It was a day that should have been the high point of His ministry.
As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Luke 19:37-38
After three years of hard work and harder prayer, miracles, and countless hours of teaching, the people were finally getting it. They recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. His people were giving Him the praise He was due.
Or were they?
And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, Luke 19:41
What’s this? This isn’t part of the Palm Sunday pageant. In every Bible, commentary, and Sunday School lesson, this scene is called “The Triumphal Entry”. Why is Jesus over there crying? What’s that He’s saying?
saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:42-44
Why is Jesus over there crying? What’s that He’s saying?
Once again, Jesus sees through the outer display of behavior and lays the heart of the people bare.
They’re praising Him because He multiplied bread and fish.
Because He healed diseases.
Because they think their Messiah has come to set them free from Roman oppression.
They don’t get it after all. And that’s why He’s weeping.
They don’t get that Jesus didn’t come to give us stuff. They don’t get that the bondage of sin is far worse than enslavement to Rome. They don’t get that taking up a cross and following Jesus will get them something far sweeter and deeper and more satisfying than all the miracles and riches and healings in the world. It will get them Jesus. And that’s what He wants to give them.
And as I watch my Savior’s heart break over His people so many years ago, I wonder– is He still weeping today?
As I watch my Savior’s heart break over His people so many years ago, I wonder– is He still weeping today?
Every Sunday, we, Jesus’ people, offer Him loud Hosannas. We lift our palms in celebration of His goodness and blessings. We sing out His praise. We kneel before Him.
But is He weeping?
Does He see through our outward behavior to a heart that just wants worldly trinkets from Him? Does He see a church that draws near to Him with its lips but whose heart is far from Him? A stiff-necked people who deign to physically bow the knee but not crucify the will?
If you’re more of a listener than a reader, check out Sanctified Social Media at A Word Fitly Spoken, which was based on this article.
Porn. Foul language. Arguments. Hacking. Cyber bullying. Affairs. Frittering away your time. Coveting others’ seemingly idyllic lives. Living and dying by how many “likes” your post got.
I get it. There are a lot of ways social media can go wrong.
But there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Facebook, X, Instagram, or social media platforms in general. They’re tools. Like a steak knife. You can cut up your supper with it so you can eat- good – or you can puncture somebody’s tire with it – bad. It’s all in how you use it.
There have been lots of articles which have rightly discussed the problems with social media and the need to take a break from it every now and then. (Ironically, I’ve seen these articles posted on Facebook and X.) And if social media tempts you to sin or the problems it brings into your life outweigh the benefits, then, by all means, you should disconnect. For thousands of years, people have been living very fulfilling and godly lives without sharing pictures of every meal they eat and watching videos of their third cousin’s cat.
But if you use the tools available to you to customize your news feed, your list of followers, and other aspects of your account, there are many ways social media can be beneficial to Believers.
1. Close contact with your church family during the week How is Susannah, in your Sunday School class, doing with that problem at work? Is Mrs. Bunyan still in the hospital? The water main is busted and we won’t be able to have midweek services? Social media makes it easy to keep up with your brothers and sisters from church- to serve their needs, pray for them, rejoice with them, and encourage them outside of worship service. We’re meant to share our lives with one another, and social media is just one way we can do that. It’s also a great way for churches to send out announcements, reminders, and prayer requests as they come up to keep members informed.
2. You don’t have to miss church when you miss church Once, before livestreaming the worship service was a thing, and I’d had to miss church for a couple of weeks in a row due to having sick babies at home, I had my husband call me from the worship service right before the pastor started preaching and hold up the phone so I could hear the sermon. It was difficult to hear, we got disconnected a couple of times, and I had to keep things really quiet on my end. Now, lots of churches stream “Facebook Live” videos of their services. If you’re sick, out of town, or otherwise providentially hindered (video coverage is not an excuse to skip church for frivolous reasons) from being at church, you don’t have to miss worship. And, as a bonus, you can watch other churches’ services, too!
