Embracing Guilt and Shame

Recently, a pastor at church posted a video-question on Facebook that asked people to comment on the reasons that we give for not confessing our sins. As I read through some of the comments, there was a recurring theme: guilt and shame cause our failure to confess our sins.

I decided to comment as well, but ommitted these two things in my response. Here's why... When I think about guilt and shame, I am first confronted with their definitions and then with their implications. Guilt, by definition, is the just conviction of transgressing a law. Shame goes a step further: not only does it embrace the guilt of breaking the law, but it also concedes that a particular party was offended, in this case God Himself. Whenever someone admits to doing something especially grievous (which is essentially confession), they usually say, "I'm ashamed," rather than "I'm guilty." The implications of guilt and shame are important, but only to an extent. They both seem to be a sign pointing to something more important, in fact, they are the means by which God reveals to us the gravity of our sinfulness and the necessity for our repentance, which begins by confession. In the same way that a burn on the hand indicates that the thing touched is fiercely hot, shame and guilt are the very feelings that our souls manifest in order to cope with the exceeding sinfulness that we battle against in the midst of a war being waged between the sinful nature and the nature that is being redeemed. Yet some would say that shame and guilt are hindrances to confession!

One person actually said that guilt and shame are crippling to us, which may be true for people who don't fully understand the benefits that guilt and shame can effect in our souls. Are they not actually spiritual warnings acting in us as healthy evidence that our consciences are not friendly with sin? If we so easily default to the cop-out of guilt and shame as the reasons for our lack of confession, the blame lies outside of ourselves, residing with these two intangibles, thereby essentially releasing us of any real responsibility. The thing to which these signs point, that is, the root of a failure to confess our sins is more simple than we may think, which may in reality bring more conviction, more guilt, more shame, and more personal responsibility within us, which is were the blame must lie.

The true reason for our failure to confess our sins is sin itself! Because of our sinful nature, our carnal desires are wholly enslaved to that sin, resulting in a will that is chained to sinful actions, namely concealing the very sin that torments us. Guilt and shame expose the sin within us, that we may confess and be cleansed. Therefore, guilt and shame are not agents of sickness that cause us to be spiritual paraplegics, but rather, tools of God that bring us to a place of desperation that would bring ultimate healing. In reality, though, for those of us who refuse to confess, sin itself takes us to a place of willing disobedience that would rather conceal sin and be tormented rather than reveal sin by confession that would have eternal cleansing effect on our everlasting souls through repentance.

So the root of our unwillingness to confess our sins ultimately boils down to the nature we've inherited from Adam, a corrupt nature that would persuade us to abdicate our own responsibility for sin, instead blaming things outside ourselves so that we never actually have to deal with confession. And if we never actually deal with the root of the issue, we'll only be producing rotten fruit.

For me, the message is simple: "MAN UP! Take responsibility for your sin, and kill it!" This is a war we're fighting here, and not one for the timid or weak (2 Timothy 1:7). Like John Owen said over 350 years ago, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." For centuries, men have searched for ways to misplace their due blame. It is far past the time of blaming anything other than ourselves for our sin, embracing the guilt and shame that comes with it, that we may find ourselves being led by the grace of God to the freeing power of confession, the beginning of repentance. Then, by the same kindness of God that leads us to repentance, we may attain an eternal inheritance kept in heaven for us where there will be no condemnation ever again!

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God's Refusal to Leave Us Alone: Deliverance

This follow-up post from the previous one stems from some observations I've recently made about myself and others, along with some insightful help from a brilliant godly Puritan that died 327 years ago:

