Guilt Gone!

Psalm 32:5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” And you forgave the guilt of my sin.

I see people all the time in my professional life who are riddled by guilt over past deeds. And many of us have past deeds that were accompanied by guilt. But for some, that guilt seems to get stuck. Even after forgiveness is granted, the guilt hangs on sometimes for years.

I see it in couples and individuals. People seem to get stuck in the past, not being able to move past the past. And this is true even for those who have a faith that provides forgiveness! Their head acknowledges that forgiveness is available and perhaps even applied to them, but their heart still swims in the guilt of their actions.

And there is no easy answer to how to get the heart to catch up with the head. If there were, I would write a book and be rich! There is no easy answer because guilt is not a single thing that all people experience in identical ways. Not all sin is identical, so the results in an individual’s life can be very different, even with very similar sins.

I am often amazed the the creative ways that people choose in order to mess up their lives with the entanglements of sin. After more than forty years of listening to people’s problems, I am still surprised at the extent of sin and the willingness to embrace it. And I wish this was only true for those who don’t claim Jesus as Lord.

But all too often, just like the writer of this Psalm, sin enters our lives. This writer describes the extent of the results of his sin. He tells us that his sin caused his bones to waste away. Now that is some deep sin! Have you ever felt sorrow for sin so deep that your bones ached all day long? I have.

But out text tells of his journey, which included forgiveness for the sin AND the accompanying guilt. He allowed the forgiveness to travel beyond his mind all the way to his heart. Forgiveness for the act he committed and a cleansing of the associated guilt. Both were and are possible for us.

I think where we get stuck is that we don’t truly acknowledge our sin. We tend to cover it up. And I think to the extent that we do this, we short circuit the forgiveness of the guilt. It would be like only cleaning out part of a skin infection and expecting it to heal on its own.

I think we need to go all the way in cleansing from sin. We don’t confess to get it off our chest and onto some else’s. We must confess to remove it completely from this earthly environment and into the arms of Jesus who already bore the consequences of our sin. Confess to Him with no reservations!