3. Supplementary preaching and teaching Your pastor, elders, Sunday School, and Bible study teachers at your home church should always be your primary source of instruction in the Scriptures. Some churches make good use of social media by setting up a private group for church members to discuss Sunday’s sermon or what they’re learning in Bible study, and there are many excellent independent theology and Christian issues discussion groups on social media as well.
If you want to listen to additional good teaching during the week, social media is a great place to find it. Ask your doctrinally sound Facebook friends whose sermons they’d recommend. Follow good pastors, teachers, and podcasters on X. You’ll soon have more good teaching queued up than you have time to listen to. And there are scads of excellent godly authors and bloggers to follow and learn from, too.
4. Evangelism Social media is a great place for sharing the gospel! Write out a post of your own, share an evangelistic page, video (like this one or this one), or share an online tract. There may come a time when Christians or the Bible are banned from social media, but until that day comes, let’s get busy sharing the gospel online.
5. Fellowship
Online friendships are no substitute for face to face fellowship with your church family. But sometimes you’re in a church situation in which there are few sisters who understand a unique life circumstance you’re going through, who share an interest in the branch of theology you’re currently studying, and so on. On social media, you can “meet” like-minded brothers and sisters from all over the world and form sweet friendships with them- sometimes you can even experience the joy of meeting them in person!
6. Prayer and Encouragement Need prayer or encouragement? In addition to asking your church family to pray for you or getting together with a Christian friend for lunch, your godly social media friends are always around to lift you up and intercede for you. And you can be a blessing to others by praying for them or offering a word of encouragement.
7. Thinktanking “Does anybody know whether ______ is a doctrinally sound teacher?” “I’m researching Bible Topic X- what are some good resources?” “What’s that verse that says ____? I can’t remember the reference.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked questions like this on social media and my friends have come through for me. There are a lot of godly people out there who have read a lot of books, listened to a lot of teachers, know a lot of Scripture, and been through a lot of experiences. Harness their knowledge and share your own.
8. Looking for a new church?
One of the things about social media that has brought me the most joy is helping people who are moving or who have to leave an apostate church to find a new, doctrinally sound church to join. Not only are there some great church search engines out there, but because of social media friendships and connections across the world, I’m able to get personal recommendations for good, solid churches. Not only can social media help you find a good church if you’re looking for one, you can help others by suggesting good churches you’re familiar with when they’re looking.
9. Current events in Christendom
What is the president of your denomination up to? Who’s the latest celebrity Christian to publicly support the homosexual lifestyle? Are there any good conferences coming up that would be helpful to your church members? Which sister churches in your state need some assistance?
Even more vital than being an informed citizen by following the local and international news, Christians need to be aware of what’s going on in the church- locally, nationally, and globally. Follow the pages of your denominational leadership, local churches, Christian news services, and so on, to keep abreast of current events. Outside of social media, you’ll probably never find out about the latest happenings until they happen in your own church and take you by surprise.
There’s no doubt that social media has the potential to cause a lot of problems, even the temptation to sin. But if you’re able to put it in its correct place so that it doesn’t steal time from God, your family, your church, or other vital relationships and ministries- using it, instead, as just one more tool to encourage yourself, and others, towards greater Christlikeness – social media can be a fantastic blessing.
I wanted to know what is your stance on drinking alcohol? Meaning drinking not to get drunk but having wine with dinner etc.
Great question, but just to tweak it a little, let’s look at the Bible’s stance on drinking alcohol. I don’t want readers to base their beliefs about alcohol usage (or anything else) on my opinions, but on what the Bible says about it.
The Bible does not prohibit Christians from drinking alcohol, only from drunkenness. Christians are not required to partake of alcohol, but may do so in moderation if they like, so long as their use of alcohol does not violate any other Scriptural principles, such as:
Evangelism Would your drinking alcohol in some way hurt your witness to lost people? If a lost person came to your house and saw alcohol in the fridge, or saw you buying alcohol at the store, or drinking alcohol in a restaurant, would it inhibit your ability to share the gospel with that person due to her perceptions about people who drink alcohol? Could you hand a person a tract with one hand while holding a bottle of beer in the other?
