Are you a Christian but, still find yourself feeling guilty? Do you often think about your performance or sin in your heart? Do you get down on yourself or feel confused about your failings? Do you ever feel like you are chasing your tail, like you can never be quite "good enough" and can never stay in a place of peace? It may be that you have unknowingly fallen into a trap of wrong thinking rather than wrong doing. God did not promise to remove sin from our heart; that my friend, will not happen until the rapture. He promised that He would forgive our sin, once and forever. He did that through the work of his son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. That finished work at the cross makes us no longer guilty of our sin in the eyes of God. Aren't you glad that God does not see our sin before His eyes, because of the cross? BUT, when we take our eyes off of the cross and put them back on ourselves, our efforts, our failings, our sins, we then can find ourselves feeling guilty again. We feel confused. We lose our peace.
But God has given us peace because of Jesus and His (Jesus') perfection. It's not about our perfection. God's kind of peace doesn't come once we are good enough, or when we have totally quit sinning. It is a peace that comes when we receive the gift of righteousness or perfection from Jesus, the gift of forgiveness of all our sins. That kind of peace passes all understanding, because it was given to us, not earned by us.
God also sent us the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit will always point us to Jesus (not to ourselves). So, when we look inside ourselves, we are trying to make ourselves sinless, rather than receiving what Jesus has done for us and given to us. By His sacrifice on the cross, He once and for all made us no longer guilty of our sins. He once and for all made us guiltless. He made us righteous. When we start focusing on ourselves, we are actually mixing our righteousness with the righteousness of Christ. That my friend, is actually mixing the law with grace, which will only bring confusion. No wonder we are losing our peace.
Because of Jesus dying on the cross for us and being raised from the dead, those of us who believe and receive that great gift are considered guiltless, shameless, and we are no longer condemned. Jesus has given us our victory. That's grace. It is finished. We don't have to DO anything else, other than "receive" what has already been "done" for us. That is great news! The more we remember and focus on Jesus and what He has done for us, the more His grace can work in our lives and we will actually find ourselves being changed by Him, rather than trying to change ourselves. We will be living guiltless, not sinless.
Mat 12:1-8
Hosea 6:6
Galatians 4:28-31
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