guiltyWould your life be better if you had a clean conscience? Guilt feelings can sit like a rock in the pit of our stomachs, even when we have tried to ignore them or explain them away. Let me show you a fool-proof way to be set free from your feelings of guilt.

The first step, ironically, is to understand the benefit of feeling guilty. Use your hand as an example and think about it this way. You have very sensitive nerves in your fingers. Those nerves cause pain when you touch something hot, for example. Of course you don’t like the pain, but it alerts you to move your hand so you can protect it. In much the same way, God has wired us to feel the pain of guilt when we offend Him.

God uses guilt as a way to warn us, but He doesn’t want us to carry that guilt for any length of time. Prolonged guilt feelings can cause us to be irritable, depressed, sad, and it can even harm our health. How can we stop that nagging feeling of guilt?

The secret to solving guilt has been hidden in plain sight. It can be summed up in this verse from the Bible: “If we confess our sins,

[God] is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Let’s take a walk through this verse so we can see the solution to guilt.

“If we confess our sins” The promise to eliminate guilt is hinged on the first word, “IF.” We must confess to God that we are guilty. The word confess literally means “to agree with.” That means we must agree that what God calls sin is really sin. The kind of confession that says something like, “I know I shouldn’t have done it (said it, thought it) but __________” is not really confession at all. We have to own up to our sin without blaming our circumstances or those around us. The first step to becoming guilt free is to admit that we have wronged a holy God.

“[Jesus] is faithful” This means that Jesus is willing to wipe away the guilt EVERY time we confess our sin. There is no sin too big for God to handle. “… where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

“[God] is … righteous” God is holy so He cannot allow sin to remain unpunished. “Are You not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? …. Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor …” (Habakkuk 1:12–13). There is only one way that God can forgive sin and still remain holy. Someone must suffer God’s wrath for that sin. Thankfully, that is exactly what Jesus has already done for us. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us…” (Galatians 3:13).

“to forgive us our sins” When God forgives our sin, He promises that He will never hold us accountable for it. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). Because God has made this promise, we must choose to believe that He will forgive just as He has promised.

Robert J. Morgan explains it this way: “Guilt is the corrosion of the soul. How can we get rid of it? We can’t drown it, deny it, or deflect it. We can only dissolve it in the blood of Jesus Christ.”

“to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” When God forgives, He also makes us completely clean in His sight. Jesus “gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). Christ’s work makes it possible for us to be completely “… holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4).

Don’t miss this very important last step. After you have followed the instructions above, when you begin to feel guilty about your past sins, stop! Instead of feeling bad again, begin to thank and praise God for His amazing forgiveness. You could say something like this to God: “Lord, I thank You for paying the awful price for my sin so I can be completely clean in Your sight. Even though I deserve to be judged for my sin, I know that I am forgiven because I am trusting what You did to pay for it. I praise You for loving me, even though I don’t deserve it and can’t earn it.”

We should give “praise [for] the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:6–7). Praise the Lord!!