Love for the brotherhood Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ enough to deny yourself alcohol if that would set a better example for them, if it would confuse them or cause them to violate their own consciences, or if it would be more conducive to your discipleship of them? There are many people who have had such bad experiences associated with alcohol that your drinking would destroy their trust in, and respect for, you. There are new Christians who aren’t yet mature enough to understand that seeing you – a godly person they look up to – take a drink doesn’t mean that any and all drinking is OK for Christians. Read what Paul had to say about eating meat offered to idols and apply these principles to your consumption of alcohol.
Flaunting Liberty I occasionally see Christians post pictures of bottles of alcohol, intentionally posed pictures of themselves drinking, and so forth, on social media, and I have to wonder – especially for those who are well aware that this is a difficult issue for many Christians – why? Is it to throw their liberty in the face of other Christians whose consciences prevent them from drinking? Is it to prove a point? Is it a result of being puffed up with the knowledge that they have the liberty to drink? Is it to dare onlookers to take them to task in order to excoriate the person with the Scriptures regarding liberty and alcohol? None of these are godly attitudes.
Authority Has your husband, employer, school, government, or anyone else in rightful authority over you asked you not to drink? We are to submit to those God has placed in authority over us.
Ambassadorship Would your drinking in any way tarnish the reputation of Christ, your church, or Christianity as a whole? God is jealous for His holy name, and we are commissioned to represent Him well.
Self Control One of the fruits of the Spirit is self control. Obviously, if you’re drunk, you’re not really in control of yourself, but there’s another aspect of drinking which requires self control. Are you able to deny yourself your right to have a drink when spiritual concerns, such as the ones mentioned above, outweigh your liberty to imbibe?
Drinking alcohol is a far deeper question than just “Can I or can’t I?” The question we should be asking about drinking (and all other activities) is: “Will doing this further the cause of Christ in my life and the lives of others?”.
If you have a question about: a Bible passage, an aspect of theology, a current issue in Christianity, or how to biblically handle a family, life, or church situation, comment below (I’ll hold all questions in queue {unpublished} for a future edition of The Mailbag) or send me an e-mail or private message. If your question is chosen for publication, your anonymity will be protected.
For more in the Basic Training series, click here.
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:17
Excuses, excuses.
We’ve all got them. We’ve all used them.
“The dog ate my homework.”
“I was going to, but…”
“I’d like to, but I can’t, because…”
Sometimes there are legitimate reasons we can’t take part in certain earthly activities. Time conflicts: If a birthday party and a wedding are scheduled for the same date and time, you obviously can’t be in two places at once. Financial constraints: Maybe you’d really like to attend that conference, but there’s no money in the budget. Prioritized responsibilities and loyalties- you’d like to travel as much as you did when you were single, but now that you have a family, taking care of them comes first.
Those aren’t really excuses, though, they’re reasons – totally understandable ones – that you can’t do something. But we’re so much in the habit of explaining why we can’t do something in the day to day logistical realm that it never occurs to us that this isn’t right when it comes to the things of God. When God’s Word tells us to do something, we are to obey it, not make excuses about why we can’t.
When God’s Word tells us to do something, we are to obey it, not make excuses about why we can’t.
Most Christians seem to grasp this concept when it comes to one of the “big” commands. Take abortion, for example. We know that abortion is a sin regardless of the circumstances, even when those circumstances are huge and scary. We reach out to pregnant women with the gospel and with practical help so that they won’t commit that sin. We love the homosexual who wants to come to Christ but is being pulled the other direction by her lifestyle, living arrangements, and loved ones, by compassionately providing for her needs while holding firm to the biblical gospel that says she must turn from her sin in repentance if she wants to be saved.
