We are, of course, in the
season of Lent. It’s a time in which
we’re called to recognize our sins, to ask God to forgive us, and to turn away
from sin and turn to the Lord.
One of the traditions of Lent, of course, is that we give
something up. We do this as a way of
honoring what Jesus said in the gospel of Luke:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their
cross daily and follow me.” Giving
something up is a way of “denying ourselves”
As you know, for the last couple of years I’ve given up
Diet Coke. I’m doing that again this
year. As I wrote in the newsletter this
month, though, I really don’t think giving up Diet Coke brings me any closer to
God. Nothing wrong with doing it. It’s probably better for my health. But it’s hard for me to think of it as really
“denying myself”, at least in anything like the way Jesus was talking
about. Jesus gave up his life to save us
from our sins, I gave up Diet Coke? The
two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Any comparison between the two just seems
totally ridiculous.
Now, if you’re giving up something like that for Lent, I
don’t want to discourage you from doing it and I don’t mean to imply that
you’re doing anything wrong. If it works
for you, go for it. But it seems to me
that if we really want to deny ourselves, if we really want to get closer to
God, there are other things we need to give up.
Things like arrogance and self-righteousness. Things like envy and resentment. Things like greed. Things like anger.
Those are the
things we really need to give up if we’re truly going to deny ourselves, take
up our cross and follow Jesus. So those
are the things we’re going to talk about in our sermon series for Lent called
“Let’s Give It Up!” And to start things
off today, we’re going to talk about giving up guilt.
Getting rid of
guilt is something God’s people have struggled with for centuries. In fact, we’ve struggled with it going back
to Old Testament times. In the Old
Testament, especially in the book of Leviticus, there are all kinds of rules
about what they called the guilt offering.
When you committed a sin against God, you were supposed to sacrifice a
ram as a guilt offering, so that your sin could be forgiven.
Why does guilt
have such a hold on us? Well, like a lot
of things, there’s an extent to which it’s probably a good thing. In this context, the word “guilt” means “a
feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, or wrong.” When we do something wrong, we should feel
bad about having done it, and we should take responsibility for it. So a certain amount of guilt may not be bad.
Even in that
context, though, guilt is not really a particularly positive thing. Even in Lent, when we’re supposed to
recognize our sins, the point is not for us to feel guilty. The point is for us to ask for forgiveness,
and then for us to change. It’s the
change that’s the point, not the guilt.
But sometimes
our sense of guilt goes beyond that. We
go beyond feeling bad about specific things we’ve done. We don’t feel guilty about anything in
particular. Instead, we feel guilty
about who we are. We don’t feel guilty
because we think we did something bad.
We feel guilty because we think we are bad. We think of ourselves as worthless. We think of ourselves as not able to do
anything and not able to help anyone. We
think our lives have no purpose and no meaning.
We feel guilty because we cannot think of anything good about ourselves.
That’s what we
need to give up. Because God does not
think of us that way. God does not think
of anyone as worthless. God does not
consider anyone to have no purpose or no meaning. God can see good in everyone. Remember in Genesis what God said after he
created humans? God said we are “very
good”. If God says we’re good, who are
we to argue?
But sometimes
we do anyway. And if you do, if you’re
feeling a lack of self-worth today, I sure don’t mean to make you feel
worse. It’s bad enough to have to deal
with feeling guilty. The last thing you
need is to feel guilty about feeling guilty.
That’s not the point of this at all.
Here’s the
point. If you’re feeling guilty, if you
feel a lack of self-worth, Jesus came for you.
Jesus came to take those feelings away from you. John, in our Bible reading today, said it
this way: “This is the message we have
heard from him and declare to you: God
is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
When we feel
guilt, when we feel a lack of self-worth, when we cannot think of anything good
about ourselves, we’re living in darkness.
In fact, that’s about the deepest, blackest darkness we can feel. Not only can we not see any light, we find it
hard to believe there even is any light.
We cannot see an end to the darkness we’re in.
But there is
an end. There’s an end in God. God is light.
The light of God shines in the darkness.
All we need to do is go to that light.
All we need to do is go to God.
The thing is,
that can be scary. We feel like we’re
not worthy of going to God. But that’s
okay. God does not want us to be worthy. God knows we’re not worthy. God will make us worthy.
In fact, as I
was writing this message I happened, just kind of by accident—or, maybe it was
not by accident—to see a quote from Joyce Meyer. She said, “God is not surprised by your
inabilities, your imperfections, or your faults. God has already known everything about you
that you are just now finding out and he chose you on purpose.”
Let that be
the light. Let that be the light in the
darkness. To know that, even though God
knows everything about you, God still chose you. And even though God knows everything about
me, God chose me. Despite my
faults. Despite my sins. Despite all the dumb things I’ve done. Despite all the times I’ve made a mess of
things. God still chose me. And God still chose you. God says that we’re worthy. God says that we’re good. God says that our lives do have purpose and
they do have meaning. God says that we
don’t have to feel guilty about who we are.
All we need to do is ask for forgiveness, and God will give it to
us. Every time. And when we accept forgiveness, when we
really accept it, the guilt is gone.
Here’s how
John says that: “If anybody does sin, we
have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and
not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”
The atoning sacrifice. To atone for a mistake, a sin, anything,
means to make up for it. Once we’ve made
up for our mistakes, once we’ve made up for our sins, we don’t need to think
about them any more, right? It’s like
they never happened. That’s what it
means to make up for something. That’s
what it means to atone for something.
And that’s
what Jesus did for us. Jesus, through
his death, made up for our sins. It’s
like they never happened. How can we
feel guilty for something that never happened?
Would that make any sense, to feel guilty about something that never
happened? Of course not!
Guilt can keep
us away from God. A lack of self-worth
can keep us away from God. Feeling that
our lives have no purpose or meaning can keep us away from God. And God does not want us to feel anything
that will keep us away from God. God
wants us to feel things that will bring us to God. I’ve said this before, but that’s really the
most amazing thing about God: That as
great and awesome and incredible and beyond our understanding God is, and as
flawed and sinful as we are, God still wants us to come and be in God’s
presence. God wants that even more than
we want it. God wants that so much that he
sent Jesus, the atoning sacrifice, to make up for our sins and make them like
they never happened.
You are not
guilty. I’m not guilty. Jesus, the “advocate” as John called him, has
gotten us off. The charges have been
dropped. The sin never happened. We’re off scot-free! And we’re able to be in the presence of God
without guilt, without shame, and without feeling unworthy.
In this season
of Lent, let’s give up feeling guilty. Because
we’re not. We are very good. God says so.
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