Often our feelings of “guilt” are driven more by pride than genuine repentance.
We all know the feeling. We’ve thought, said, or done something wrong. And we feel remorse about it. But if we’re honest we don’t feel remorse about the sin itself or about disobeying God. Rather, we feel remorse because we failed. We didn’t do so well. Or others saw us fail. Or if others didn’t see us, we feel guilt because if someone did happen to find out about it we’d be embarrassed.
In these instances our “guilt” is less about the sin or the God we’ve dishonored; it’s more about us. We failed. We’re frustrated, embarrassed. We think we should do better.
Satan’s Strategy to Attack Our Egos
This happens personally to me all the time. I’m starting to watch out for it and call it “me-focused guilt.” Recently while reading Daniel Fuller’s The Unity of the Bible he poignantly explained this idea, telling not only that it happens but why it happens. Fuller writes,
“Satan indeed generally has grounds for his accusations, since all sins have have elements of foolishness, ignobility, shame, and weakness. Far from showing their root to be a failure to believe God, however, Satan’s strategy is to attack our egos, taunting us for not sufficiently employing our own wisdom and strength in coping with some situation. Since his one objective is to destroy our faith, his accusations always carry with them an implicit demand to trust in ourselves rather than in God (cf. 2 Cor. 1:9).” (Daniel Fuller, The Unity of the Bible , 282).
Why Attack the Ego?
This is Satan’s strategy: not to merely make us feel guilty, but “to attack our egos.” But why does Satan use this method of attack? Why does Satan assault our egos, leading to me-focused guilt?
Because if our guilt is me-focused, then we’re prone to think the solution will also be me-focused. As Fuller writes, “Satan’s strategy is to attack our egos, taunting us for not sufficiently employing our own wisdom and strength…his accusations always carry with them an implicit demand to trust in ourselves rather than in God” (emphasis added).
Looking to Ourselves for Hope
Here lies the danger of me-focused guilt. The danger is not just that it’s wrong or dishonoring to God or unbiblical—although those are true. The danger is how it leads us to find the solution to our problem in ourselves, to trust in ourselves, to find hope in what we can do better next time—and not in our all-sufficient God. (Which will lead to more dishonoring of God’s goodness and grace in the future.)
When we’re guilty and focus primarily on how we failed and how we should’ve done better, we’ll be drawn to our own will-power when we think about trying to overcome next time. We’ll try to buckle down and think how we can not fail, on what we need to do to succeed (or on how we can make sure we don’t look so bad next time).
In doing so, we not only over-focus on ourselves, we look to ourselves for hope. We trust in ourselves. We do not rely on and cling to God.
We might acknowledge that we’re weak when we engage in such me-focused guilt, but we don’t look to God for future help and strength. We instead look to our future selves.
Let Guilt Point You To God
We must, then, avoid letting our guilt drive us to over-fixate on ourselves. Our guilt instead should drive us to God. To his grace, sufficiently, strength, not our own.
Guilty feelings are often helpful. When we actually thought, said, or did something wrong, these God-given feelings reveal to us our sin. They direct us to our ever-present corruption which reminds us of our desperate need of grace. And most important, guilt points us to the glorious cross of Christ, where we have confidence that because of what Jesus did, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
But if we let our guilt point us mostly inward, we’ll miss these God-given intentions. If our failings become about how we need to do better or about how we were embarrased, we’ll be prone next time to simply just try to do better or do whatever it takes to avoid the embarassment. As Fuller explains, we’ll give into Satan’s temptation to focus and rely on ourselves rather than our God. And not only does that dishonor our gloriously good God, it sets us in a position to fail and fail again.
May we therefore watch out for me-focused guilt. And may our loving God do whatever it takes to teach to us “rely not on ourselves but on God” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
