Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 6:23

When a psychotherapist talks about guilt, he is usually talking about something which the Bible describes as conscience. He’s talking about the emotion which either condemns or exonerates you of your actions.  But when the Bible talks about guilt, using the same term which psychotherapy uses, it is in relationship to your standing before God–not your feelings, which may reflect your culture and your understanding of right or wrong.

Shortly before his death, Pol Pot, the Cambodian butcher of several million people, admitted that he had made some “mistakes.”  However, he said, “My conscience is clear.”  Scores of other criminals from gangster Alger Hiss to Hitler himself justified what they were doing by alleging to have a clear conscience, one void of any offense.

Why does the Bible make such a clear distinction between feelings of guilt or conscience and actual guilt before God?  Simply put, your conscience can’t be trusted. For some who have a clear knowledge of right and wrong, it’s a good measure of your conduct, but for those who have grown up without a clear understanding of right and wrong, of what God expects, forget it–your conscience shouldn’t be trusted.  It tells you that you are OK when you are in real trouble.  This means that a person may stand guilty before God when his own conscience doesn’t condemn him at all.  And that’s a dangerous situation to find yourself in.  It’s like having an instrument panel that tells you the tank of fuel is nearly half full, when in reality it’s almost empty, or that you are flying at a given altitude when in reality you are about to crash into a mountain.

It’s the attitude in our society–that there is no right or wrong, nothing which is really moral or immoral apart from what you think–which has contributed to the death of conscience.  How?  Because the views of society–what it deems moral or immoral–is at juxtaposition with what God says and expects.  If, however, there were no God and no ultimate accountability, your personal conscience would be an acceptable barometer or guide for behavior.  That’s a big “if,” since God’s health is quite good.

On the other hand, if God hasn’t changed his mind about what is moral and what is immoral, what is right or wrong, then whether we like it or will admit it, we are responsible for our actions, and someday will be accountable for them because our conduct as well as our choices come down on the side of guilt.

There is a redeeming balance, though, to our guilt, and that is God’s grace–his undeserved and unmerited favor that erases our guilt and lets us stand before God forgiven and cleansed.   That’s good news!  And why doesn’t modern psychotherapy acknowledge that guilt can be balanced by grace?  This, of course, means that it would have to acknowledge that God does exist and that our actions which they label as poor choices or mistakes are really sin.

Would that admission be altogether bad?  Ask any condemned prisoner if accepting a pardon from the governor or president is bad.  Ask anyone who has been granted a reprieve from the ravages of cancer if it’s bad to get a new grip on life.  Ask the miner who has been rescued from certain death if seeing the blue sky and white cumulus clouds that fill the sky and smelling the fresh scent of the morning air are bad?

No, grace is good news.  It is the best news that ever was announced to men and women who know they have fallen short of God’s expectations but often don’t know what to do about it.  Thank God for grace that is greater than all our sin.

Resource reading: Romans 6:1-23