How To Be Free From Guilt

Sermons by Dr. Richard Caldwell on How To Be Free From Guilt, righteousness and the only hope we have for dealing with these can be listened to or watched here:
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How To Be Free From Guilt

Why does my conscience cause me to feel guilt over sins I’ve confessed? How should a Christian deal with feelings of guilt? How can I forgive myself? What is the difference between true guilt and false guilt?

This week on the Straight Truth Podcast Dr. Richard Caldwell and host Dr. Josh Philpot talk about the Christian conscience and our feelings of guilt. Dr. Caldwell begins by reminding us as Christians we have to preach the gospel to ourselves over and over and that we need to be clear about what the gospel is. The gospel is not Christ helping me save myself, it’s not me atoning for my sins; the gospel is the good news of Christ, that Christ died for sinners.

When He did this, He died for all the sins for all those who would place their faith in Him. He died not just for our respectable sins but for our most heinous and horrific ones. He didn’t die for some of our sins, He died for all of them. The Bible doesn’t tell us to forgive ourselves; it’s in Christ that we receive forgiveness, it’s in Him only that we can know real forgiveness. We have to know that we are fully forgiven and we do this by informing our consciences with the truth of the gospel.

Dr. Caldwell goes on to discuss what this will look like in the life of the individual who has been saved and washed clean by the blood of Christ. He tells us we need to examine ourselves about these guilty thoughts and feelings. In some cases, feelings of guilt are appropriate, because confession of sin may be needed. Many times we feel guilty because we are.

Are We Deflecting on Current Sin?

Often times it may be that we think it’s over the guilt of past sins, but in reality, it may be something at the moment that we aren’t dealing with, some sin that we are deflecting on. He asks us to consider if we are confessed up, are we dealing with all the sins in our life that we are aware of? He tells us that a guilty conscience greatly affects our spiritual life. It, along with the enemy of our souls, “the accuser” will cause us to set our focus on ourselves. Our focus becomes me-centered rather than God-centered. But, the Word of God commands us to set our focus on Christ and on what God has accomplished in Christ.

For the Christian who can say, “I am aware of and am dealing with all the known sin in my life, by confessing and forsaking, yet still always feeling guilty” – you must continue to preach the gospel to yourself! We are to take as FACT what the Bible declares about our sin. From Romans 8:1 and Romans 5:1 there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we now have peace with God.
The cure for false guilt is the gospel. Dr. Caldwell says we are no less acceptable to God on our worst days than we are on our best days. Our acceptance is not based on us, it’s not found in our performance, it’s not found in what we’ve done or not done, it’s found in what Christ has done. When we put our faith in Christ all our sins are forgiven, we are clothed with His righteousness; we can rejoice in God’s grace.

Asking the Wrong Questions

Dr. Caldwell explains that people often deal with guilty and troubled consciences because they are asking the wrong questions. He gives us an example explaining that guilt can become so great as to cause some to wrestle and struggle with assurance of salvation. He says that sometimes it’s a distortion of the truth that is going on in our minds, our consciences are uninformed, ill-informed or just weak.

Perhaps we are trying to tie our conversions to a time/“date” or an actual event, but the Bible never speaks about our salvation this way. The Bible must be the guide when we have questions about conversion and what it looks like in a saved individual. The Bible does not ask us, “When were you born?”; the Bible asks us, “Are you alive?”. That’s where our focus must be placed, in God’s Word. The Bible must be the guide for all the questions that we ask, as well as the answers that we seek. The answers for all the struggles we have and face, guilt and all the rest, is Christ and truth, the ALL SUFFICIENT Word of God.

Go to Your Pastor or a Fellow Believer

Dr. Caldwell recommends that when we find ourselves struggling with some of these issues that we go to our pastor or a fellow believer even, to someone who is mature in the faith. We want to begin to talk through these issues with them and let them direct us into a right understanding of Scripture. Then we need to let that Scripture inform our hearts and minds, and actually believe it.