Should Christians Ever Feel Guilty?

What role does guilt play in the Christian life? Today, Ken Jones explores how believers should understand conviction of sin in light of Christ’s finished work of redemption.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: Joining us this week on the Ask Ligonier podcast is pastor Ken Jones. He serves at Glendale Missionary Baptist Church in Miami. Pastor Jones, when a Christian sins, should they feel guilty?

REV. KEN JONES: Yes, but guilt is multilayered. We feel guilty because of various things, circumstances, convictions. It’s a moral conviction at the innermost part of the soul. It is the conviction that what you should do, you haven’t done, or what you’ve done, you shouldn’t have done—if we were to put it in plain terms. But that immediate sense of guilt is attached to a greater ultimate reality. And the greater ultimate reality is that we are guilty because we are in violation of an ultimate law. So, in the ultimate sense, what the gospel does is assuage our guilt. So, if our faith is in Christ, then we know that there is no condemnation. So, in that ultimate sense, Christians should not seek to do the will of God out of fear of that ultimate judgment. And so, in that sense, no, there is no guilt. We stand before God covered in the righteousness of Christ because the ultimate guilt has been assuaged by Christ Himself.

But at a secondary level, we do feel because we are covered by the righteousness of another, which means we are being conformed. And so, as a part of our being created in the image of God with a moral sense of right and wrong, now having, as Paul says in Romans, that we know that the law is holy, just, and good, when we return to the law—when we open up God’s law and see what it says and what it means, and we see ourselves through the empowerment, enlightenment of the Holy Spirit—we are able to see ourselves as we truly are. We will feel guilty for not having done what we should have done or for having done something that we should not have done. But that’s not to be confused with the ultimate guilt, if that makes any sense.

The way I usually put it is that what Christ has experienced in our behalf—He’s experienced the full weight of divine wrath that will be experienced on the day of judgment—that means those on the day of judgment, they will stand naked before God, having violated His holy law. And so, even the guilt that’s been building, even if they’ve tried to submerge it, it’s going to be fully exposed, so they are guilty before God. And what Christ has done is He has experienced in His flesh all that guilty sinners will experience on the day of judgment. Therefore, for believers, judgment day has already come. So, we do not serve God out of dread lest He pour out His wrath; we serve God because, out of grace, He’s already poured out His wrath on His Son in our place.

So, that ultimate guilt has been resolved, and now, the guilt that we experience is the inconsistency between our confession and conviction and our practice. So, our consciences are actually made alive. I like what it says in Ezekiel. The Lord says, “And I will take your heart of stone out of you and give you a heart of flesh” (see. Ezek 36:26). And then He says, “And you will loathe yourselves because of your sins” (see Ezek. 36:31). Now, that’s not a browbeating, navel-gazing sort of thing. But that’s a sensitivity that we do not have in our unregenerate state to either the law or the Lawgiver. So, that’s why the law still has a place in the life of believers: to show us our sins, to reveal our sins, even the sins of those who are justified and saved.

So yes, Christians should feel guilty. We should never feel at ease or comfortable once our sins are revealed.