God is Sufficient for Your False Guilt
"I feel bad about..." I began.
My husband joked it was time for my daily list of "things I feel guilty about that I probably have no control over anyway." If only he wasn't right!
Too often, I find myself stuck replaying all the ways I could have done better, loved more, anticipated and therefore better responded, and so on. Some of it comes from conviction of sin. Some of it comes from cultural narratives or others' expectations of me. But some of it is actually feeling badly that I didn't manage to be sovereign and perfect.
This, I've learned, is called false guilt. And I’m probably not the only one who experiences it.
Where Are We Placing Our Trust?
To be clear, God says throughout the Bible that we are all accountable for our own sin—we wouldn't need the salvation found in Jesus otherwise. Guilt often turns our attention to particular sins we need to confess, repent of, and receive God's forgiveness for. So, we can receive accurate guilt as a good gift from God. It's often the impetus that gets us out of the darkness of shame and into the light of grace.
“False guilt tricks us into trying to be God—we often think we have more authority and ability than we actually do.”
But false guilt isn't like this. Instead of freeing us, it traps us in shame. We feel helpless because we can’t make someone’s pain go away. We’re afraid we’re lazy because our impossibly long to-do list didn’t quite get done. We avoid doing something we love because we worry it’s selfish to spend time on things that bring us joy but aren’t “productive” enough. Maybe someone’s told us we really should do something we don’t feel called to do, and we doubt our conviction and even say yes—and then feel badly about saying yes out of a sense of obligation, not a pure heart for service.
False guilt tricks us into trying to be God—we often think we have more authority and ability than we actually do.
Why do we fall for it? I think it's often because we desire to please God and love others but do so out of self-sufficiency. We mean well, but we're trying so hard to "get it right" that we get distracted from the One whose righteousness alone we can rely on.
How Do We Get “Unstuck?”
Knowing the difference between false guilt and conviction from the Holy Spirit can be challenging. Our own sin often overlaps with the sin of others and with circumstances in a fallen world. Everything from the weather to group dynamics to physical health are affected by sin.
So, the first thing to note as we address false guilt is that we won't always know if something we're feeling badly about is ours to confess to God. We are limited in our ability to discern motives, weaknesses, and emotions. It may be that our guilt is a blend of conviction for our own failure and of sorrow over sin's effects on things. Maybe it's that our empathy has us feeling regret for something someone else has done. Or maybe a fluctuation in our hormones is making us particularly sensitive for no reason.
God doesn't require us to always be certain of precisely when, how, and where we've sinned in order to extend grace to us. As David prayed: "Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults" (Ps. 19:12). Jesus' death for our sin included those sins we can't discern.
We can ask God's forgiveness when our guilt is vague. When we have moments we know are rooted in false guilt, we can ask God's help and grace for getting unstuck too.
It is by grace through faith we have been saved from sin (Eph. 2:8). The same grace of God is sufficient for us in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). What's more, it is grace we're meant to grow in as we grow in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18).
God's grace is enough for us when we've messed up—remembering this is a big help in getting unstuck from false guilt. To help ourselves remember, we can hide passages like those above in our hearts. Or, we can ask a trusted friend to pray. We might even ask for their wise counsel if we’re having trouble figuring out how to move on from false guilt about something in particular. We can also turn to favorite stories in the Bible of human messiness and God’s faithfulness to reassure us. Peter’s story as recorded in the gospel of John is one that always grounds me in God’s grace.
Is Grace Enough?
God's grace being enough, even for false guilt, was driven home for me during a particularly hard season. I faced back-to-back illnesses and injuries while also struggling through some difficulties at work and in a few friendships—all while under a significant deadline and being unexpectedly alone in a service role that was meant to be shared.
During that season, I was plagued by a sense of failure. Every day, I’d recount an extra long “I feel bad” list to my husband. Every day, I’d ask the Lord’s forgiveness for all the things I’d wanted to do but hadn’t, the people I’d wanted to be there for but didn’t have time to seek out, for being so needy (when I couldn’t stand without help!)
A wise sister in Christ heard me apologizing for something ridiculous and joked about how it “wasn’t like I had anything else going on.” She continued to gently, kindly point out my limits, the ways she saw God sustaining me, and God’s call on me to rest in him. I was convicted at last not of my failure to do enough or be enough but of neglecting to rely on Christ’s righteousness instead of my own efforts to please Him and love others.
As the Lord washed the false guilt away, the real burden of trying to carry it all on my own began to lift. I was reminded of one of my favorite verses, long ago tucked away in my heart—"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).
There was still stress. I still had a long recovery ahead from illness and injury. My deadline wasn’t pushed back. But God showed me such grace in reminding me that because I am in Christ, I didn’t have to feel ashamed of my weakness, limitations, or mess. He was pleased with me because of Jesus. He was helping me because of Jesus. He was with me because of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t shy away from the messiness of humanity and life on earth. He still doesn’t. God’s sovereignty accounts for our limitations. His forgiveness is enough to cover all our sin, even the sin we struggle to discern. He holds all things together, as Colossians 1:17 beautifully says. No false guilt is needed to convince him we’re worth his being our hope, our help, and our righteousness. And he is so faithful to us, no matter how much we’re struggling. What peace we have in him!
RESOURCES ON SCRIPTURE MEMORY
IMPORTANT NOTE
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