Chuck Larsen

We are saints who still sin! According to the Apostle John, anyone who says otherwise is simply lying. We all sin, but for the believer, we know that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (See Romans 8:1). We will not be judged for our sins! The great white throne judgment will be for those who have chosen to pay for their own sins. Believers get a hall pass on that day.  But all sin must be paid for. We either pay for it ourselves on that day, or Jesus pays for it for us on the day he was nailed to the cross. For those in Christ, Jesus has taken our punishment. John again writes in 1 John 2:2, “When Jesus served as a sacrifice for our sins, He solved the sin problem for God – not only our sin problem but the whole world’s.”

We often sing, “Jesus Paid it All.” He certainly did! If we but accept the payment that was made for us on the cross, we are completely debt-free in this life. I’ve always been a little disappointed at the second line of the old hymn, which says, “All to Him I owe.” I understand what it means, but sometimes we simply transfer our “indebtedness” from one credit card to another. I don’t think Jesus paid the penalty for our sins to make us “indebted” to him. As a matter of fact, he frequently said he came to “set us free.” If we were to try to repay the debt to God, it would be such an insult. I gave my wife a nice set of earrings and a necklace for Valentine’s Day. Imagine how I’d feel if she tried to pay for it! I’d be insulted, and mostly, I’d be hurt. If she felt she had to repay me, it would ruin my gift of love. The scriptures are clear that God’s greatest gift is a love gift. John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave us” his son. We cannot pay Him back for such a marvelous gift. We can but accept it and thank Him for it and celebrate the greatest present ever!

Pete Winn tells about the time he went to the Post Office after his Christmas vacation when he visited his parents out of state. It was one of his most expensive Christmases ever because of the travel and all the presents involved. He recalls, “After helping me, the pleasant postal clerk uttered what is surely her standard line: “Is there anything else I can do for you?” I quipped, “Can you help me pay for Christmas?” Without missing a beat, she replied, “He has already paid for it.” I was stunned. Pleased, surprised, a tad embarrassed, but most of all, stunned. I murmured something profound in response—like, “He certainly did”—and left. A simple phrase had put everything in perspective.

Through our connection with Christ, the great judge finds us not guilty! In Romans 3:21-24 he writes, “Now God says he will accept and acquit us—declare us ‘not guilty’—if we trust Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way by coming to Christ, no matter who we are or what we have been like. Yes, all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious ideal; yet now God declares us ‘not guilty’ of offending him if we trust in Jesus Christ, who in his kindness freely takes away our sins.” Yet, the reality in our lives is that we still struggle with guilt often. Phantom guilt, guilt that comes when there really isn’t anything to be guilty about, is the product of too strenuous a self-standard or a failed attempt to live up to someone else’s standard. But there is still true guilt, even for a believer. True guilt is that sense of shame and sorrow when we do something we should feel guilty for. This guilt is truly God’s “wake-up call.” He uses His Spirit in various ways to open our consciences to the wrongs we do so that we get them right again. He has made a way, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). True guilt can only be “cleansed” with a true confession.

Guilt is God’s alarm clock. Chuck Smith used that illustration to explain how God moves his people to repentance when they need it. He uses three alarm clocks. The first one plays gentle music. The second goes off a little later and has a more disrupting sound. If he sleeps through that one, the third one will wake the dead! It makes “a horrendous sound.” He compares this to God’s work of His Spirit that arouses us to our guilt. At first, there’s a gentle tugging at our spirits to see our wrong. If we fail to “wake up,” the Holy Spirit will cause a less pleasant experience.  Chuck Smith explains, “That’s what God did with David. The king wasn’t listening to the Holy Spirit’s prompting in his conscience, so God revealed David’s secret sin of adultery to the prophet Nathan and sent him to speak to David. David’s sin was exposed. It became public knowledge, and at that point, David turned to God in repentance. If that’s what it takes, that is what God will do.” But it even gets worse.  If we ignore or resist the first two “wake-up calls,” God will move more drastically to get our attention. When Pharaoh hardened his heart against God’s confrontation, God took direct action against all of Egypt and its people.

Chuck asks, “Which of these three ways would you like God to use to stop you sinning?” I know I’d like to wake up to soft music. I don’t want to have to be stunned out of my lethargy to sin; I want to be sensitive and open to seeing my failures. I sometimes don’t want to wake up in the morning, and I usually struggle with waking up to my sin, but if we don’t respond to God’s gentle nudging in our consciences, He’ll wake us up in a more radical way. Guilt is God’s way of reaching out to us in the gentlest of ways. It’s always disturbing, of course, but when God speaks to us through the guilt he arouses in us, it’s another expression of God’s wonderful Grace.

At 56 years of age, my dad lost his right arm just below the elbow in an electrical accident. He was rebuilding another old house on 60^th and Pratt in Omaha (His 4^th!), and he and mom lived in the basement while he rebuilt the kitchen above. It took some time for his arm to heal, and the worst part of the injury was what the doctors explained as “phantom pain.”  It’s the sense that his wrist and fingers of his right hand were burning or itching, and he couldn’t scratch them because they no longer existed. He would often dig at the stub to relieve the pain, but it didn’t help. It took some time to get over it.

Dr. Paul Brand, writing with Philip Yancey, told a story about a man named Mr. Barwick, who had a serious and painful circulation problem in his leg but who refused to allow amputation. But finally, the pain became too great for him to bear, and Barwick cried at last, “I’m through with that leg. Take it off.” He had developed an irrational hatred for his own leg, and after the operation, Barwick took the amputated leg and put it in a pickling jar. He installed it on his mantle shelf. He said, “Then, as I sit in my armchair, I will taunt that leg, ‘Hah! You can’t hurt me anymore!’” But the leg had the last laugh.  Even long after the wound healed, according to Brand, “Barwick could feel the torturous pressure of the swelling as the muscles cramped and itched and throbbed.”

Brand then made the comparison of phantom pain with false guilt. He writes, “Phantom limb pain provides wonderful insight into the phenomenon of false guilt. Christians can be obsessed by the memory of some sin committed years ago. It never leaves them, crippling their ministry, their devotional life, their relationships with others.…” False guilt is produced by something that isn’t really there. We’ve failed to live up to the expectations of others, we’ve not met a standard that we’ve set too high for ourselves, or we’ve let God down in such a way that we can never be forgiven. Many of us have our false standards, unmet expectations, and previous sins right up there on the mantlepiece. Jesus died for our sins and paid the penalty for them, and Paul reminds us that even though we have past sins and regrets, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). We still feel the pain of our failures over and over again. We dig at the stubs of our sins. But there really isn’t anything there. They’ve been removed by the great physician himself. In 1 John 1:9, we read that whenever our sins are confessed to God, He is faithful (can be depended upon!) to forgive us and cleanse us of our sins. But then in 3:19-20, It says, “By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”