Guilt and Forgiveness

God doesn't wait for a person to be pure and unblemished before He redeems him. That's the gospel, isn't it? That while we're still filthy, we are given the cloak of the righteousness of Christ.

Over the past few weeks, R.C. Sproul has helped us see that as Christians, we are to pursue, by God's grace, righteousness. And he has given us battle plans for our war with the world, the flesh, and the devil. But what do we do when we stumble? What do we do with the guilt and the accusations of the enemy when we sin? This is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and I'm glad you're with us for an important message and reminder from R.C.

Sproul. Guilt can be debilitating for the Christian. The accusations of the enemy can hinder our growth and our fruitfulness. So it's important to know how to deal with our ongoing sin and those accusations biblically, and to revisit the truths that you'll hear today again and again. You can do that when you request this series and study guide with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. But this is the final day of the offer.

It won't be repeated next Saturday, so be quick while there's still time. Well, to help you gain and maintain your assurance of salvation, here's today's message from Dr. Sproul. In our last session, we considered the New Testament teaching of the role of Satan in the life of the Christian. And in my judgment, one of the most formidable functions of Satan in the life of the Christian is in the work of accusation. I distinguish that from temptation. Temptation is where you go, wouldn't you like to get involved in this?

This is what will really make you happy if you'll just compromise your ethics at this point. So that's temptation. Accusation is that situation by which Satan torments the conscience of the believer. Now, I want to look then, if we can, at an example of this activity, a satanic accusation that we find in the Old Testament in your favorite book, the book of Zechariah. Everybody reads that for their daily devotions, right? The book of Zechariah, beginning at chapter 3. Zechariah chapter 3, and he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

You get the picture. Here is the one who has been chosen and called of God for the ministry. He's a minister, and this minister is standing in the presence of an angel.

Now, you would think so far that that image, that picture is one that's very positive and inspiring. But right next to him, on the other side of the one where the angel is there, is the fallen angel, the malevolent angel, the malicious angel who is standing there accusing him. Now, what's he accusing him of? And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke you, O Satan, even the Lord that has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you.

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel. Do you see what's happening here? The priest appears in the presence of God, and his clothes are dirty. And that indicates that there's a blemish or something that is taking away from the purity of his office and of his mission. And it's that that Satan sees and focuses upon.

And what he's doing basically is what? He's saying to the angel, he's saying to God, look at this man. He is not fit to be a minister in your presence.

His clothes are dirty. People ask me, you know, do I get nervous before I have to speak in front of a group? I get so nervous that sometimes I have bad dreams and I'll dream that I'm supposed to speak in a church on Sunday morning. And I get to the church and it's time for the service to begin. And I don't have any shoes or I don't have a white shirt or I don't have a necktie.

In other words, I'm not appropriately dressed. Now, a psychiatrist could have a field day with that, I'm sure. I never dream that I forget what I was going to say. And that's the thing I worry about before I go. I mean, I really worry about, am I going to have anything to say?

Am I going to forget myself in the middle? What am I going to say to these people? I never consciously worry about, am I going to show up there without a pair of shoes or without a necktie or without a white shirt?

But when I sleep, those are the things I dream about. And I think it would be so embarrassing to stand up in front of 2,000 people and not have the proper clothes on. We're very conscious about that sort of thing, aren't we? But imagine a priest being ushered into the presence of God. And you remember that the priestly garments in the Old Testament were ordered and decreed by the detailed prescription of God himself. God said, this is what I want the priest to wear. And we are told in the Old Testament that the garments of the priest were designed for beauty and for glory.

That God would be honored by the magnificence of the garments of the priest. And here comes the high priest into the presence of God with filth all over his garments. And Satan jumps at that. What are you doing here?

You don't belong here. This is no place for dirty people in the presence of God. And in the midst of the accusation, God opens his holy mouth and speaks and says, Satan, you shut your mouth. Is this not one of my brands that I have plucked from the fire? Oh, I love that statement from God, don't you?

I mean, think about it. Have you ever been out camping in the woods and you roast marshmallows, you get a stick and you stick the stick into the fire? You build a little fire from the twigs and afterwards you want to clean it up. And have you ever tried to move some of those sticks that have been charred by the fire? If you pull a stick out of the fire before it is consumed by the fire, you want to save that stick, keep it from perishing.

You pull it out, chances are you're going to get charcoal and grime all over your hand. If you don't wear gloves and you go with your bare hand to pull a stick or a brand and keep it out of the fire, your hands are going to get dirty. And that's how God describes not only Joshua, ladies and gentlemen, but he's describing you. He's describing me, a brand that has been snatched out of the fire. So that when God redeems you, when God rescues you and pulls you out of the flames, he gets his hands dirty. And when he rescues you, you are a brand snatched from the fire.

That means you're covered with creosote, you're covered with charcoal, you are a filthy mess. God doesn't wait for a person to be pure and unblemished before he redeems him. That's the gospel, isn't it? That while we're still filthy, we are given the cloak of the righteousness of Christ to be received in the fellowship with God.

