God's grace does not free believers from all guilt and shame. I'm going to start there and then share four things that God's grace does do. God's grace is a powerful force that should transform our lives, perhaps more than we realize. When we trust what the Bible says about grace, we can experience what Acts says happened in the early church: "God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all" (Acts 4:33 NIV).
Someone has guilt when they have done something wrong. If I steal my neighbor's lawnmower, I am guilty of a crime against my neighbor, and I need to make it right. I have guilt. This is not the same as "feelings of guilt," although the word guilt is often used that way. Feeling guilty is really a type of shame. Because of our conscience we feel bad because we know we have done wrong.
Shame is a painful emotion we feel in response to two different things: 1) real moral wrongs we have done, or 2) our own perceived shortcomings that have nothing to do with morality. I might feel shame that I am not successful enough in my business to please my parents, or shame that I am not physically attractive enough to measure up to the expectations of my culture.
I believe God's grace gives us the power to overcome the second type of shame, and I will explain how below. However, God's grace does not remove the first type of shame, and that's a good thing!
Shame over our moral failures is part of God's grace to us. He has equipped us with an internal mechanism that alerts us to our need to repent. Shame also urges us to spiritual growth, which is something we need far more than a life free from feeling bad because of sin. Shame drives us to experience the wonderful grace of repentance and then experience the love of God in forgiveness. We can feel the loving arms of Christ around us in a fresh way.
Think about it. If form the moment you became a believer in Christ you never again felt bad about bad things you did, would life really go better for you? Would you really seek to grow in holiness, study biblical teaching and apply it to your life, or have a sense of your need to continue to fight against remaining sin in your life, to the degree you have? In reality, one of the classic traits of a sociopath is that they no longer feel shame over their wrongdoing. It's not a place any of us want to be. Salvation is not a free pass to be able to sin more without any pain (and thus run further from God). Salvation draws us closer to God and continues to draw us closer to him. God is gracious to us by continuing to use shame to alert us to areas we need to keep working on in life.
Grace can be presented in such a way as to make believers feel shame for feeling shame! What I mean is that I might think that, as a believer who is forgiven for every sin, I should never feel bad about what I do. "Why," I might ask myself, "do I continue to feel shame when I am supposed to believe Jesus has forgiven me of all my sin?" I begin to feel bad for feeling shame, for not trusting in Christ's forgiveness enough. I hope I have freed you from that. Celebrate that God still allows you to feel shame to help you grow closer to him.
So, if God's grace does not remove all shame, what does it do?
1. Grace gives us confidence in our position before God and our adoption into his family. "Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (Jn. 1:12 NIV). As a result, we know God's love for us is secure and that we will enjoy his blessings for all eternity. We are declared righteous in his sight. There are two implications of this confidence:
First it enables us to overcome the shame we have that is not related to morality. We know God loves us no matter what anyone else thinks of us. I am not saying that makes it easy to overcome shame that we feel around people who disapprove of us. But it does equip us with the tool we need to overcome it. We can read our loving Father's words in places like Psalm 23 or Psalm 139 and know that we are God's creation. He made us in a unique way for his glory and he loves us.
Second, we will never have any reason to be overcome by shame over wrongdoing. Yes, shame over moral failures will come, but we know that God will never abandon us no matter how much we fail. God will always call us to come running back to him. Our sin is paid for by the blood of Jesus.
This does not mean that we are never guilty of wrongdoing. Instead, it means all our guilt before God is already dealt with. If I am being tried for a crime in a courtroom. I may be guilty. I may deserve a ten year prison sentence. I have guilt. However, once I have served my ten year prison sentence and am released from prison, my guilt has been dealt with. I have "paid my debt to society." That doesn't mean I never did wrong, but it does mean that I no longer have to dread being arrested, charged, and punished for that particular crime, that has already happened.
In the same way my debt to God is already dealt with in Christ Jesus. He has already served my "prison sentence," taking upon himself my punishment at the cross. I may still have guilt with regards to others. If I steal my neighbors lawnmower, I have guilt with respect to him until I apologize and return the lawnmower. If I continue stealing from others, I may have to go to prison because of my guilt with respect to the law. But with respect to my standing before God, I have, and always will have, a clean slate. With respect to earthly things, I may still have guilt, but with respect to the heavenly things, my sins are paid for. Therefore, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Heb. 4:16 NIV).
Consider these beautiful verses: "He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace." (Eph. 1:5-7 NIV) If it were not for promises like these, we might give up in our battle against sin in our lives, overwhelmed by our unworthiness to love and be loved by God. But God's grace calls to us again and again, "Of course you are unworthy of God's love, but he loves you anyway. You are his child, he has provided everything you need to draw near to him. You glorify him when you display the power of his love and forgiveness when you confess and repent of your sins yet again." Just as God graciously uses shame to help us draw closer to him, God uses the promises of our secure position before him to encourage us to keep drawing close to him in the midst of shame. He does not want us to wallow in any shame, but to overcome it through his grace.
2. God's grace gives us the power to radically forgive others.
I don't think we often appreciate how much emphasis the Bible places on forgiving others. Jesus stated plainly, “If
you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins”
(Mat. 6:15 NIV). Later, he said, "If
your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent,
forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times
come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them” (Luke 17:3-4 NIV).
Giving this amount of forgiveness to others is basically impossible. At least on our own. The only way we can do it is by realizing that God has already given us more grace than we could ever give to others. Then he asks that we hand out some of the grace we have received to others. Thinking of it this way, we can enjoy giving away forgiveness to others. This is the point of the parable in Matthew 18. Every time we radically forgive others we are reminded of how powerful God's grace is in our lives that makes forgiveness possible.
3. God's grace gives us the power to love and serve others sacrificially.
We can die to ourselves and "value others above ourselves" (Phil. 2:3 NIV) only because of what Jesus has done for us. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19 NIV).
4. God's grace gives us the power to overcome suffering.
Only because of God's grace can we have confidence that God can do great good through our suffering, for he has already done the greatest good through the greatest suffering at the cross. We know that our suffering is necessary to fully share in the glory of Christ. "We are...co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Rom. 8:17 NIV)
So we know that suffering itself is God's grace in our life that is "not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:28). We may not understand the "how" or the "why" of particular suffering, but God's grace tells us we can trust him and it gives us the strength to endure it. In fact, it means suffering is even an occasion for rejoicing (James 1:2) because of what we know God will do through it!
Conclusion:
Having confidence before a holy God, radically forgiving and sacrificially loving others, and having the ability to rejoice in suffering are all supernatural abilities. You cannot do them without the amazing grace of God. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ" (Eph. 1:3 NIV).
