A Word in Season: When Guilt is Good (Psalm 51:3)

I hope you know those profound, painful, precious words at the beginning of the 51st psalm. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Now I think if you suggested to a lot of people today that that is good and proper language to come from the heart and the mouth of any person, many would be utterly horrified.

Guilt as a Proper Response to Sin

We live in a world in which guilt is by definition wrong. We are never to feel guilty for anything that is in us, anything that is true about us. We are never to have our sense of self-identity and self-worth and self-esteem in any way damaged by the notion that we might not be quite as good and as great as we imagine ourselves to be, that there is something wrong with us that needs to be dealt with.

And yet it's quite clear from Scripture, this portion and many others, that properly understood, guilt is good. Guilt can be a great gift from God. Guilt is good when it is a proper response to sin. Now we need to be careful here because there are times when Satan afflicts us with guilt about things that are not sin.

Sometimes we can impose burdens upon ourselves that God never intended for us to bear. But guilt in itself is the proper response to disobedience, to transgression, to breaking the law of God and offending him.

Guilt That Will Not Let Us Escape Lightly

When guilt is a proper response to sin, when it is the feeling of shame and distress because of the breaking of God's law, that guilt is a good thing. Guilt is good too if it will not let us escape lightly.

David said, my sin is always before me. Jeremiah criticised those who healed the sin of God's people lightly. And too often there are ways and means that we can push guilt away and remove shame and try and soften the blows in our conscience and pretend that things aren't as bad as they are.

But guilt is good when it keeps coming back and will not allow us an easy, a light and a false escape. Guilt is good then if it brings us to the end of ourselves. There is a proper despair with regard to self.

There's a sense in which we finally realise that there is nothing that we can do ourselves to take away the guilt and the shame of our sins. It's why David is crying out, not looking in. When he looks in, he sees his sin.

It's therefore that he must look out in order to deal with that sin. And so guilt is good when it brings us to the point when we say, I cannot help myself. I cannot cleanse myself. I cannot make myself any better.

Guilt That Brings Us to Christ

Guilt is good then if it brings us to Christ. Guilt should not ultimately drive us from God, but draw us to God. When we understand his loving kindness, his tender mercies, his readiness to cleanse and to forgive, then we come to him with all our guilt and our shame and our wretchedness, with all the weight and the ugliness of our transgressions upon us.

And we come to the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness. We come to the cleansing flood of the blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We come to Calvary where our Lord Christ, the Lamb of God, shed his blood for the sins of the world.

Guilt Resolved in Salvation

And guilt is good then if it is resolved in salvation. If it brings us to Christ, empty of self to cast ourselves upon his fullness and to find forgiveness full and free through his precious blood in accordance with the mercies of a gracious and saving God.

If guilt brings us to the point where we cry, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, then that guilt is a precious blessing.

And it can be removed and it will be removed if but only when we come to Christ, the Saviour of sinners.