What Is the One Truth that Frees You from Guilt's Destructive Power?

If anyone ever asks me to do some psychological experiment, I am not going there.  Those researchers do all sorts of things to twist you up, like they did with the jelly beans.

It all started when the researchers gave each person this long description of the experiment written in really small print.   So, most folks didn’t read it all the way through.   Then they started the experiment.   They gave you a choice of two types of jellybeans, ones that tasted like fruit, and ones that tasted like vomit.   And what do you think people chose?  The fruit flavored ones of course.   But then the researchers came in and said.  “Okay, as you know from reading all that small print, the participant after you are going to have to eat the jelly beans you didn’t.”  Ouch.  These poor folks thought they had inflicted nasty tasting jelly beans on some poor stranger.    Now another group of folks didn’t get told this.  They said the participants after them could eat whatever jelly beans they liked.

Then the next part of the experiment began.  Every participant got five dollars.  Now they could keep as much of the money as they wanted, or they could also choose to give some to a partner.   And guess who the partner was?   Yes, it was the person who had supposedly had to eat the nasty flavored jellybeans.   Now guess which group gave away the most money to their partner.  Not only did the folks who thought they’d forced vomit flavor jellybeans on their partner give more, they gave three times more!

Now what was the point of all the jellybean trickery?  The researchers wanted to prove.  Guilt can motivate good.   When you’ve felt you’ve done something bad to someone, you try to find a way to fix it.  Why?  You want to relieve your guilt.   And that’s a good thing. 

But here’s the problem, what works with little things like jelly beans, doesn’t generally work well in life.   In fact, guilt messes up your life in all sorts of ways.  It sucks up your time.  According to research people experience about five hours each week feeling guilty.  And all that guilt hijacks your life.   When you’re feeling guilty, your ability to concentrate, produce and create all go down.  And guilt literally weighs you down.  People who feel guilty think they weigh more than they actually do.   

And it doesn’t stop there.  Guilt makes you beat yourself up, and deprive yourself of things that give you joy.  Why?  You think.  Why should I feel joy when I’ve been so bad?    It even limits your relationships.  Why?   Well, when you feel guilty, you can avoid talking to the person you think you’ve hurt.    When my wife and I got married, we had to limit our invite list.  And I felt guilty for a whole year afterwards about a guy and his wife that we couldn’t invite.   I intentionally avoided any contact with him.  Then I finally got the guts to reach out and tell him how bad I felt.   Guess what I found out?   He wasn’t bothered by the non-invite at all.   That’s the other problem, our guilt alarms often go off when they shouldn’t.  You feel guilty for hurting someone, when you actually haven’t hurt them at all.

Guilt in small doses might do you some good.  But overall, guilt takes away the very life God wants you to live.   It drains away your energy.  It deprives you of joy.   It fills you with anxiety.  But how do you get free of it?   In the words you’re about to hear, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.       

I John 2:1-6

Guilt can weigh you down.  It can take away the very life God created you to live.   And in these words, God shows you the path to freedom.   How do you become free from guilt?  You realize the grace of God doesn’t just give you forgiveness, it gives you righteousness too.   It makes you right as nothing else can.    

Too often, when folks think about what Jesus did, they think that all that Jesus did was bring you forgiveness.   But in Jesus, God did more than that.   God brought you innocence.  

That’s why John talks about Jesus here as your advocate.   Last week, I talked about one dimension of this word, how advocate often meant champion.   Why?  It’s because in certain cultures, if you got brought up on charges, you could win your innocence by having a champion fight on your behalf.   And if your champion won, then you won.   And John is saying here that in Jesus, God became your champion.   So when Jesus won, you won.    That means, that when it comes to whatever wrong or guilt in your life, your champion has the last word.   His victory has now become your victory.    

But the word carries more than just that image.   John also wants you to picture a courtroom, in which you are the one brought up on charges.   Why?

John knows what goes on inside people when they mess up.   Sure they carry regret over the harm their failings caused others or themselves.  But that regret often becomes toxic. Within you, a sort of prosecuting voice can rise up to declare your guilt, to tell you what an awful person you are.   Now this voice doesn’t do anything that leads you to change or become better.   No, this voice just makes you feel miserable, and believe that your misery is your just due.   And many folks even mistake this voice for the voice of God.   In fact, that’s what the voice hopes you’ll do. 

But this prosecutor isn’t God.  It’s actually God’s enemy, out to destroy those created in God’s image, in other words, us.   In fact, Satan means just that.  Satan literally means the prosecutor.    

So in this image, when that prosecuting voice shows up in your life, who else shows up?  Jesus, your advocate shows up.   Now in ancient times, an advocate just didn’t mean some lawyer who you paid to get you off.  No, an advocate meant an honored and respected member of the community who spoke on your behalf.   And not only that, this advocate could also be your judge.  

