Have you ever had one of those cringe-worthy flashbacks? Perhaps you were simply making yourself a sandwich, opened up the fridge to grab the mayo, and the sight of the water jug prompted a memory of an awful conversation you had with your mother last week. The sense of guilt is so potent you cringe, and the heat of embarrassment and shame flushes over you from head to toe, despite the abundance of apologies you have given.

Maybe this one memory plunges you into a list of all the horrible things you’ve said in the past as you spread the mayo on your sandwich. Because of this, you spend the rest of the day sulking over your guilt, wondering if you should ever risk speaking again.

Each of us knows the sickening feeling of guilt over our sins. It isn’t pleasant, and sometimes it comes unannounced. Yet, we also know it was by recognizing our smothering guilt that we confessed our sins and trusted in Christ for salvation. Is this guilty feeling good, even though it feels so bad? What do we do with our guilty consciences? What do we do when guilt feels stuck in our stomach and refuses to go away?

There is a helpful kind of feeling of guilt.

Feelings of guilt are necessary and good at times. Without feeling the weight of our sins and rebellion against the one Holy God, we wouldn’t come to him in repentance and seeking his rescue. If we didn’t recognize the gravity of our sinful condition, God’s call to salvation would be laughable to us. Upon salvation, we are freed from that guilt. When we trust in Christ, we trust that he lived perfectly for us and bore all the wrath from God we deserved for such sin.

But we still continue to sin because of our fallen nature. Each time we sin we should feel that conviction of guilt once again, reminding us that we still need Christ. We still need his righteousness, because we are still unable to obey perfectly like he did. And we still need God’s grace—we need him to bestow forgiveness on us yet again.

Sorrow over our sin reminds us that we need the Holy Spirit working through God’s word to continue molding and crafting our hearts into the likeness of Christ, because they are still far from perfectly imaging him. This recognition of our guilt keeps us in constant dependence on God.

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