Tag Archives: Justify

Commentary

A closer look at the Christian doctrines of guilt and forgiveness

3 Comments

This is from Randy Alcorn’s Eternal Perspectives web site.

Excerpt:

It is a critical mistake to try to eliminate feelings of guilt without dealing with the root cause of guilt. No matter how often someone says “you have nothing to feel guilty about” to someone who has sinned against God and others, his guilt feelings will remain. Why? Because he knows better. Only by a denial of reality can he avoid guilt feelings. But such a denial is inherently unhealthy. It sets him up for emotional collapse whenever something reminds him of the sin. People need a permanent solution to their guilt problem, a solution based on reality, not denial or pretense.

Because it offers a solution to the guilt problem found nowhere else, I will quote from the Bible and cite references to specific biblical books, chapters and verses. This way you may look up these verses in a Bible yourself and think about them on your own.

Because of Christ’s death on our behalf, forgiveness is available to all.

The word “gospel” means “good news.” The good news is that God loves you, and desires to freely forgive you for all your sins, no matter how ugly or destructive. But before the good news can be appreciated we must know the bad news. The bad news is that there is true moral guilt, that all of us are guilty of many moral offenses against God. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

The Hebrew word for sin means literally “to miss the mark.” Sin is falling short of God’s holy standards. Sin separates us from a relationship with God (Isaiah 59:2). Sin deceives us and makes us think that wrong is right and right is wrong (Proverbs 14:12). The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Jesus Christ is the Son of God who loved us so much that he became a member of the human race to deliver us from our sin problem (John 3:16). He came to identify with us in our humanity and our weakness, but did so without being tainted by our own sin, self-deception and moral failings (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15-16). Jesus died on the cross as the only one worthy to pay the penalty for our sins that was demanded by the holiness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Being God, and being all-powerful, he rose from the grave, defeating sin and conquering death (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 54-57).

When Christ died on the cross for us, he said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The Greek word (teleo) translated “it is finished” was commonly written across certificates of debt when they were canceled. It meant “Paid in Full.” Christ died so that the certificate of debt consisting of all our sins could once and for all be marked, “Paid in Full.”

Here’s an article from CARM that talks about feeling guilty after getting forgiveness.

Excerpt:

There is an important lesson you need to learn about forgiveness that begins with understanding two things:  justification and sanctification.  Justification is God’s legal declaration upon a sinner in which the sinner is declared righteous in God’s sight; this is also known as salvation.  Sanctification is God working in the Christian, through the Holy Spirit, to make the Christian more like Christ.  Justification is instantaneous; sanctification lasts a lifetime.  Justification is easy because we receive it by faith (Rom. 5:1; Eph. 2:8).  Sanctification is difficult because it is something we do in cooperation with God as He works in our hearts daily.  If we are not very sanctified in our actions, thoughts, and words, we are still justified; we are still saved because of Jesus.  Justification does not depend upon our sanctification.  In other words, our salvation is not dependent on our works in any way.  Justification (salvation) is based upon what Jesus did.  Jesus bore our sins in His body on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24).  Jesus paid for our sins, all of them.  They are gone because He removed them.  It is all because of Jesus and what He did, and not because of what we have done.  Praise be to Him.

Now, I have a question for you.  Can you earn your salvation or do anything at all to merit forgiveness from God?  No, of course not.  That is why salvation is by faith, and not by works or faith and works.  If you did not get your salvation by your works, then you do not keep it by your works, either.  In other words, you do not keep your salvation by doing good or by suffering for your sins so that you might, somehow, be made good enough to be with God.  It can never happen!

Finally, here is the point.  Some Christians, after they have committed a sin, punish themselves by retaining the guilt of their sin and do not receive the full forgiveness of Christ until they have put themselves through enough suffering that they have then “earned” the right to be forgiven.  Of course, this isn’t the intention of holding on to guilt, but sometimes it’s the underlying reason.  It is a danger because it is nothing more than trying to earn the forgiveness of God through our works; in this case, through suffering.  This is an insult to the cross of Christ.

