Category: Illustration

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How Can My Guilt Before God Be Removed?

I live on the 20th floor of a high rise in downtown Chicago, and our building is surrounded by one-way streets. I regularly see drivers accidentally turn onto a one-way street going the wrong direction.

The nature of guilt

One-way streets illustrate the nature of guilt. Even though normally when someone drives the wrong way on a one-way street they do it accidentally, they are still guilty of breaking the law. It’s against the law to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. Even if the police do not see it happen and do not issue a ticket, the wrong-way driver is nevertheless guilty of breaking the law.

That is because cities have authority to make traffic laws, and once they do, drivers are responsible to follow them. Every moment someone drives in the wrong direction on a one-way street he or she is guilty and liable to punishment. Moreover, their guilt persists. One month later they can get a ticket in the mail because a street camera recorded their law-breaking.

God is the ultimate lawgiver

So, guilt comes from breaking a law enacted by someone or something that has the moral right to enact laws and punish lawbreakers. In this way, every human has incurred guilt in the sight of God. God created and sustains all things and people. Thus he owns and rules over them. Therefore he has the right to enact laws we are responsible to obey. He is our God whether we acknowledge him or not. He gives us life, breath, water, food, and a beautiful world to live in.

For our good and his glory, he has established good and just laws we are commanded to obey. These laws are fair and right and promote human flourishing. For example, God commands that you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not lie, you shall not covet, you shall not love money, you shall not worship another God, you shall not commit sexual immorality, you shall honor your father and your mother, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

The objectivity of guilt

If we break any of these life-giving commands even once, we incur guilt as a lawbreaker in the sight of God, the righteous Lawgiver. When we live in an ongoing state of breaking God’s laws, we are like someone driving the wrong way on a one-way street for mile after mile, refusing to turn around or turn off the road, and endangering those around us.

Guilt is not just a subjective feeling. Guilt is an objective condition before a righteous Lawgiver. We may or may not feel guilty, but we all are objectively guilty of breaking God’s righteous laws.

How your guilt can be removed

The Bible teaches there is only one way to remove our guilt before our righteous Judge. We must put our faith in a Savior graciously provided by God. This Savior perfectly kept God’s laws and had no guilt. But then he was crucified for human sin. He took our guilt. His substitutionary death made it possible for us to be forgiven of our guilt. This Savior is Jesus Christ, God’s only Son.

The Bible says, “He has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him” (Colossians 1:22 CSB).

He alone can remove the guilt of your sin. He alone has atoned for human guilt, the righteous for the unrighteous. He becomes your Savior when you put sincere faith in him and follow him as your Savior and Lord.

The Bible says, “God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16 CSB)

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The True Gravity of Sinning Against God

Recently I heard a man1 tell a story of how he as a kid in fourth grade had wronged his grandfather. Let’s give this man the name Bob. A friend came over to Bob’s house, and Bob invited him to join him on his daily errand of feeding his grandfather’s pony. Together they went to his grandfather’s nearby farm.

As Bob took care of the pony, his friend noticed four cases of canning jars. His friend suggested they break them. For some reason, Bob agreed to it, and they broke all the jars.

As Bob the adult told this story, he explained that he had no reason to go along with breaking the jars, because he loved his grandfather. He went to church with him every week. He and his family lived in a house built on his grandfather’s farm.

Sadly, Bob’s boyhood friend did not stop with breaking the canning jars. He found cases of light bulbs and suggested breaking those. After they did, they went on breaking glass. They found storm windows for the house and broke them all. They looked around for more glass to break and came upon his grandfather’s truck. Each window they shattered. Then the windows of the barn, all except for one window where the pony was kept.

Finally Bob’s “friend” left, and he walked home petrified at what he had done. He did not sleep that night. For three days he heard nothing about their crimes. Then he came home from school and found his grandfather’s car in the driveway.

“Did you break the windows out of the barn?” his grandfather asked. He suspected Bob had done it because the only window left unbroken was by the pony. Bob admitted it, but did not bring up breaking anything else.

The next day, when he returned home from school, his grandfather’s car was again in the driveway. “Did you break all the canning jars and light bulbs and storm windows?” his grandfather asked. Bob admitted doing those things but did not bring up other wrongdoing.

The next day, when he returned home from school his grandfather’s car was again in the driveway. “Did you break the truck windows?” his grandfather asked, his voice raised in anger. Bob said yes. “Someone’s got to pay for this,” his grandfather said, to teach Bob a lesson. “Do you have any money?” Bob had $5, and he went and got his money and brought it to his grandfather.

Breaking holy things

When I heard Bob tell this story, I could only cringe at the wrongness—the evil—of what he had done to his grandfather. Now as an adult, “Bob” said the same thing.

How does hearing this story affect you? Beyond its lessons for human relations, it gives us a figurative glimpse of how we should feel about sinning against God’s commandments. When we transgress a command from God, he feels as the grandfather did. We have violated his holiness.

Breaking even one of God’s commandments is more wrong, more unthinkable than we comprehend. We might think we have “just” broken one commandment, but that is like saying you only broke one windshield of the truck—only it is infinitely worse than even that. The perfection of God’s holiness makes breaking even one of his commandments an infinitely serious evil. Each one of us over our lifetimes has broken God’s commands thousands of times, in deeds far more evil than the breaking of a few thousand dollars of a kindhearted grandfather’s glass. Our guilt is beyond human comprehension. The shards of shattered glass can only be undone through Jesus.

  1. I heard this story while evaluating a preacher’s sermons and theology. I disagree with him on significant things, which is why I have not included his name.