Lesson 103. A Sense of Guilt

In 2007, my friends and I conducted seminars on Christian topics through Skype. Each time, we invited listeners to help people solve problems they could not handle on their own. One young man contacted us and tearfully told us how he had killed an acquaintance. His mother-in-law had run into his home crying out in pain because a fork had been stuck into her leg. The man quickly learned who was responsible and ran off to deal with him. As a result, he beat the offender so severely that the man died from his injuries at the scene. The court acquitted the son-in-law and passed no sentence upon him. In the eyes of his relatives and friends, he became a hero. But he understood that he was a murderer and could do nothing about it. His guilt weighed upon him so heavily that he no longer wanted to live. In this condition, the man turned to us for help, sobbing into the microphone. I listened and did not know what to do. I understood that all my knowledge was insufficient to help this person. But I knew the One Who knows how to resolve such matters. While I listened to his story, my heart earnestly prayed for wisdom and cried out to God for guidance so that I might help solve this problem. When he finished describing his experience, the Lord gave me the clear thought that I should assure this young man of God’s love and forgiveness. I had no experience in offering such comfort, but I decided to try. I began speaking what the Holy Spirit gave me at that moment, while my friends listened and prayed about the situation. We read many Bible passages about forgiveness and the assurance of God’s love, gave this burden to Jesus in prayer, and assured the man of God’s acceptance. I simply watched the miracle of God’s grace at work and marveled at how quickly it could change a person’s mind and establish within it the authority of Christ and God’s love. Within an hour, the sobbing man, crushed by grief and guilt, was transformed into a new person. He became calm, began to smile, and joyfully exclaimed praises to God. We all experienced an awareness of God’s presence, and our gratitude knew no bounds.

Later, I spoke with this man several more times, and I always heard him express joy and gratitude to God for healing his soul in this way.

Guilt is a person’s awareness of responsibility for violating ethical standards or rules established by society or law. This feeling may be objective or subjective. For example, if I visit someone and break a beautiful vase, I objectively see that I have caused damage to my acquaintances. In this case, guilt prompts me to seek a solution by apologizing, explaining myself, feeling ashamed, or offering to compensate for the loss. Or I may begin blaming myself or those who placed the vase in the wrong location. The reaction may differ, but the guilt is objective.

In another case, an acquaintance devises a solution to his problems at my expense. To involve me, he describes the situation in a way intended to create a subjective sense of guilt within me. He may recall experiences from the past and speak about them in order to prompt me to take the actions he expects, even though I am not actually guilty before him. This is often seen in families, when children are blamed for their behavior in order to make them do or refrain from doing something. For example: “Son, because you behave so badly at school, your mother has become ill.”

In both cases, a sense of guilt arises in a person’s mind, and he must make some decision and take some action so that this condition will go away.

Awareness of guilt is not something positive. It destroys a person’s inner peace and brings suffering, distress, worry, remorse, anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions into life. Then the person begins searching for a way out or falls into despondency.

God gave His law to our world, and He placed within its requirements an emotional recompense for violating its ordinances and committing lawlessness. A sinner cannot live peacefully or be happy in evil. The guilt that comes from God enables a person to understand that he has transgressed the law. Through this awareness, the Spirit of God draws the human mind to Christ so that forgiveness and deliverance may be given in Him. This path of freedom from guilt and sin was provided and established by God Himself, and God’s grace heals the mind of the repentant soul.

But the enemy of souls does not want a person to experience such deliverance from the power of sin. He invents different religions and arguments, offers salvation by works, and gives people false peace and false teachings in order to keep deceived souls under his control by diverting their attention from Christ. Satan also skillfully uses subjective guilt to sow his seeds of grief and despondency through this condition of mind. To accomplish this, he has an entire army of agents who, sometimes unconsciously guided by the influence of evil spirits, learn to manipulate people’s minds in order to achieve their own goals. At times the enemy of souls personally instills this feeling in those who have come under demonic influence through disobedience to God’s requirements. If we consider the fact that we are all sinners, I believe each of us has experienced or is experiencing something similar while being unable to resolve the matter independently.

If this concerns only me and my own condition, then I begin destroying myself. This is harmful to me. But if I become the source of such influence and begin manipulating another person’s mind in order to accomplish my plans, I unwittingly take responsibility before God for that person’s life and salvation. I assume an authority to control another person’s conscience that does not belong to me.

The expression, “You should be ashamed of yourself!” may not always be right in the sight of Heaven.

Love teaches me to respect the opinion and freedom of my neighbor, even if that person is a member of my family. Love does not condemn people for their mistakes and sins, but always looks for opportunities to improve the lives of those who have gone astray or are committing sin. Love delivers me from both true and false guilt by drawing me to Jesus and enabling me to receive forgiveness through repentance and confession of my mistakes. So that I will not commit such offenses again, God desires to endow me with love, which brings heavenly harmony into my life and makes it beautiful in my heart and in my surroundings. Love heals the soul from every sense of guilt, and it does not admit the subjective influences that Satan attempts to impose upon me through his agents. My love for people reveals God’s love for His creation and gives thirsty and deceived people an opportunity to touch the eternal Source of grace and discover in Him the beauty of God’s character.

By loving my neighbor, I bear the surest testimony about God, and many proofs are not required, because words of love have power to create what is beautiful in people and to bring happiness and peace into their lives. Sometimes you simply speak with a person, and afterward he rejoices and exults merely because Jesus touched him through you. Friendship and a relationship of trust are established. Love binds us with eternal ties so that, in this condition, our souls may be preserved until the day of the glorious Coming.

1. Did this lesson reveal anything new to you?

2. Is a sense of guilt something right?

3. What should we do so that we do not live under a sense of guilt? How can we be freed from it if it is present?

4. How can objective guilt be distinguished from subjective guilt?

5. How can we manipulate another person’s conscience without even realizing it?

6. How does love deliver the soul from guilt?

7. Please read Galatians 5:22; Matthew 27:37; Zechariah 3:4; Psalm 32:5; and Exodus 20:5 in the light of our lesson.