You're Not the Boss of Meعينة

PRAYER:

God, please guide me as I seek to monitor my heart. Help me identify and deal with my negative emotions. 

READING:

Guilt

Guilt is the emotion associated with acknowledging that we’ve done something wrong. Sometimes our guilt is so overwhelming that we create a narrative—an explanation that allows us to distance ourselves from our guilt. But denying, excusing, or being defined by guilt always empowers it. 

Guilt creates a debt/debtor relationship. When you wrong another person, you take something from them, so you owe them. We often use this terminology: “I owe you an apology.” But we don’t experience guilt as a debt. We experience guilt as a weight that throws us off balance. When our guilt is resolved, we say, “I feel like a weight has been lifted off me.”

But until that happens, we carry the weight everywhere. It travels with us—from work to home, from one season of life to another. And if we don’t resolve it, guilt evolves into anger. But the reason we don’t want to face our guilt is because it leaves us standing condemned. And there is no way to undo the past. 

But you don’t have to be defined by your past, and you don’t have to deny it. Jesus offers a third option. The apostle Paul put this concept into words.

Paul was a man who carried more guilt and regret than we can imagine. He stepped onto these pages of history as Saul of Tarsus, who arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and executed innocent men and women in the name of God. But Paul didn’t deny his guilt. He told us his story. 

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… - Romans 8:1

We can stand uncondemned, regaining our balance, when we’re willing to face the condemning truth about ourselves, acknowledge it to God, and surrender to the lordship of His Son.

…because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh… - Romans 8:2–3

The law can’t set you free from your past. But God through Christ did something even the best law in the world cannot do. 

… God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. - Romans 8:3

When you receive what God has done for you in Christ, there is no condemnation. To paraphrase, God says, “Together you and I will agree that you are guilty, but you are not condemned.”

And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us. - Romans 8:3–4

When you step into a relationship with God through Christ, four things happen:

1. You forfeit the right to condemn yourself because you are not yours to condemn.
2. Your guilt will remind you, but it will not define you. Your guilt becomes a pivot point for you—not to condemn you, but to look gratefully to God.
3. You forfeit the right to condemn others, because condemning them would make you a hypocrite. You are perfectly positioned to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable.
4. You’re free to make restitution without expectations and without excuses. Your willingness to approach the person you’ve hurt may unlock feelings that have been festering inside them. 

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because what the law could not do, God already did. 

REFLECTION:

Is somebody waiting for you to make the first move? Is your pride keeping you from making it? Jesus humbled himself for you, and now you’re free to humble yourself for others.