Chapter 4: The Guilt Cure
CHAPTER 4
THE GUILT CURE
John Newton is famous for writing “Amazing Grace,” the one hymn that everybody seems to know. But Newton didn’t start out life as a hymn writer. In his youth, he was the captain of a slave ship! He left the sea and eventually became a Christian minister. But he never forgot the horrible nature of his sin as a slave trader. At the end of his life he told a friend, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.”
Centuries before that, a man named Saul dedicated his life to persecuting Christians. He traveled from town to town to do it and even watched while a believer named Stephen was stoned to death. Then Saul met Jesus. He changed his name to Paul and spent the rest of his life preaching the gospel. But near the end of his ministry he wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).
Do you think of yourself as a “great sinner”?
A lot of believers can’t relate. They’re not involved in slavery. They’ve never traveled from town to town to persecute people. They haven’t murdered anyone or run a drug cartel or slept around. “No one’s perfect,” they might say, “but I’m not that bad.”
If I look back on my own life, I have to admit I was generally a good kid. I got okay grades and didn’t get in trouble much. I grew up to be a faithful husband and father and employee. I’ve even been on the staff of a Christian ministry for years and years.
And yet I’ve said hurtful, critical things to others. I’ve been resentful and impatient. I’ve acted selfishly, failed to trust God in difficult issues of life, succumbed to materialism. I’ve even let my favorite football team become an idol. And as we’ve seen, those sins are just as offensive to God as the more scandalous kind. So I have to agree with Paul that I am the foremost of sinners. Or with John Newton that “I am a great sinner” but “Christ is a great Savior.”
That’s my only hope, the only remedy for my cancerous sin.
It’s your only remedy as well.
Note that Newton and Paul didn’t say “I was a sinner.” They said: “I am.” This wasn’t about slaves and persecution. They were painfully aware of still being sinners right now.
Paul, in fact, seems to have become more aware of his sinfulness as years went by. When he wrote to the Corinthians in AD 55, he referred to himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:9). Five years later, writing to the Ephesians, he called himself “the very least of all the saints” (3:8). And he called himself “the foremost of sinners” even later, in AD 63 or 64.
Was Paul getting more sinful as he went along? Of course not. Over the years, both Paul and John Newton acted more and more like the saints they had become at conversion. But they also became more aware of the sin that still remained in them.
John Newton could have easily said, “I was and still am a great sinner, but Christ is a great Savior.” And if you and I are to make any progress in dealing with our sneaky sins, we must say the same. That’s why we need the gospel every day of our lives.
A lot of Christians think that once we trust in Christ we don’t need the gospel anymore, at least, not for ourselves; we just need to share it with unbelievers. But that’s not true, as we’ve already seen. Though we truly are saints, we’re practicing sinners too, and we need the gospel to keep that reality before us.
I’m using the word gospel here as a shorthand expression for what Jesus did through His historic life, death, and resurrection and what He is doing in our lives and our world through His Holy Spirit. This entire work of Christ is the remedy for the cancerous disease of sin. In fact, the great old hymn “Rock of Ages” calls it a “double cure”:
One, it takes care of guilt and makes us clean.
And two, it frees us from sin’s power.
So how does the gospel of Jesus cleanse us of guilt? It starts by preparing our hearts to face the reality of our sin.
I’m not just talking a halfhearted admission that we’ve messed up! “Uh, sure, my bad, sorry about that.” What’s called for is a wholehearted, defenseless facing of sin: “That was a really awful thing to do. I am a really selfish person, and that particular thing I did was only an outgrowth of the selfishness that still dwells within me. I really am a sinner.”
But facing sin like that is painful. It makes us feel guilty. It should, because we are guilty. And if we believe, consciously or unconsciously, that God still counts our guilt against us, our sense of self-protection will kick in. We’ll end up denying or at least minimizing our sin and guilt. Before we can even acknowledge our sin, let alone begin to deal with it, we need to know that God forgives us.
The gospel gives us that assurance: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (Romans 4:7-8).
Why does God not count my sin against me? Because He has already charged it to Christ. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (53:6, italics mine).