So what does Jesus the righteous, this advocate/judge, say?   Jesus says to the prosecutor.   You can’t bring this person back into court.   Whatever mistakes this person has made, I have already covered them.   In me, in my righteousness, they have been made right now and forever.  They are innocent, and not because of mercy but because of justice.  

That’s what enables God to not only forgive you but to make you righteous, justice.  It’s because God is faithful and just.   When God in Jesus died on that cross, God made it all right for you forever.    Your forgiveness, your righteousness, your innocence, it doesn’t come as a matter of mercy.  It comes as a matter of justice.   God has paid the penalty.  Jesus’ righteousness has now become your righteousness. You are now free and clear.

 

And Jesus the righteous doesn’t only free you from what you have done wrong.  Jesus the righteous frees you from obsessing about what you feel you haven’t done right.  

 

Often what you need to find freedom from are what you have made your righteousness.  What do I mean?   Throughout life folks find all sorts of things to show they are good and right.   And almost always this is good stuff.   They strive to be a good parent, a good provider, a good son or daughter.   They work to be successful or to please others.   The list could go on.   But these good things become ultimate things.  They become their righteousness, what makes them right.   So when they have a bad day as a parent, when their success at work has a setback, they feel terrible.  They feel so wrong.   Guilt overwhelms them.     

 

A while ago, I was speaking to a woman, who was struggling to care for her elderly mother.  Her mother hated how limited her life had become, how dependent she was on others.   And in anger, she lashed out at her daughter.   She complained about how poorly her daughter cared for her.   Now, this daughter was going above and beyond for her mom.   But her mother’s angry words wounded her.   They stirred up guilt, which then became resentment, which then made her feel even more guilty.   But what was going on was that for this woman, her desire to be a “good daughter” in her mother’s eyes had become her righteousness.    All her life she had sought her mother’s approval, an approval that had never come.   Somewhere inside, she thought that if I do a little bit more, I’ll get there.  I’ll get her approval.  Then I’ll know, I’ll really know that I am good and right. 

 

But as we talked she realized that what she yearned for, not only could her mother not provide, no mother could.   She was making “being a good daughter” her righteousness, what made her right and that would never work.   Why?   It’s because Jesus was already her righteousness.   In Jesus, she had already been made right.   She didn’t need to anxiously strive for mother’s approval.   In God’s eyes, by God’s grace, she already had all the approval, all the validation she needed.   So when her mother tried to lay on the guilt trip.   Or when that prosecuting voice rose up inside her, telling her that she was failing as a daughter, she simply needed to remember, that wasn’t her righteousness.   Jesus was her righteousness.   And in Jesus, even in the places where she was wrong, she had been made right.  She had been made right, now and forever.

 

And when you know that, not only does it free you from guilt, it frees you to obey.  Why?    It’s because once you know what God’s love has given for you, it fills you with love, with peace, with a sense of security that frees you to love others in ways you could not before.   Guilt generates fear, fear of consequences, fear of rejection, fear of failure; and the list goes on.   Fear only generates more fear.

 

But when you know God, you know love.   And the more you know that love, the greater your love becomes.  And that is what obeying God is, loving God and loving others.

 

Every now and then, a funeral home calls me to do a service for some member of the community.   In most cases, these folks don’t have much connection to faith.  I do the best I can to give consolation and to connect the family to God’s love for them.   But this past week, I had a funeral that wasn’t that at all.   This woman, Juanita, had been deeply connected for years to First Methodist in Fort Lauderdale.   She had taught Sunday School there, and she and her husband, had raised their six children in that church.   Not only that, her family went back generations as dedicated Methodists, all the way back to John Wesley, himself, the founder of Methodism.

 

And as her family talked, they mentioned how for years, decades even, she made these gifts for seniors in nursing homes to bring them at Christmas.   When her children were young, they would go with her on these gift-giving journeys.   And she would say to them, it’s important these folks know that they are not forgotten when the holidays come; that someone is remembering them. 

 

Now I thought to myself.  “Well, that’s nice.”   But then they kept talking, about how she began making the gifts early in the year, January, February.   That seemed a bit peculiar.  So I asked how many did she make?  And they matter of factly said, “hundreds and hundreds.”   Now what led her to do this, to give again and again to people she didn’t even know.  It became clear in talking to her family.   She knew how God loved her.   And that love just generated more love, love that led her to give as God had given to her.  

 

When you know the love, really know the love, the guilt goes away.  God’s love takes it away.  And the more the guilt goes, the more room it gives for the love, to love as God has loved you.   Are you feeling guilt today?   Let it go.   Let the love in.   For even where you are wrong, Jesus the Righteous has made you right, inside and out.   And guilt has lost its place forever.