Our study through Song of Songs focuses on love, sex, marriage, commitment, and a number of other significant themes. For many, these themes are exciting, instructive, and life-giving. For others, these themes can be painful sources of guilt. For those who are divorced, hearing about God’s value on marriage and commitment can bring guilt and regret. For those who have had extra-marital sex, hearing about God’s sex ethic may feel condemning. This series – which we hope will bring joy and healing – has the potential to bring pain.
Certainly, this is not the only series that has the potential to bring shame and guilt to people. There are certain things that God calls “sin.” If we proclaim and teach God’s Word, people’s sins will be exposed (at least to themselves). Does the church, then, become a place of guilt and shame and condemnation? Are we destined to walk out of church services feeling devastated and defeated? I certainly hope not. When we face guilt, we universally want to get rid of it. Every human being is passionate about guilt elimination. This desire to remove guilt has resulted in two main paths that we take when we experience guilt.
Path #1: We ignore our guilt. We pretend that it does not exist. We stuff it down deep inside of us. No one else learns of it and we do our best to forget it. Whether we have had an affair, looked at pornography, stolen from our employer, lied on our taxes, or committed any other offense, we pretend that our sin never happened. And, as we do this, we hope that one day our guilt will no longer plague us. We hope that ignoring our guilt will lead us to forgetting that our sin ever happened.
Path #2: We explain our guilt away. We tell ourselves that we didn’t do anything wrong at all. And if it was wrong, it certainly was no worse than what others do. Why should we be plagued with guilt and shame when we aren’t serial killers or sex traffickers? We attempt to justify our actions and ourselves so that we can rest assured that the guilt we feel is not valid.
The Bible does not ignore our guilt problem. In fact, the Bible tells us that our guilt is real and it is valid. There is certainly false guilt (when another person makes us feel bad for not living up to their expectations), but every human being has real guilt before God. Romans 3:23 tells us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Ephesians 2:3 says that we deserve God’s wrath because of our sin. Through the Bible God does not tell us, “Don’t worry about your guilt.” Instead He tells us, “You have guilt. Your guilt is a real problem and something needs to be done to take your guilt away.”
And then we arrive at God’s solution to our guilt: The cross of Jesus Christ. Our guilt leads to punishment, but when Jesus died for our sins, He took upon Himself the weight of our guilt. Far from ignoring or explaining away our guilt, God takes it seriously enough that He places it upon His Son. And when He did this, as Romans 3:26 says, God was both “just and the one who justifies.” God took our guilt seriously, but also removed our guilt from us. It had to go somewhere. And it went to Jesus. Now, as Romans 8:1 says, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We are free from guilt.
When you experience guilt because of your past actions, don’t ignore that guilt. And don’t explain that guilt away. Those are cheap and inadequate solutions to a much bigger problem. God alone justified. And thank God that He has justified us through Jesus. When you experience guilt, cling to the cross. You are free from it because Jesus took it. You are now free to admit your sin, and to admit that your sin is a big deal. You are free because you are also free from condemnation. You have been set free by Jesus, the one and only guilt-eliminator.
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