But when it comes to the “little” commands like…
…submitting to your husband
…being a faithful, active member of a local church
…refraining from teaching men or holding authority over them in the church
…refusing to be anxious about anything
…lots of those same Christians (including me) who are so clear that abortion and homosexuality are sins requiring repentance regardless of the circumstances, have at the ready, all kinds of excuses and reasons and circumstances to offer up as to why we can’t obey God’s word.
“I just don’t think my husband’s decision is the right way to go.”
“A church hurt me in the past, so I’m done with church.”
“None of the men in my church will step up and lead, so I have to.”
“I’m in a really bad situation. I can’t help it if I’m constantly stressing about it.”
Uh uh. No excuse for disobedience that we can come up with is going to wash with God. There is never any acceptable reason or excuse to say, “I can’t,” when it comes to a command of Scripture. God expects us to be obedient. So how can we move from excuses to obedience?
There is never any acceptable reason or excuse to say, “I can’t,” when it comes to a command of Scripture. God expects us to be obedient.
1. Understand that obedience to Scripture is not “legalism” or being a “Pharisee”
As much as pop evangelicalism would like us to believe it, obedience to Scripture is not legalism, nor is someone acting like a Pharisee if she’s teaching that all Christians should obey Scripture. Legalism is when you think obeying God’s commands will save you, make up for your sin, or somehow make you right with God through your own fleshly efforts. Pharisee-ism is making up your own bibley-sounding laws – usually ones that are related to Scripture, but more restrictive than Scripture – and insisting that others adhere to them or they’re not saved, not as good of a Christian as you are, etc. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about rightly handling God’s Word in context, understanding what His commands to Christians actually are, and joyfully submitting to them in obedience.
As much as pop evangelicalism would like us to believe it, obedience to Scripture is not legalism.
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. James 4:17
Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Matthew 28:20a
So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” Luke 17:10
And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.” 1 Samuel 15:22-23a
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15
And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. 1 John 2:3-5
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5:3
Scripture says that Christians seek to obey God’s Word, and when we don’t, we’re sinning.
3. Know that there are no commands of Scripture followed by asterisks
“You shall not murder…unless…” “Do not worry…except in circumstances X, Y, or Z, then it’s acceptable.” “If no men will step up and teach that co-ed Sunday School class, it’s OK if a woman teaches it.” Nope. You will not find a command of Scripture that contains exceptions or caveats. When God says “do” or “don’t”, He means it. He means it for you. He means it for everybody. He means it if it’s difficult or inconvenient. He means it regardless of your circumstances.
When God says “do” or “don’t”, He means it. He means it for you. He means it for everybody. He means it if it’s difficult or inconvenient. He means it regardless of your circumstances.
4. Realize that God is sovereign over your circumstances
God controls everything in this universe. Nothing happens anywhere that He hasn’t either allowed or caused. Translation: you’re in the circumstances you’re in because God either put you there or allowed you to be there. Everybody has some sort of situation in her life that makes obedience to Scripture difficult or inconvenient. Do you think God intends for everyone to use those circumstances that He sovereignly decided to allow or put into their lives as an excuse to disobey Him? Adam and Eve tried that. Did God accept their excuses? Isn’t blaming your disobedience to Scripture on the circumstances you’re in just another way of saying it’s God’s fault you’re being disobedient? That if God had just created you differently or put you in a different set of circumstances, you’d obey, but since He didn’t, you have no choice but to disobey?
Isn’t blaming your disobedience to Scripture on the circumstances God sovereignly put you in just another way of saying it’s God’s fault you’re being disobedient?
When we really want to do something, we find a way or die trying. Be honest- have youchecked out every single church you can get to and explored every available resource and option for finding a church before giving up and saying you can’t attend church? Have you actually tried submitting to your husband even when you think he’s making a boneheaded decision? Is anybody at your church going to die if all of the women refuse to teach men and that co-ed class is disbanded? Are you so willing to obey Christ that you’ll do whatever you have to do in order to find a way to obey Him?
