Guilt Gospel (3) Not Relevant

The forensic presentation of Jesus’ gospel that is preached by the evangelical church is no longer effective in reaching people’s hearts. I presume the reason is that modern people are not riddled with guilt like Martin Luther. Luther preached during a time when the church had become legalistic. Most of the teachings of the church focussed on demands for people to behave better. People were constantly urged to live better. The consequence was that people constantly felt guilty. It seemed to be impossible to comply with the standards required by the church.

People like Martin Luther urgently needed a solution for the guilt that crippled them. For him, the good news that he was forgiven by God was a huge relief. The truth that the cross provided freedom from guilt was a very welcome message. Following the reformation, preachers continued to set high demands for the people of God. However, they were not so effective in teaching people how to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Their failure to live according to Jesus’ standards left people feeling guilty. A gospel that absolved guilt continued to be well received.

Modern people are not wracked by guilt in the same way as previous generations. Instead, they see themselves as victims of circumstances that they can’t control. They have tried to live well, but life has not worked out as they expected. Many were let down by their parents. Others were let down by their teachers at school. Many have been hurt by people they trusted. They feel trapped in troubles that have been caused by other people. They don’t feel guilty, because they don’t believe that they are responsible for the situation they have found themselves in. They see them as victims.

I presume that the root of this feeling that they are harassed and victimised is spiritual, although people often don’t see it. However, if they are aware that their problems are spiritual, they feel like they have been entrapped in a bad spiritual place by events beyond their control and the actions of other people. They will acknowledge that they have made mistakes that harmed them, but they would also claim that they did not know what they were doing. This is probably true.

I am sure that many modern people would identify with Paul’s statement that he was in slavery to the elemental spiritual forces of the world. The people do not need a solution for guilt. A gospel that promises release from guilt does not stir their hearts. I sense that modern people need a gospel of deliverance/rescue from the forces of evil that have swamped them and transfer into the healing life of his body. In the gospels and Paul’s letters, this seems to be the good news that was proclaimed.

The book of Hebrews explains that the cross provides a solution for guilt and shame (Heb 9:16; 10:22). Some people feel guilty about their behaviour before they came to know Jesus. Some believe that they have offended God. The cross is the solution that these people need. Dealing with guilt is one aspect of what Jesus achieved, but we should be careful about making it the centre of the gospel. We don’t need to force people who don’t feel guilty to begin to feel guilty, as the first step to hearing the gospel. Jesus met people where they were. Our proclamation of the gospel should do the same.

Guilt Gospel (1)

Guilt is a central aspect of the modern evangelical gospel. The first stage of sharing the gospel is to persuade the hearers of their guilt before God. Some preachers are very good at doing this. They believe that repentance is not possible until the people listening to the gospel message feel guilty.

• Guilt is the feeling.
• Guilty is the verdict.

In the evangelical gospel, repentance is thinking about your sins and feeling guilty and remorseful. For repentance to be real, guilt must proceed to sorrow and regret and a choice to stop being bad.

The gospel message starts with guilt. Once the listeners to the gospel feel guilty, the consequences are reinforced by explaining that their guilt deserves death or punishment in hell. Once this is understood by the people listening, the preacher can introduce Jesus as the remedy for the problem of guilt and hell. He explains that Jesus died in the listeners’ place, taking the punishment they deserved. If the listeners accept the offer, they are freed from the threat of punishment, but their guilt remains. The evangelical gospel also ends with guilt.

Given that guilt is so central to the western evangelical gospel, I was surprised when I studied the New Testament and found that it is only rarely used in the New Testament. When I did a search for “guilt/guilty” in a bible tool, it threw up only five references in Mathew, one in Mark, and one in Luke and five in John. All the references in John and three of those in Matthew were incidents where Jesus was confronting the Jewish leaders. Jesus did not use the word guilt when challenging ordinary people.

Three of the five occurrences of the word guilt in the book of Acts were references to Paul not being guilty of breaking Roman law.

My search threw up five occurrences in Romans, but four of the references were to headings, and only one was in the actual text. This result shows the bias of the editors of the various English translations. They came to Romans expecting to find guilt, so they put guilt in the headings, even though the word guilt was not used in the text of their translation.

Most of the other half-dozen references in English versions of the epistles were translations of Greek words for debt or liability for making a payment, so “guilt” or “guilty” might not have been the best English word. Some translations used the word “liable”.

I was surprised by the results of my online search. Given that guilt plays such an important role in the western evangelical gospel, it is odd that the concept of guilt, as we understand it, is not mentioned much in the New Testament. The New Testament cannot be wrong, so the problem must be with our interpretation of Jesus’ gospel.

Sacrifice (1) Guilt

The fall created a third serious problem for humans. God was present in the Garden of Eden. Humans could see the spiritual as well as the physical world. They could receive the wisdom of God by listening to the Holy Spirit speaking. Life on earth was amazing.

When humans rejected God’s wisdom and aligned themselves with the deceiver, they created a huge problem. God is holy, so their guilt caused them to withdraw from his presence. They still needed his wisdom, but choosing the wrong side of the battle created a barrier between them and their creator. They could not come near God, because their sinfulness made them scared that his holiness would overwhelm and destroy them.

God was not the problem. The problem was with humans. We were created with a capacity to communicate with God. We could see spiritually and hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. Once sin corrupted that ability, humans cannot bear to be near to God. Guilt shuts down our ability to communicate with him.

When the humans heard God coming into the garden they ran away and hid.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden (Gen 3:8).

They could not bear to be close God any more. God knew that they had obeyed the serpent, but he still came to spend time with them. He was still happy to relate to them, but they could not. Their guilt meant that they could not bear to be close to God.

God did not have a problem. He was happy to communicate with them.

But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you? (Gen 3:9).

There is no anger in this question. God was looking for his friends to share with them. He realised they were lost and wanted to find them.

Later, he explained the curse they had placed themselves under by submitting the spiritual powers of evil (Gen 3:14-19). Even then, there is no anger, only sadness at what his friends had lost and the pain they would experience. God knew better than they did what life would be like for his people once they rejected him.

Guilt separated humans from the God who had created them. This was a huge problem. Humans needed God’s wisdom to care for the world. They had submitted to the spiritual powers of evil, so they needed him to rescue them, but they could not come close to him. God had given them authority over the earth, so he could not intervene without their permission. But because of their guilt, they could not bear to let God into the earth. Guilt left humans isolated from God, when they needed him the most. Worse still it shut God out of his creation, at the moment when the powers of evil had gained control.

Once God was shut of his creation by the ugliness of human sin, the powers of evil went to work and expanded their evil empire. For more than a millennium, they wreaked havoc on earth, as humans rejected God’s call to return to him.