How does the Bible deal with guilt?

Guilt

I often feel wretched. I get full up of all the thoughts of all the things I've done or said or thought wrong, I try to do better and to stop doing things wrong but I straightaway slip right back. I know how bad the things I do, say and/or think are, but no matter how hard I try they just seem to have a hold on me. It makes me feel like such an awful person.

Perhaps that sounds familiar to you?

It was the way I was just before I became a Christian, when I'd learnt about sin and realised just how messed up a person I was, but not understood that being a Christian wasn't about trying hard to be a good person. I hadn't understood what words and phrases like, "grace", "forgiveness", "filled with the Spirit" and "born again" really meant. And so I was, for a time, in a state of despair.

And even now that I've become a Christian, periodically I seem to wind up in the situation I was then, hung up on how badly I'm doing on this or that and completely forgetting all about grace, forgiveness and being filled with the Spirit and born again. Having recently been in such a situation, I thought it might be a good idea to have a go at writing a post on the topic more generally.

--

(There are a lots of 'you's in this post, this is not me talking down to anyone, I read all of these 'you's as 'I's and 'me's, they're just there to make it more readable.)
Imagine you've done something awful, or maybe you don't need to imagine. It might be a physical action, or something you've said or even something that you've thought but that you know you just shouldn't have. It's eating you up, in one way or another. That's guilt. Perhaps you're afraid you'll do it again, the temptation to do it may seem or be way too great for you.

If you stay the way you are, things will only get worse. Either you'll keep doing it, start doing something worse, or simply be eaten up by what you've already done. There needs to be a solution.
- The thing you've done wrong needs putting right, whoever you've hurt needs healing, justice needs to be done. This is important in getting rid of your guilt except...
- You need forgiveness too so that you can be spared from the punishment and no longer be held accountable. But that's not enough...
- You also need to change, so that you won't do it again and won't live an awful struggling battle of a life.

The trouble is that we were the source of the problem originally, we're the ones that are broken. How can someone broken fix them self? It seems hopeless.

The Bible offers hope, a sure hope, a way to fix not just the problem, but us as well. It starts off with grace. 

Grace and Forgiveness 
Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Jesus, God the Son of God the Father, came to Earth to die in the place of anyone who's prepared to accept. We know that the stuff we do wrong needs punishing, justice needs to be done for it, but we can't take the punishment. Jesus can, and so he did, his offer to you and me and everyone is to take the punishment we deserve for us. Not only that, but his death also brings us forgiveness, with Jesus willingly taking our dirt and wrong and sin, we're no longer accountable, we're free to drop our guilt. This may be confusing, after-all the people we've wronged may never forgive us, or may never have the chance to, but God the ultimate judge of the universe has forgiven us. That's grace. But God's grace doesn't stop there... 

Being Filled with the Spirit and Born Again 
Like I said before, we need to change, lest all this become meaningless as we mess up again and again. God knows that too, there's another part of the deal of accepting Jesus' death in our place which we need to cover.

You can't just accept Jesus' death in your place and then ditch him. In return for taking all your sin and punishment, we need to accept God into our lives, to be our saviour, our king, our friend and so on. God doesn't just want to take our punishment, He also wants to give us all the goodness and good things He owns. 

One of the things He offers is change. He offers to get rid of all the rubbish messed up stuff inside us, all the stuff that we hate and loath, the stuff which is broken. He offers to change us bit by bit to make us more like Jesus. It'll take our lifetimes, and we won't see it completed until the next life but when that day comes we will be like Jesus, that's the offer. 

God offers to make us like Jesus. Think about that for a second.

Jesus once said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10) 

Life as a Christian is not about rules and regulations. Life as a Christian is about something more. It's about a relationship with God and deeper relationships with each other, it's about love rather than necessity. It's about something so much deeper than anything this life can offer.

But how, how can we have this change and this life? Well, God's promise to anyone who accepts Jesus' death in their place, is to send the Holy Spirit (who is God) to live inside us and work in us, to change the way our hearts and minds work.

Accepting this God into your life offers you real life, real forgiveness, real change, and after you've said, "Yes" you don't need to do a thing. That's being born-again.

The problem is dealt with.

That's what led me to become a Christian. I am by no means a good person (genuinely), but I am a changing person and that gives me great joy. The beautiful thing is that God does the work, so even when I mess up and feel rubbish (which happens a lot), I'm able to have peace about it, move on from it and be confident that God will deal with it. That's grace.