Are you so willing to obey Christ that you’ll do whatever you have to do in order to find a way to obey Him?
Remember taking pop quizzes when you were in school? Unless you were a child genius, you probably don’t look back on them fondly. They were unpleasant. Hard. Sometimes scary because so much was riding on them. Maybe you were like a lot of students who could easily answer questions on the subject matter while studying, but went blank during the quiz because of the fear and pressure.
The testing of our faith can be a lot like those pop quizzes. We know the test is coming, but we’re never quite sure when. We’re supposed to be studying the Textbook and asking the Teacher for help every day so we’ll be prepared. But when the test comes, we have to take it. There’s no opting out and saying, “If this test weren’t happening I’d be able to obey easily.” Of course you would! It’s easy to obey God when it’s convenient and everything’s going your way, but obeying when it’s difficult or inconvenient pushes you. Stretches you. It reinforces what you’ve learned, reaffirms your commitment to Christ, and refreshes your trust in God. Don’t give up in the middle of the test. Hang on to Christ, hang in there, and…
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4
Obeying God when it’s difficult or inconvenient reinforces what you’ve learned, reaffirms your commitment to Christ, and refreshes your trust in God.
Christians are supposed to “walk in the same way He walked” (1 John 2:5b). Christ is the perfect example of someone who determined to obey God regardless of His circumstances. Just look at everything He went through. Don’t you think He was awfully hungry after fasting for 40 days in the wilderness? Wouldn’t it have been extraordinarily easy to strike down every Pharisee who got on His nerves? Couldn’t He have decided the cross was just too much and that redeeming mankind wasn’t worth the trouble?
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Hebrews 12:3-4
Jesus gave up His body – His life – in order to obey God. Are we willing to give up whatever it costs us to walk in the same way He walked?
8. Remember that God has promised to help you
What an amazing God we serve who doesn’t just give us a bunch of rules to follow and leaves us to figure it out on our own! The Holy Spirit is right there, indwelling His people, always ready to help, guide, strengthen, and comfort. First Corinthians 10:13 says:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
God isn’t going to put you into a situation in which you have no choice but to disobey Him. Jesus proved that with His own life. Have you asked God to provide you with a way to obey Him? The Bible tells us that when we pray for things in accordance with God’s will, He will give those things to us. It is definitely in God’s will for you to resist temptation and obey Him, so it is His delight to answer when you ask Him for a way to do that.
Ladies, obedience to Christ is not optional. We don’t get to pick and choose which of God’s commands to Christians we want to obey and which ones are OK to let slide. He expects us to follow after Christ, who obeyed to His last breath, His last drop of blood. And He promises to help us, even when obeying Him is hard. Let’s stop making excuses and start looking for ways to submit to, and obey, God’s Word.
God expects us to follow after Christ, who obeyed to His last breath, His last drop of blood. And He promises to help us, even when obeying Him is hard. Let’s stop making excuses and start looking for ways to obey God’s Word.
“Iagree with what you’re saying, I’m just afraid it might arouse guilt and shame in newer believers, as well as those with sensitive consciences,” a follower recently said in response to a statement of biblical truth I posted on social media. I’ve been pondering that ever since she said it. It was good food for thought.
Guilt and shame are not subjects we often talk about outright. Rather, they seem to be a taboo silently woven into the fabric of our collective consciousness in 21st century Western culture – even in evangelicalism. It’s an unspoken law with the direst of consequences: “Thou shalt never say or do anything that causes anyone to feel guilty or ashamed for the choices she has made or the way she lives her life.” If you do, cancel culture will hunt you down and publicly eviscerate you. You’ll be shunned, and you can kiss your reputation goodbye. Why? Because our society tells us that guilt and shame are the absolute worst things someone can feel.
But is that really true? Or could it be that the prince of the power of the air is lying to us yet again?