So that every Christian is a brand snatched from the fire. And what that means, ladies and gentlemen, is that every one of us has filthy garments. There is some filth in your life. There's filth in my life. And we don't want to go around and parade that garbage in front of everybody else in the world.

In fact, we do everything in our power to conceal it, don't we? But there are two people who know about every skeleton in our closet. There's God and there's Satan. And Satan is a skeleton rattler.

He loves to go into the closet and shake up those bones. And he comes before God and says, look at that filthy coat. The Lord rebuke you, Satan.

Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire? Now Joshua's clothes was filthy garments and stood before the angel. And he answered and spoke unto those that stood before him, saying, take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, behold, I have caused your iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment. And I said, let them set a fair mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon his head and clothed him with garments, and the angel of the Lord stood by.

Do you see what's happening here? Is that when God redeems that man out of the fire, the person still has filthy garments. But God doesn't stop. God goes through the process of replacing those dirty garments with clean garments.

And he promises to do the same thing for every one of you, to put a new turban on your head, a new cloak on your body that is free of all of those blemishes. But in the meantime, as we live our lives in the presence of God, we have to listen to that enemy who's constantly calling attention to our sins, to accuse us to take away our peace and our fellowship. Now, I know that Christians debate over the question of whether or not it is possible to know for sure whether you are redeemed. There are some people who take the position that we can really never be sure if we are in a state of redemption. Now, I take the position that not only you can know if you are in a state of redemption, but it is your duty to know because God commands us to make certain what our status is before him.

You need to know whether you're in a state of grace or not in a state of grace, because if you don't know, then you're totally vulnerable to the paralysis of the accusation of the enemy. Remember, Joshua was listening to this conversation. Joshua was standing there with the filthy garments, and he hears the accusation of Satan. Satan says, he is dirty. Now, what do you suppose would have happened to him if that's the only voice he heard? But thanks be to God, God spoke and said, shut your mouth, Satan.

This is a brand plucked from the fire. We notice that the very first fruits of justification, according to Paul, is this, that being justified, we have peace with God, access into his presence. The person with a troubled conscience, the person who is under the weight of this accusation, does not have peace. People who are at peace with God, who know where they stand, who know that they are redeemed, have a freedom to work out their Christian life that makes them people of power in the world. But it's the person who isn't sure, who's stumbling, halting between two opinions, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, that person is crippled in his spiritual pilgrimage.

That's why it's so vitally important to get it settled in your life where you belong and are you redeemed. Now, the thing that's so subtle about Satan's accusation is that Satan is called at times the slanderer. And what is a slanderer? A slanderer is somebody who charges you with things for which you are innocent.

When somebody accuses me of something I haven't done, that's slander, and that person has inflicted an injustice upon me. And Satan does that. Satan is so concerned about paralyzing people and getting them upset, he will tell lies about them. He will get their reputations tarnished by false accusations.

But ladies and gentlemen, that's not the only way he does it. Sometimes he accuses us where we are in fact guilty. Joshua's clothes were really dirty, weren't they? It wasn't just that Satan was coming along and saying, ah, he has dirty clothes, when in fact he had clean clothes.

Now, he was telling the truth. Now, here's where it gets very difficult in working out the Christian experience because in our study of the Holy Spirit we went over this, that one of the Holy Spirit's ministries in the life of the Christian in sanctification is to convict us of sin. If we commit a sin and don't feel guilty about it, we shouldn't rejoice in that because that's like having a disease and not feeling any pain.

We may think that that's a benefit, but in the long run it's very, very destructive. To feel guilt is a healthy thing if in fact we really are guilty. And if we don't feel the guilt, then the Spirit comes and convicts us of our sin, that we may turn from it. But what's the difference between the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the accusation of Satan? Suppose I commit a sin and I try not to deal with it. And Satan comes along and says, you did it. We know you did it.

What kind of a person are you that would do something like that? The Holy Spirit comes along and troubles me about the same thing. How do you tell the difference? Well, what's the purpose of the Spirit in the conviction of sin? When the Spirit comes to convict you of sin, if you've experienced the conviction of sin, you know that though it is painful to be brought to an awareness of one's sin, there is still something very, very sweet about it. Somehow that when the Holy Spirit confronts us with our sin, at the same time that He tells us we are guilty, He assures us that we are forgiven as we turn to Him, that He comes to us not as somebody trying to destroy us, but Satan's accusation is designed not to redeem us, but to destroy us.

And there's a total difference. You know the difference between the person who comes up to you and say, I want to tell you this out of love, and then really sticks the knife in. That's when you want to say, get out of here, Satan.

And the person who really does communicate that they're for you. The Spirit always communicates that He's for you when He convicts you of your sin. And that's the answer to the debilitating accusations of Satan. In other words this, Satan will hit us where we really are guilty. We have to acknowledge that there is such a thing as real guilt, and the only remedy to real guilt that I know of is real forgiveness.