The more deeply I can grasp this great truth of God’s forgiveness of my sin through Christ, the more free I’ll be to face my sin honestly and humbly. That’s why it is so helpful to affirm each day with John Newton that “I am a great sinner, but Christ is a great Savior.”
And here’s another way the gospel cleanses us from guilt: It energizes and motivates us to deal with our sin. We are commanded in the Bible to put sin to death (see Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). But sometimes it’s hard to find energy for what we’re supposed to do. The gospel helps supply that energy in two ways. First, it encourages us that God is for us, not against us (see Romans 8:31). And that in turn makes us grateful. How can we not be thankful for what God has done and is now doing for us through Christ? This twofold effect of encouragement and gratitude together produces in us a desire to deal with our sin. It’s what motivates us to deal with our respectable and subtle sins and act like the saints we already are.
You can see, then, that we need a daily dose of the gospel to deal with the sin in our lives. We need that daily assurance that even though we are great sinners, we have a great Savior. We need the continual reminder that our sins are forgiven, that God doesn’t count them against us, that He is on our side and helping us fight against sin instead of judging us for it.
Some years ago, I heard a man use the expression, “Preach the gospel to yourself every day.” That is what I believe we must do to deal with our sins, scandalous or respectable. We must remind ourselves of God’s message of forgiveness and redemption and personalize it for ourselves, as Paul did when he wrote of “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, italics mine). There is never a day in our lives when we are so good that we don’t need the gospel.
You may be wondering, But how do I preach the gospel to myself anyway? The whole idea might sound a little strange. So I’m going to tell you how I do it. Even if my way doesn’t work for you, it might help you figure out your own way.
I begin each day by reminding myself that (1) I’m a saint and (2) I still sin every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. If I am aware of any recent sins in my life, big or little, I acknowledge those to God. Even if I can’t think of any particular sins, I still acknowledge to God that I have not come close to loving Him with all my being or loving my neighbor as myself. That’s always true, unfortunately!
Once my sins are out there, I repent of them. That is, I tell God I’m sorry and I want to change. Then I turn to specific Scriptures that assure me of God’s forgiveness. Here are just a few I choose from each day: Psalm 103:12; 130:3-4; Isaiah 1:18; 38:17; 43:25; Micah 7:19; Romans 4:7-8; 8:1; 1 John 1:9.
As I spend time with these Scriptures, I try to think about the way God’s promise of forgiveness applies to my life. Sometimes I will paraphrase a Scripture to make it more personal. For instance, 1 John 4:10 will become: “This is love: not that I loved God, but that he loved me and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for my sins” (1 John 4:10, NIV — italics indicate personalized paraphrase).
Finally, I say to God — reminding myself ! — that my only hope of a right standing with Him that day is Jesus’ blood shed for my sins and His righteous life lived on my behalf.
That’s the way I preach the gospel to myself. I hope you’ll take this as a starting point and adapt it to your needs and personality. Maybe you’ll want to write your sins and prayers in a notebook or sing a song that reminds you of the gospel message or use a Bible search engine to find Scriptures that apply to what you’re seeing in your life. I predict that the more you do this, the closer you’ll come to acting and feeling like the saint you are.
Being cleansed from guilt is a great thing. Understanding that God has forgiven all our sins through the death of His Son on the cross prepares us, frees us, and motivates us to face our ongoing sin.
But that’s just the first half of the “double cure,” remember. We’ll look at the other half in the next chapter.
YOUR TURN
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” (Romans 4:7-8)
ENGAGE
1. This chapter says the gospel is a “double cure” for sin. What does this mean?
2. How does the truth that God has forgiven our sin free us to honestly and humbly face our sin? How does it motivate us to deal with our sin?
3. What do you think of the idea of preaching the gospel to yourself every day? Would the author’s plan for doing this work well for you? If not, what might?
4. The author lists Scriptures he uses to preach the gospel to himself. Choose one of these and write it down. What does it tell you about God’s forgiveness?
BRING IT TO GOD
Rework and personalize the Scripture you chose in number 4 and offer it to God as a prayer. (For instance, 1 John 4:10 could be “Dear God, thank You for loving me so much that You sent Your Son as an atoning sacrifice for my sins.”)