless you know He has accepted you just as you are, unless you know what it means to be accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6). The Beloved is the title for God’s dear son, Jesus Christ. The acceptance He has for Him, the Son of His love, the beloved one, is the same acceptance He keeps on having for us.
To fail to be accepted completely by God for even one second would mean that somehow we had gotten out of Christ, and that just isn’t possible. He won’t let go of us! Isn’t that great news?
SATAN BLINDS US TO THE CROSS
Satan would like to blind us to all this wonderful truth. In fact, he keeps trying to blind us every day. We may not even realize it, but the number one reason the power of God is short-circuited in our lives is that we have never really learned what the Cross of Christ means on a day-by-day basis. The Cross is the continuing basis of God accepting and forgiving us.
We have all had experiences that we consider “mountain toppers” - times when we experienced the Holy Spirit’s working in our lives in a fresh way.
For a while everything was going great and then, without even really knowing why, things began to weaken us, and we wondered what was wrong.
I’ve gone down this painful road before, and each time I’ve discovered the real problem: I’ve started off on a “guilt trip”. I’ve failed to believe that from God’s perspective that I’m already forgiven for disappointing him; I only need to claim the forgiveness that is already a fact, and need not beg God as if forgiveness were in doubt.
THE BELIEVERS DEFENCE ATTORNEY
The Apostle John, in writing to the new believers of this day, said, “My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if any one 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 world” (1 John 2:1-2).
An advocate means a defence attorney. Why would we need a defence attorney in the presence of God, our Father? Most of us think that it means Jesus Christ defends us against the Father so that He won’t judge us. Is that true? Absolutely not! Because of what Jesus Christ did at the Cross, the Father will never condemn us again.
GOD DOESN’T GET EVEN
Are you ready for this?
God does not punish. Punishment means to “get even”, and God doesn’t do that. He’s already “gotten even” with Jesus Christ for all our sins. God “disciplines” and “training” are interchangeable words. God’s disciplining always has a forward look to it (Hebrews 12:5-13).
When God sees a child of His who continually refuses to depend upon the Holy Spirit to deliver him from his temptations, then, out of deep concern for that child’s well-being and happiness God will begin to train him so that he will come to depend upon God in the future. God knows we are only happy when we are living holy lives. This is true discipline and it has no resemblance to punishment.
Sometimes this discipline may seem grievous, but if we are learning to see everything that comes our way as being permitted by the loving hand of our Heavenly Father, then we can give thanks even for the discipline.
Unfortunately, at this point Satan has taken his toll with many believers. They live in constant fear of punishment for their sins.
Most of us have a few especially gross sins we committed in our past that spook us like the proverbial skeleton in the closet. Whenever some difficulty or calamity hits our lives, we trot the skeleton out and say, “Oh yes, God is getting even with me for ‘that sin’.”
Some live with gnawing fear that lightening is going to strike them or God is going to kill one of their children to get even with them for some sin they committed long ago or for some sin they are involved in at the moment.
God does not deal with us that way. To be sure, adversities are permitted in the believer’s life, but they are designed to teach us to trust God, not to destroy us with vengeance.
BUT WHAT ABOUT....
Now some of you may be saying “all right, if God never punishes us for our sins, what about Galatians 6:7 which says, ‘do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap’?”
This verse is jerked out of context by so many Christians. The verse just before this one says, “And let the one who is taught the Word share all good things with him who teaches” (Galatians 6:6). This context is talking about supporting financially the one who gives himself to studying and teaching the Bible.
This same idea of sowing money for God’s is contained in 2 Corinthians 9:6, “now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully.”
This concept of “whatever a man sows, he shall also reap” is concerned with investing our money in God’s work and the reward or lack of reward for our stewardship.
To apply this passage to God’s method of discipline is to contradict the whole principle of grace with which God now deals with his children. God will not let anyone discipline His children but Himself. He’ll do it in love because He has set Himself free to deal with us in grace.
SATAN, THE OLD GUILT TRIPPER
Satan’s name means “the accuser’’. He is referred to as the accuser of our brethren (Revelations 12:10) Jesus Christ doesn’t have to defend you against the Father; instead he defends you against Satan, before the Father. In Hebrews 7:24-25 we have these encouraging words: “but He (Jesus Christ), on the other hand, because he abides forever, holds his priesthood permanently. Hence also He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”
According to this fantastic promise of assurance once we believe in Christ as Saviour, it is impossible to be lost again or unforgiven. For a child of God to become lost, Christ would have to stop interceding for him. The promise is that “he is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him.” “Forever” is a very long time.
Jesus Christ himself promised, “I will never desert you, nor will ever forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). Thank God that “He always lives to make intercession for us,” and because of that we can “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16)
After Satan accuses us before God and doesn’t make any headway there, he begins to accuse our consciences. He’ll get us into a hopeless treadmill: sinning, vowing we won’t do it again, trying not to sin, and then sinning again.
Here is the way it works:
First, he’ll start working on an area of weakness. Every Christian has at least one area where he is especially vulnerable. We still have the old sin nature in us which can tempt us, and when we don’t depend upon the indwelling Holy Spirit to overcome temptations, we will sin.
Seeking to be a good Christian we might say, “God, I know I have been wrong: thank you for forgiving me.” Our burden is lifted and everything goes along fine for a while. Then Satan gets us to fall down again in the same area. We hate ourselves for being such an awful Christian, but we accept his forgiveness and keep moving - only we’re feeling a little guilty about having so little will power to live for God.
