FREEDOM FROM GUILT AND SHAME

Introduction

-Today I am finishing a 3-part series

~Entitled “Let the Past Die” this series has tackled issues that keep Christians from moving forward in their walk with Christ, and has stunted their spiritual growth such that they remain babes in the faith

-The writer of Hebrews in Heb. 12:1 tells us to lay aside every weight that hinders us from running with endurance the race that God sets before us

~But sometimes there are certain things from a person’s past that they refuse to let go of, and it hinders them in this race

-Two weeks ago, I talked about forgiveness—whether someone seeks it or not, for our own health and walk we need to cancel the debt and forgive people for their sins against us

~Last week I spoke about hurts that we cling to, and saw the need to get beyond the hurts, trusting God with every circumstance of life

-Today I want to talk about finding freedom from guilt and shame—and this might be appropriate for Mother’s Day

~There are no perfect parents, but after kids grow older and if they begin to make bad life choices a mother or father might feel that they did something wrong and feel guilt over it

~Or, there may be things that we have done or said in the past that we allow to still haunt us

-There was a pastor who told a story about when he was a kid he was in a gun club. He competed in target shooting and got his picture in the newspaper because he was a good shot. One day a friend suggested they take their guns and go out hunting. They went out in the woods near the house, and it wasn’t long before they saw a rabbit. His friend shot and missed, but the pastor shot and got him in the neck.

The kids ran over to it and saw it was suffering. The pastor was so upset that he mortally wounded an animal that he took his gun and threw it into a pond on the way home.

When he went home and told his brother what he had done, the brother asked where the rabbit was, then went and found the rabbit, cut off its feet and hung them from the rear-view mirror of his car. So, every morning for the next five years going to and from school, that pastor had to look at those feet and remember what he had done and was forced over and over to revisit his guilt.

-And that might be some of you. There is just something that makes you revisit your guilt over and over again.

-Now, let me clarify something. There is real guilt because everyone is guilty of breaking God’s laws. But after you come to faith in Jesus Christ, that judicial guilt is gone, never to be revisited.

~But the guilt I’m talking about finding freedom from is guilty feelings that, despite the fact that you have been forgiven in Christ, you cannot shake the shame that comes with it

~That doesn’t mean consequences of sin disappear, but we don’t have to feel guilty such that it impairs us since we are no longer counted as guilty when we are in Christ

-So, feelings need to be put in check with the truth—in our passage, Paul tells us that when you come to faith in Christ that you are then free from judicial guilt, and therefore with God’s help you can be free from felt guilt

-I pray that today you will be released from any guilt and shame about things that have already been forgiven by God

Romans 8:1–11 ESV

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

-Paul gives us three points that will help us find freedom from our guilt and shame

I) Know your identity in Christ

-What does Paul say in v. 1—there is no condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus

-To be IN Christ Jesus is to have your identity found in Him

~If you repent of your sins (that is, you turn from sin and turn toward Christ) and believe that Jesus died on the cross for you, not only are you saved, but you are then identified with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ

-So then, when God looks at you, He sees you as being identified with His Son

~Think about this: Jesus Christ, the Son, is perfect, He is holy, He completely fulfilled the law, and He is loved by the Father beyond measure

-Paul tells us in this passage that Jesus took on the likeness of sinful flesh, and through that sinful flesh He condemned sin through His death in that sinful flesh

~It’s not that Jesus was sinful, but He took on humanity with flesh that could sin, but Jesus did not sin

-And Jesus was obedient to the Father unto death—and now those who place their trust in Jesus Christ have their identity in Jesus

~So now, being identified with Christ, when God the Father looks at you He sees you through the filter of your identity in Christ: He sees you as perfect, holy, completely fulfilling the law, and loved beyond measure

-Our guilt comes because of actions that give us a sense of worthlessness and shame—and when people look upon us that is how we think people see us:

~we’re the ones that stole … lied … killed

-But within our identity in Christ, God doesn’t look at us as the one who stole … lied … killed, God looks at us as being in union with His Son

~So, God doesn’t look at us with a condemning glare or a judgmental stance, but with the same loving, caring, compassionate relationship that He has with His own Son

-When you know your identity in Christ you know that God looks at you a different way

II) Cling to your acceptance in Christ

-When you are identified with Christ by grace through faith, that means that God accepts us which is a state of existence that will never change

-Part of guilt and shame is fear—if there is something that we have done or said, we are fearful that when other people find out about it that we will be rejected—so this fear contributes to our guilt and shame

-We have this dread, even in the closest of our human relationships, that if that other person finds out what I did or said they are going to reject me

~With guilt and shame, there comes a fear of rejection which magnifies the guilt and shame

-But here’s the thing about our relationship with God in Christ—if we are truly saved and have truly trusted in Christ, there is nothing we have done, are doing, or will do that will cause God to reject us, all based on what Jesus did at the cross

-Now, if you don’t trust in Jesus, your guilt follows you into death, and you will be rejected by God and suffer for it

-But listen, if you believe Jesus died and rose again, you have your identity in Christ—and think about this: Would God the Father ever reject Christ the Son? No, never.