While the church has historically done a stellar job of sharing the good news that Christ took away our guilt and shame on the cross, it has not always done a good job of explaining what the emotions¹ of guilt and shame are or the proper function they are to serve in the lives of both Believers and unbelievers.
There are two kinds of emotional guilt and shame: biblically appropriate and biblically inappropriate. Biblically appropriate guilt and shame is when you feel guilty and ashamed as a result of doing something wrong. Biblically inappropriate guilt and shame is when you feel guilty and ashamed when you haven’t done anything wrong.
Biblically appropriate guilt and shame are good gifts from God. They are like a fever that tells you you’re sick and need to take some medicine. Lost or saved, new Believer or seasoned Saint, sensitive conscience or not, if someone is sinning, she should feel guilt and shame, because she has transgressed a holy God. For the lost person, that guilt and shame is an internal reminder that she stands forensically (legally) guilty before God and needs a Savior. For the Believer, that guilt and shame is the conviction of the Holy Spirit leading her to repent and obey Christ instead of sinning. Biblically appropriate guilt and shame are biblically appropriate because your feelings about what you’ve done match the facts of what you’ve done. You feel guilty and ashamed because you are guilty of doing something shameful: sin.
The warning sign of guilt and shame is a blessing from a good, kind, and merciful God calling us to repent immediately and return to Him before we dig ourselves into a deeper pit of sin. Like a loving father who starts with a stern look when his child first misbehaves and then progressively moves on to increasing levels of discipline, God does not pour out the full fury of His wrath at our first bobble toward sin. He starts with the “stern look” of guilt and shame.
Have you ever read the Old Testament and explored some of the more drastic warning signs God had to send His people, and the pagans they lived among, when they sinned and hardened their hearts against the guilt and shame He blessed them with? Have you contemplated the horrors of eternal conscious torment in Hell, lately? When we consider…
how dangerous sin is for us in this life,
how petrifying the prospect of what God could do to us, has every right to do to us in His anger over our sin if He were so inclined,
…it is much easier to recognize biblically appropriate guilt and shame as an act of unfathomable love from God.
If a professing Christian doesn’t normally feel guilt and shame when she has clearly sinned, she should be extremely concerned. That is usually the fruit of someone who is unregenerate, not someone who is saved, and she would do well to follow Scripture’s mandate to examine herself against rightly handled Scripture to see if she is indeed in the faith.
But what about experiencing biblically inappropriate shame and guilt? In the life of a genuinely regenerated Christian, biblically inappropriate shame and guilt mainly takes one of two forms:
feeling shame and guilt for your own pre-salvation sins, or post-salvation sins you’ve already repented of
feeling shame and guilt for someone else’s sin or for something else outside your control
This kind of shame and guilt is inappropriate because it is misapplied. God intended shame and guilt to bring you to repentance for your sin, not to haunt you for sin you’ve already repented of or for someone else’s sin or something outside your control.
If you have bowed the knee to Christ in repentance and faith that His death on the cross, burial, and resurrection paid the penalty for your sin, then God’s good gift of guilt and shame has done its job. It’s over. Christ took your guilt and shame and sin, nailed it all to the cross – and it died there. It did not come down off the cross with Jesus, and it was not resurrected with Him. You have the glorious privilege as one robed in the righteousness of Christ, to rebuke those feelings of guilt and shame over past sins any time they rear their ugly heads, armed with the knowledge that you are forgiven and free. Christ paid with His blood to give you the right not to have to feel those feelings. Send them packing by praising God for His wonderful gift of grace and mercy to you in Christ.
And what about feeling guilt and shame for someone else’s sin? Perhaps you did your best to raise your child in a godly way, but he grew up to become a rapist or murderer, and you feel guilty. Maybe someone committed the sin of abuse against you and you’re dying of shame inside. If I just hadn’t done this, or if I had only done that, he wouldn’t have done what he did. It’s my fault.