Now, I am not saying that we should never feel guilty for doing something wrong.  I am saying that you should confess your sins and be forgiven (1 John 1:9).  Once confessed and forgiven, it is wrong to harbor the feelings of guilt as a way to punish yourself so that afterwards you might feel you’ve done enough to “feel” good enough to have fellowship with God.  That is what’s wrong, and it is sin.  If that is what you are doing, then you need to realize that God does not require you to pay for your sins through feeling guilty.  He has already paid the full price.  Your part is to humbly and truly confess your sin to the Lord, turn from it, and leave it.  By looking to Jesus and what He has done, you can let the guilt and the guilty feelings fall away from you.  Put your eyes on Jesus.  Praise Him for His great love and forgiveness, and continue in your walk of sanctification.  Lay it all before the cross.

I think the key thing to look for when you are asking for forgiveness is that you have to be sure that what you did really was wrong, based on the Scripture, whether it worked out for you or not. If you do something that the Bible forbids, then there is no excuse for what you did. No desire that you have allows you to sin. No noble purpose you have allows you to sin. No unfair condition allows you to sin. No imagined success or hope of victory allows you to sin. No failure of anyone else allows you to sin. Either you sinned or you didn’t. If you think you didn’t sin then you’re not needing forgiveness, and you don’t have it. If you think you did sin, then you can get forgiveness if you ask Jesus for it, and if you know that he is able to give forgiveness to you.

Polemics

What are the minimal requirements for rational morality?

25 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome readers from the the Western Experience! Thanks for the link, Jason!

Last week, I posted a list of 13 questions that Christians could use to get discussions going with their atheist friends. Basically, you ask your atheist friend out to lunch, ask them the questions. We got 10 responses to the questions, which I summarized here. And I had lunch with another one of my friends, another Jewish atheist, who goes to a Reformed synagogue, as well.

Basically, the questionnaire’s purpose is to establish whether atheism provides a rational foundation for moral behavior. Specifically, can atheism account for the minimal requirements for rational moral behavior (see below).

1) Objective moral values

There needs to be a way to distinguish what is good from what is bad. For example, the moral standard might specify that being kind to children is good, but torturing them for fun is bad. If the standard is purely subjective, then people could believe anything and each person would be justified in doing right in their own eyes. Even a “social contract” is just based on people’s opinions. So we need a standard that applies regardless of what people’s individual and collective opinions are.

2) Objective moral duties

Moral duties (moral obligations) refer to the actions that are obligatory based on the moral values defined in 1). Suppose we spot you 1) as an atheist. Why are you obligated to do the good thing, rather than the bad thing? To whom is this obligation owed? Why is rational for you to limit your actions based upon this obligation when it is against your self-interest? Why let other people’s expectations decide what is good for you, especially if you can avoid the consequences of their disapproval?

3) Moral accountability

Suppose we spot you 1) and 2) as an atheist. What difference does it make to you if you just go ahead and disregard your moral obligations to whomever? Is there any reward or punishment for your choice to do right or do wrong? What’s in it for you?

4) Free will

In order for agents to make free moral choices, they must be able to act or abstain from acting by exercising their free will. If there is no free will, then moral choices are impossible. If there are no moral choices, then no one can be held responsible for anything they do. If there is no moral responsibility, then there can be no praise and blame. But then it becomes impossible to praise any action as good or evil.

5) Ultimate significance

Finally, beyond the concept of reward and punishment in 3), we can also ask the question “what does it matter?”. Suppose you do live a good life and you get a reward: 1000 chocolate sundaes. And when you’ve finished eating them, you die for real and that’s the end. In other words, the reward is satisfying, but not really meaningful, ultimately. It’s hard to see how moral actions can be meaningful, ultimately, unless their consequences last on into the future.

Tomorrow, I will explain why the answers given by the atheists show that the worldview of atheism offers none of these 5 requirements, and that therefore morality is really, really, really irrational on atheism. Atheist can look over their shoulders at their neighbors, and act like them in order to feel happy that they are acting consistently with the arbitrary fashions of their herd, but that’s all they can do, on atheism.

Further study

You can get the full story on the requirements for rational morality in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by William Lane Craig here. You can also hear and see him present the paper to an audience of students and faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. The audio is clipped at 67 minutes, the video is the full 84 minutes. There is 45 minutes of Q&A, with many atheist challengers.

The video of this lecture is the best material you can get on this issue, and the Q&A from the hostile audience is vital to the lesson. More debates on atheism and morality can be found on the debate and lecture page.

You can find a post contrasting the morality of an authentic, consistent Christian with an authentic, consistent non-Christian here. A post examining how atheism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million innocent people in the 20th century alone is here. A post analyzing the tiny number of deaths that religion was responsible for is here.