Pretty soon Satan will get us to sin again in the same area, and this time we’re feeling so unworthy that we promise, “God, if you’ll just forgive me one more time, I vow I won’t do this again.”
At this piece of news, Satan and his demon hordes let out a rousing cheer of victory. He has us right where he wants us—on the sin treadmill.
We try hard to please God, only we do it in the power of the flesh. The harder we try, the more we fail. The more we fail, the more we vow not to do it again.
Then Satan steps in and says accusingly, “Too bad! God won’t forgive you this time. You’ve had it. There’s no more grace for you.” Or if he sees that we’re too smart to fall for that extreme line of reasoning, he’ll say, “God may forgive you, but he can’t forget how unreliable you are. You’ll never be able to be used by God as fully as before.” It’s that old “bird with the broken wing will never fly so high again” routine.
Wham! You’re wiped out! You forget that the issue is not will God forgive you, but will you believe that he has forgiven you and trust him for the inner strengthening to turn from sin.
I’m not trying to teach that we can go out and sin and have no conscience about it, so don’t get up-tight about that.
The Holy Spirit will faithfully convict a believer of sin so that he can claim forgiveness and continue to believe again. But God does not want us to dwell on our sins, but rather on our forgiveness. If your focus is continually on yourself, then you cannot be “Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2, Amplified Bible).
When you finally understand what Jesus Christ accomplished at the cross, you realize that God never stops forgiving you, even while you’re in the process of sinning, although you yourself cannot appreciate the comfort of the forgiveness while you’re sinning.
When Christ died on the cross, how many of your sins were future? Every one of them.
I used to think that when I accepted Christ had died for my sins up to that point, but from that point on I’d just have to confess them as I did them or else I wasn’t forgiven. That’s a perilous position to be in because you’re never quite sure if you’ve confessed all your sins, and there just might be one or two that God is holding against you.
One day I realized what the all in Colossians 2:13 meant: “And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions.”
The verb translated “having forgiven” means something which happens at a point of time that doesn’t have to be repeated. A final act. In God’s mind, how many does that all mean? How many of our sins did God see when He judged them in Jesus Christ on the cross?
The answer is all!
GOD SEES THE WHOLE PARADE OF LIFE
God is looking at our lives as a helicopter pilot would look down at a parade. If we’re standing on a corner watching a parade, we see the beginning of the parade, each segment passing by, and then we see the end of it. We see consecutively. But God, like the pilot, sees the whole parade at one time. That’s the way God sees your life: your past, present and future is all in the now with Him. When you place faith in Jesus Christ as your Saviour, God has already seen (back in A.D. 33) your life go by like a parade. He took your whole life and the sin and guilt of it and put it all on Jesus Christ.
So when you believe in Jesus Christ as Saviour, how many sins has God forgiven you? Not just those you have committed up to that point, but those from your whole lifetime. He couldn’t accept you into a relationship with Himself at all unless He could forgive you for the whole thing.
This doesn’t mean that God condones sinning in the life of a believer – far from it. It means He has set Himself free to be ready to work in us the moment we see that we’ve sinned and acknowledge it and accept His forgiveness.
First John 1:9 says, “if we keep on confessing our sins, He is faithful and righteous, to have cleansed us from all unrighteousness” (literal translation of the Greek verb tenses).The Bible never tells a believer after the cross to ask forgiveness. It’s already a settled fact with God, and He just wants us to claim what is already true.
In first John 1:9 the word “confess” means to agree with someone about something; in this case to agree with God about our sins. But I can’t agree with God about His attitude toward my sins until I see clearly what His attitude is.
Guilt is the most crippling disease in the world today!
Psychiatrists and doctors say that unresolved guilt is the number one cause of mental illness and suicide. Over half of all hospital beds are filled with people who have emotional illnesses. The greatest therapy they could possibly have would be to find out that God loves them and has made an all - encompassing forgiveness available to them in Jesus Christ.
We don’t have to go to a psychiatrist to get the answer for guilt. Jesus Christ provided the only real answer to guilt some two thousand years ago.
I don’t want you to suffer from crippling guilt like this. I want you to be able to release the power of God in your life day by day, moment by moment - to be set free from a guilt complex and be able to acknowledge to God, “Yes, Lord, I’m guilty, but I thank I’ve been forgiven, forever!”
Then turn and believe that the Spirit of God will work in your life right now. You don’t have to wait until you are worthy of it or earn it.
Here’s a passage that thrills me every time I read it - it never gets old. “Having cancelled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).
God isn’t angry with you - no matter how much you’ve let Him down. He has utterly forgiven you any offences toward Him. The only thing that grieves God now is for His children to feel alienated toward Him when He cares for them so much. He loved you more than His only begotten Son, and He proved that by permitting that one and only begotten Son, Jesus Christ be sacrificed for your sake! The Father waits for you to return to Him with open arms. He longs to hug you and He cherishes you company. Come to Him, now….and bask in that all encompassing acceptance that He has for you in Christ Jesus. Being able to do so, on a moment to moment basis, is the secret of a truly victorious Christian life.
(These thoughts are excerpted with some modifications from the book, ‘The Guilt Trip’ by Hal Lindsey, © 1972 Zondervan)