~Then if you are in Christ, and made a new creation where old things have passed away and all things became new, then God the Father will never reject you either

-In Jesus Christ you are eternally accepted such that there is nothing that will tear you out of His hands—and that means that the fear that stokes the fire of guilt and shame has been quenched. You do not need to live in guilt and shame because you are forever accepted by the Father because of your identity in Jesus Christ.

-Think about this:

Suppose there was a way to take your entire thought life over the past year, somehow burn it onto a DVD or Blu-Ray, and then we played it up on the screen for all the church to see. Every judgmental angry thought. Every X-rated fantasy. Every bit of gossip. Every bit of envy.

~If we did that to any of us, we’d run out of here never to show our face again because of how guilty and shamed we would feel, and we’d know we would be rejected.

-Guess what, God the Father already knows all of those thoughts, and if you are in Jesus Christ He does not reject you—you are still loved and accepted

~Not that God just overlooks sin, but it is because of the fact that Jesus died on the cross to pay for that sin, so that sin is taken care of, and now God looks at us as He looks at His Son

-So, the power behind guilt and shame is nullified—Satan likes to continuously bring it up in our mind because he’s trying to drive a wedge between us and God

~We have to get those feelings under control of the truth, and tell those feelings: NO, I AM ACCEPTED BY GOD IN CHRIST JESUS, and nothing can change that

III) Live by the Spirit of Christ

-In our passage Paul makes a contrast between living in the Spirit of God and living in the spirit of the flesh—there is salvation by faith that then leads to an indwelling of the Spirit whereby we can live in the freedom given to us in Christ

~but then there are those who try to live by their own effort—this is the spirit of the flesh where you think that you can live out the law and make yourself pleasing to God

-The problem is that the law was never meant to save—it only points out what we’ve done wrong, it doesn’t give us the power to live right

-So, here’s the point: when you try to please God in the flesh by trying in your own effort to live out God’s law, you are going to fall flat on your face—and all that’s going to do is exacerbate your feelings of guilt and shame

-Here’s the problem that many people go through: a person feels guilty about something or another in their past, so what they do is they think they can somehow make up for the past by trying harder in the flesh to please God; but then they fail even to do this, and that just makes them feel even more guilty

~They already felt guilty for something; they try to do good to make up for it, and then feel guiltier when they fail even that

~On and on it goes in a vicious cycle

-But Paul says that we live by the Spirit of God that dwells in us, because that is the only way to please God

~Living like the world will not please God

~Living in our own power will not please God

-It is the Spirit of God in us that gives us spiritual life, it is the Spirit of God in us that will raise us in a resurrected physical life, and it is only by the Spirit of God in us that will give us peace in our mind about our eternal life with God through Christ

-When we try doing things in our own way through our own effort and live by the indwelling Spirit, we are freed from the cycle of guilt and shame—instead of trying to please God in a way we never can, we live knowing that we please God because we are in Christ and Christ (by the Spirit) is in us

Conclusion

-Let me close with this story:

Author and apologist Lee Strobel talked about a time when he was pastoring that he and his church did this baptismal service where they handed the people being baptized a piece of paper where they were to write down a few of the sins they committed, fold the paper, and pin that paper to a large wooden cross on the platform—since their sins were nailed to that cross with Christ and fully paid for. After they did that, then they came to the pastor to be baptized.

A woman whom he baptized would later write him this letter. She said:

I remember my fear. In fact, it was the most fear I remember in my life. I wrote as tiny as I could on that piece of paper the word abortion. I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium during the service, the guilt and fear were that strong.

When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there. I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long. But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It’s okay. You’ve been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It’s the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and unconditional love. It was unbelievable, indescribable.

-And that story makes me want to ask you: Do you have inside of you a secret sin or something from your past that you wouldn’t even want to write down on a piece of paper out of fear somebody might open it up and find out? Let me tell you something about the Jesus I serve. Not only does he want to adopt you as his child, he wants to lift the weight of guilt off your shoulders if you would trust him.

-There may be some here today who have never trusted Christ because they thought Christianity was about doing good and being good to make up for what you’ve done. The problem is you can’t. But Jesus died for your sins, and not only that, He took all your guilt and shame on Himself so you would no longer carry that burden…

-But maybe you are a Christian who has a hard time of letting go of something from your past. The devil wants you to carry that burden to keep you from a fruitful relationship and fellowship with God. Don’t let the devil have that victory. Know your identity in Christ, cling to your acceptance in Christ, and then live by the Spirit of Christ. So maybe you want to come to the altar and lay that burden down at the feet of Jesus who unconditionally loves you—so much so that He died for you.