I recently came across the following quote by John Piper that made me think about sin and the freedom Christian’s have in Christ from guilt and shame. Piper writes:
Sin creates a blinding guilt that makes a person feel hopeless and despairing that they could ever be forgiven and included among the righteous. This is deeper and more terrible than slavery to the lure of sin. This is slavery to the blinding despair of sin.
You ask a person in this slavery to sin, “Don’t you realize that the promise of sin is a lie, and that you are on a dead-end street to destruction?” And amazingly, they may agree with you, and perhaps say something like, “I know, but it doesn’t make any difference. There is no hope for me anyway.” Here is a person not only in bondage to the lure of sin, but even more terribly, in bondage to the despairing blindness of sin’s guilt. They can’t make any progress in fighting the lure of sin, because they feel no hope in escaping the guilt of sin.*
In this quote Piper is discussing the hopeless plight of a nonbeliever gripped by the blinding accusation of sin’s guilt. I wonder however, how many Christians live with this same guilt in their lives. They have repented of their sins and have placed faith in Christ, but they still live with an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame because of the sins in their past. Perhaps, they view this guilt and shame as a consequence of their sinful actions, and just accept it as something they must live with for the rest of their lives. Does sin have consequences? Absolutely, but guilt and shame are not some of them. The apostle Paul in Romans 8:1 asserts, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (ESV).” For a person to be condemned means that he is declared guilty of transgressing God’s law, and is deserving of the just penalty that comes along with that condemnation. In Romans 8:1 Paul states that a person who is in Christ is set free from that condemnation. He is declared right in the sight of God; and therefore , he is freed from the guilt associated with the condemnation. When Christians live as though they are continuing to bear the weight of the guilt of their sins, they do not live in the freedom that comes in the gospel.
This overwhelming sense of guilt and shame is a tool frequently used by the enemy to convince people that they are unworthy to be used by God. People struggling with these emotions must daily crucify them, trusting in the truth of the gospel. Trusting that when God says there is therefore now no condemnation, he means that they are set free from that guilt. In the end, believers and nonbelievers must both see that in the gospel they are released from the guilt of their sin, and can live lives of freedom in Christ. Piper puts it this way when writing about Romans 6:6-7:
then verse 7 is perfectly designed to describe the remedy. It goes like this. Verse 6: “Our old self was crucified with him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” How so? How does death with Christ free us from slavery to sin. The answer of verse 7: The death of Christ goes first to the deepest root of slavery, not the lure of sin, but the blinding and hope-destroying guilt of sin, and says, “He who has died is justified from sin.” The guilt is taken away before the lure is broken.**
Christian, know that because of Christ’s death, you no longer have to live with an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. Christ bore it for you, so that you can live boldly for him..
*John Piper, Sanctification in the Everyday (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2012), IPad Version-Landscape View, 72.
**Ibid., 73.