The hardening [by the deceitfulness of sin, see Hebrews 3:12-13] is to the utmost, — utter obduration; sin tends to it, and every distemper and lust will make at least some progress towards it. Thou that wast tender, and didst use to melt under the word, under afflictions, wilt grow as some have profanely spoken, “sermon-proof and sickness-proof.” Thou that didst tremble at the presence of God, thoughts of death, and appearance before him, when thou hadst more assurance of his love than now thou hast, shalt have a stoutness upon thy spirit not to be moved by these things. Thy soul and thy sin shall be spoken of and spoken to, and thou shalt not be at all concerned, but shalt be able to pass over duties, praying, hearing, reading, and thy heart not in the least affected. Sin will grow a light thing to thee; thou wilt pass it by as a thing of nought; this it will grow to. And what will be the end of such a condition? Can a sadder thing befall thee? Is it not enough to make any heart to tremble, to think of being brought into that estate wherein he should have slight thoughts of sin? Slight thoughts of grace, of mercy, of the blood of Christ, of the law, heaven, and hell, come all in at the same season. Take heed, this is that thy lust is working towards, — the hardening of the heart, searing of the conscience, blinding of the mind, stupefying of the affections, and deceiving of the whole soul.

-John Owen, excerpted from Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers

Recently, I was curious to look back through my journals from the past several years in order to assess some evidence of my spiritual journey during that time. During the two years I spent living in Morocco, I wrote 111 pages of grace-filled, soul-changing, mind-enriching journal entries. For these past 2.5+ years since returning to the U.S., I have written only 40 pages, most of which are my wrestlings with myself and my sin. It seems like I have been behaving as a rebellious young boy, perhaps upset with my heavenly Father for one reason or another. As I think on this small statistic, I am greatly saddened by my neglect. What's worse, is that if I really think about these things, I might actually find that my sin has become exceedingly sinful, plundering my heart in its utmost affection for God. There has been this haunting suspicion in my heart that I have tried too hard to ignore, for the sake of rationalizing my idle behavior, that my heart has grown hard and cold, foremost toward God and consequentially toward virtually everyone around me. Thus, that deceitfulness of sin that Owen so eloquently described has subtly crept in, through my idle neglect, so that my heart has gradually become hardened to the things of God that He gives to us in this life to enjoy. Is it such a wonder to me why my life has seemed inconsequential for the sake of eternity! It's because it has for the most part, except for some supernatural work of the grace of God.

There is no new sin that is not common to man. I have seen firsthand instances of people close to me to whom this has happened. More recently, though, there have been students of mine, three in particular at present, going through this very thing. If we, as Christians, don't mortify our sin daily as Owen puts it, then it will overtake us, proving our faith to be a fraud. He says, "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." In the same way that John Piper put it, we must wage war -- we are either fighting against our sin with the help of God, or are at peace with it thereby becoming an enemy of God.

So today, in remembrance of the day when Jesus was crucified, let us meditate on this:

...but the Lord delivers him out of them all."
Psalm 34:19b

The Lord delivers the righteous man from his promised affliction. Many evils assail the righteous and many wicked deeds accompany his carnal existence, yet his righteousness is not found there. Absent from all worldly deeds, his righteousness is stored up for him in heave as Christ Himself embodies it, preserved by the all-sufficient power of the Holy Spirit. It is from this man that deliverance comes. The embodiment of righteousness, namely Jesus Himself, is also the one true deliverer for those whose righteousness is held to the cross with the nails that pierced his hands and feet. If it were not for this sinless man who died on the cross, this Jesus whose divine authority would conquer the destruction reserved for all sinful men in death, there would be an eternity of despair for the soul of every man.

Every animal killed in the name of God, every sacrifice consecrated to the Lord, every offering burnt as a pleasing fragrance, and every prayer mentioned to the Almighty are but echoes of the true shout of Christ spanning the chasm of affliction that endangers every man's soul. Jesus is to us a friend, a help, a teacher, and a guide, but let us remind ourselves that he is our DELIVERANCE! Oh, to grace how great a debtor are we constrained to be!

So then those of us whose hearts have grown cold and hard, have hope, bound up with our Savior who, through faith, delivers us from all our affliction past, present, and yet to come. Were it not for the promise of redemption found in Him, my station as husband, father, son, brother, worker, worshiper, and saint would be vanquished by the otherwise overwhelming power of sin in my life. But as it is, God sees fit to look on Him and pardon me -- for the sake of His glory and my joy. May that be a greater reality day by day, as the coldness and hardness of my heart turns to warm, satisfying affection as it is inclined to our God!

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