My favorite illustration of this, I had a college student come to me on one occasion who was very, very provoked. She was a Christian, and she said to me, I've got to talk to you. And I said, what's the matter? She said, well, I'm engaged to be married, and my fiancé and I have been sexually involved, and I have felt this terrible burden of guilt. And I went to see the chaplain at the university, and I told him of my problem, and the chaplain said to me, the problem with you is that you have a highly sensitized conscience, and you've become a victim of a Victorian taboo, a Puritan ethic in your society, and you just have to understand that things have changed.

You're not living promiscuously here. You're being involved sexually with someone to whom you're betrothed, you're engaged, and this is the 20th century. This is the sexual ethic of our day and age, and to be free of this paralyzing guilt, you have to understand that you're not guilty of anything. And the girl looked at me, you know, and she said, but Dr. Sproul, I still feel guilty. Right away we were involved with the great mystery of guilt here, the difference between what I call objective and subjective. It was the difference between guilt and guilt feelings. Guilt is defined legally and theologically as a transgression of the law of God. If a person steps across that line and violates the law of God, he incurs guilt in the sight of God's justice. Now that person, when he violates the law of God, may feel terrible about it, or he may feel nothing. How he feels has nothing to do with the reality or unreality of the actual guilt.

Do you see that? I mean, you can imagine a psychopath who's killed 15 people standing up in the courtroom and the judge says, do you plead guilty or innocent? He said, hey, I'm innocent. And the guy said, well, how do you know you're innocent? He said, because I don't feel guilty.

What kind of a defense is that? The question of guilt or innocence has nothing to do with the feelings. It's an objective question. Now, the question this lady was saying to me was she said, I know this much for sure, I feel guilty. The question is, am I guilty? And I explained to her, I said, there are times when you can feel guilty when your feelings are not corresponding to the reality. You're not really guilty of that which you're feeling guilty about.

That happens. Or you can violate the law of God and not feel guilty so that the two aren't always together. I said, but you should be grateful at this point. I said, the reason why you're feeling guilty about this particular activity is because you are guilty. And for me to tell her she was not guilty would give her no peace whatsoever. Denial, guilt denial, or guilt rationalization has never in the history of the world worked as a remedy for guilt. The only thing that has the ability to free a person from actual guilt is actual forgiveness.

But there's a price tag for that, isn't there? And it's called actual confession and repentance. But God promises, it's one of the few promises of God that He gives absolutely, that if anyone comes to Him and confesses his sins, truly confesses before Him, God absolutely promises to forgive that person of sins. I had another woman come to me once and she said, oh, I'm having a terrible time with guilt. I said, what's the matter? She said, I did such and such, she told me what she did, and she said, and I've asked God to forgive me 15 times, but I still feel guilty. What can I do? And I said, well, what I want you to do is pray one more time.

And she just, oh, you can just read the letdown in her face. You know, I came to a theologian, you give me an answer like that, just pray again. That's what I've tried. Don't you understand? Aren't you listening? I've prayed. I said, I know you've said that.

I said, I want you to pray about something else this time. She said, well, I said, I want you to ask God to forgive you for your arrogance. Arrogance?

What do you mean arrogance? How can you call me arrogant? She said, I've repented more than anybody in the world. I've repented of my sin 15 times. I mean, I'm the quintessentially humble person here.

I mean, why would you call me arrogant? And I said, because you know that God says that if you confess your sins, He will forgive them. How dare you deny the forgiveness that God has guaranteed? I said, if God says that He will forgive you when you confess, then you only confess once.

And to confess it again is a state of arrogance. It's because you don't want to receive grace, or you will not believe that you are forgiven until you feel forgiven. But forgiveness, again, is something God does, and when He does it, it's an objective reality, and it is not dependent upon my feelings. And that's what Satan does.

He hones in on your feelings. He tries to make you a sensuous Christian so that you will only be as certain of your forgiveness as you feel at the given moment. That's why faith, ladies and gentlemen, comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God. It's as we read the promises of God and embrace them into our lives that we become free. And we can read with the Apostle Paul, who will lay any charge against God's elect. We understand that Christ is our righteousness and that the only way we are ever going to please Him is by living daily in dependence upon His grace, keeping short accounts, confessing our sins as we go, but not being paralyzed by the guilt that we incur along the way, confessing it, being cleansed of it, and moving on for the high calling that is ours in Christ.

What a helpful message from R.C. Sproul on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. At Ligonier Ministries, we're often asked this question, How can I know that I'm saved?

Or how do I deal with my guilt? Whether on the Ask Ligonier podcast or live events or during our conference Q&As, it frequently comes up. So if this is something you have wrestled with or you're currently wrestling with, I encourage you to request today's resource offer so that you can revisit today's message and go deeper by using the study guide as well. When you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we'll send you the series on DVD and we'll give you lifetime digital access to all the messages and study guide. Simply visit renewingyourmind.org or click the link in the podcast show notes and know that your generosity is helping spread the truth of the gospel and is helping equip Christians for the battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

This is the last day of this offer. It won't be repeated next Saturday, so respond now while there's still time. As you probably already know because you listen to a program titled Renewing Your Mind, we are to have our minds renewed. We are to be thinking Christians. And next time, RC Sproul will help us build a Christian worldview and to think like Christians. So be sure to join us next Saturday on Renewing Your Mind. .