May I make a suggestion? Do a good, long, hard study of Ezekiel 18. God is crystal clear – in such a loving and comforting way – that He does not hold you responsible for anyone’s sin but your own. You are – not as a matter of subjective opinion or feelings, but as a matter of forensic, objective fact – not guilty of that person’s sin. So if you’re feeling guilt and shame, your feelings don’t match the facts. Your feelings are boldly and brashly lying to you in the face of what God says is true about you. He says you’re not guilty. Your feelings say you are. Who are you going to believe?
That’s why it’s incredibly important that we believe God’s objectively true written Word over and above our feelings. It’s also why it makes me so angry when seeker driven churches and women’s “Bible” study materials focus on your personal feelings, opinions, preferences, and life experiences instead of properly teaching you the Bible. How can you believe God’s Word over your feelings if you don’t even know God’s Word? When all you know is your raw emotions and not what God says, that leaves you trapped, a slave to your con artist feelings, when you could be completely set free from the shame and guilt God never intended for you to feel for someone else’s sin.
And, finally, you could be feeling biblically inappropriate guilt for an accident or something else outside your control. If we had just bought a different house, we wouldn’t have been living in this one when the tornado hit, and my husband would still be alive. If I had just taken a different route, I wouldn’t have encountered that unexpected traffic accident and missed my daughter’s senior recital.
There’s a key truth all Christians need to come to grips with here: God is sovereign over every atom and event in the universe. You are not. God knows the future. You do not. God is God. You are not. When you feel guilty for things you had no way of knowing, preventing, or avoiding, you are essentially saying you should have God’s omnipotence and omniscience. You’re feeling guilty for not being God.
And your feelings of guilt over something like this are also saying that God was wrong for allowing what happened to happen, because if you were God, you wouldn’t have let it happen. Take a moment and let that sink in. Your feelings of guilt over something unforeseen and unavoidable say that you think you could do a better job of being God than He can. Well, let me tell you what we both already know. You can’t.
God determined from the foundations of the earth exactly which day, and how, and where, your husband was going to die. If it wasn’t God’s will that he die in a tornado on that day, in that house, he wouldn’t have. If God wanted you at your daughter’s recital, you would have been there.
You don’t have control. Control is an illusion. God has control. (And that’s good. Because God knows faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than we do the right thing to do in every situation.) And if you don’t have control, then you didn’t do anything wrong. And if you didn’t do anything wrong, feeling guilty is biblically inappropriate, a) because God’s purpose for guilt is to draw you to repentance over your sin, not for failing to achieve Godhood, and b) because your feelings (“I’m guilty!”) don’t match the facts (you’re not).
God is sovereign. He always does what is right and best in every situation, even if you can’t see it and don’t understand. And because He always does what is right and best, you can trust Him in those terrible incomprehensible situations. Take some time to study what God’s Word says about trusting Him.
A major problem in evangelicalism today is that we have followed the world’s lead and made people’s feelings into a god. We are more worried about hurting people’s feelings than providing them actual biblical help. And we all, including me, need to repent of that and stop it. It is infinitely better to fleetingly hurt someone’s feelings with biblical truth that leads her to Christ, than to allow her feelings to be an untouchable idol that keeps her in sin.
There has to be something higher, more important, than protecting someone from feeling biblically appropriate guilt and shame. There has to be something lofty enough to rescue people out of biblically inappropriate guilt and shame.
There is: God and His Word.
Exalting God and His Word to their proper and deserved place of preeminence and authority, and submitting to them in our hearts, minds, churches, and relationships is not simplistic, it’s foundational. And when it comes to the veneration of people’s feelings (and far too many other issues) we have become the foolish man who has traded a foundation on the rock of God’s truth and His ways for one on the enticingly sandy beach of worldly “wisdom”.
And, y’all…
…it’s starting to rain.
¹There is also a forensic definition of guilt. For example, if you rob a bank, you are forensically (legally), objectively guilty of the crime of robbery regardless of how you feel about it. This article deals mainly with the emotion of guilt– feeling guilty, or having a guilty conscience.
