According to many Christian counselors, the number one common problem among Christians which keeps them under condemnation, under bondage, and unable to receive freely the things of God is guilt. Guilt is a mental stronghold that is the most effective tool Satan uses to rob Christians of the abundant life Jesus came to give. So the really tragic consequence is that Christians who ought to be living a joyful life being a child in the family of a loving heavenly Father instead walk around with a fear of punishment hanging over them, in depression, feeling isolated and rejected, feeling as if God is giving them the cold shoulder. Guilt is especially debilitating because it renders our prayer life ineffective. God invites us in Hebrews 4:14-16 to "draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we might receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need." It is difficult to pray effectively and with confidence when one feels a sense of inferiority and condemnation before God. Without an effective prayer life we cannot experience that intimate fellowship God desires with each of His children. Guilt also robs us of our praise life. How many Christians don't enter into praise and worship heartily because they feel a sense of unworthiness?
Now the real irony of the whole situation is that the central fact of the gospel is righteousness, our right standing with God. If any group of people should be free of the mental oppression of guilt, it should be Christians. The most precious gift purchased for you by the sacrificial death of Jesus is the gift of righteousness. Righteousness is not how holy you are, or how well you keep a moral law. Righteousness is simply the grace-provided ability to stand before God without any sense of condemnation or inferiority, as if sin never existed. When a person accepts what Jesus has done for them on the cross, God places on that person a stamp of "not guilty". Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that "He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
To become free of guilt, then, you must become established in righteousness. And the first fact to know is that righteousness is a free gift. Paul writes in Romans 5:17 that "those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ." The hardest thing for most people is to stop trying to earn the favor of God and learn to accept right standing with God as a gift. One must realize there is nothing about you in the natural man that is acceptable to God. Only one fact makes you acceptable: that you are covered by the blood of Jesus and constituted a child of God by His righteousness. You must grab hold of that realization and stand by it. Of course the first place to start in dealing with guilt is to examine yourself and to confess any known sin and consider that you are forgiven, according to what the Word of God says. You may not feel forgiven, but you must not base your relationship with God on feelings. Having settled it within your heart that God has forgiven you, you must then make a stand of faith. Standing in faith on your blood-bought righteousness involves facing Satan your accuser and confessing with your mouth, regardless of feelings, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I'm covered."
I encourage you to pick up your Bible, find out about your righteousness, begin to claim it as a free gift from God and start walking in that abundant life Jesus came to give you.
@ copyright 1992 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.