The more holy we become through Christ’s life in us, the more sin we will see in ourselves. There is less sin than before, but we hate it more. We begin to see evil through the eyes of Jesus Himself; that is, we begin to despise it for the filth it truly is.

For anyone who has faithfully read or listened to the late R.C. Sproul, you would know it is no exaggeration on my part to say that the man was a storyteller. Indeed, R.C. seemed able to pull from his deep proverbial pocket a story well-suited for almost any and every theological concept.

Several years ago, I heard a story by R.C. on the issue of guilt and forgiveness. At the time, I thought it to be an encouraging and insightful illustration; however, I was unable to remember exactly where I had first heard the story when I went to look for it some time after. It must have been from one of his many sermons I had listened to, or perhaps from his radio broadcast, Renewing Your Mind—though, I could not recall. This past summer I read his book Pleasing God and behold, there it was (with a plethora of other classic R.C. stories, might I add). Speaking on the issue of guilt in a chapter titled “Real Forgiveness”, R.C. unfolds this encounter:

A woman once asked me: “How can I receive forgiveness for my sins? I have prayed and prayed to God for forgiveness for my sins, but I still feel guilty.” The woman was seeking theological advice. She looked at me as if she expected me to come up with some secret, esoteric device to grant her full assurance of her forgiveness.

I replied, “I think you need to pray for forgiveness one more time.” My answer not only disappointed her, but also clearly annoyed her. She said: “Didn’t you hear what I said? I have prayed repeatedly. What good will praying one more time do?”

I answered, “This time I want you to ask God to forgive you for your arrogance.” Now she was really angry. “Arrogance! What do you mean by arrogance? I have humbled myself time and again in prayer. Why is that arrogance?”

In response, I quoted 1 John 1:9 to her: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Then I told her she needed to repent of her failure to believe God’s promise.

For a moment, and a moment only, let us empathize with this poor woman. There is in the Christian life such a thing as guilt. Even after we have been redeemed and washed in the blood of Christ, there can be—and often is, though wrongly so—a sense of guilt that yet lingers in the dimly-lit halls of our soul. This guilt assumes power when we give a foothold to unbelief and doubt; when we refuse to fully and finally believe that God has separated our sins from us as far as the east is from the west, casting them into the sea of forgetfulness (Psalm 103:10-12; Micah 7:19).

“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:10-12).

And yet, we still wrestle with guilt. Often, this guilt is bound to some particular sin from our past; “old haunts”, as it were. We know that God has forgiven us, yet we struggle to believe that God has forgiven us of that. Other times, we experience a more general sense of guilt, one that is tied less to some old way of life in particular but rather guilt over some vague realization of our own unworthiness. We are saved and forgiven, but we struggle at times to fully embrace the depth of the Father’s love for us. And lastly, sometimes we feel guilty, quite simply, because we have sinned.

When guilt of any sort stirs within us, we must distinguish between guilt and guilt feelings. If we have objectively sinned against God, then as Christians we should expect an objective feeling of guilt to flood our soul. If His Holy Spirit has taken up residence within us, then what a joy it is that He will not allow us to remain in sin’s slum without some profound sense of spiritual unease or even agony. If that is at any point where we find ourselves, then we must confess and repent, trusting in the faithfulness of Him who is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (1 John 1:9; Romans 3:26).

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