What could I say? This evening we are beginning a series looking at a number of pastoral issues which different people struggle with. We are going to consider the topics of guilt, anxiety, failure, fears and grief. In each case we will be asking two questions. What does the Bible have to say on the subject and how does the Bible help? This will be useful to anybody who is battling with that particular issue. And then we will think about what could we say as Christians to help somebody else who is wrestling with that problem? This will help us to help other people.
The overarching theme is pastoral care. Pastoral care is not “the care the pastor gives” but the care every Christian should show for other people. Jesus calls his followers to love each other with the same kind of love as he has shown for us. How as Christians do we play our part in looking after each other in the church? How can we care for each other, and share our lives together, and bear one another’s burdens, in practice? In a few weeks we will have a special session when we will consider the general principles of how Christians can help and support each other. This evening we will begin with our first specific topic, which is guilt. What can I say if somebody is burdened with guilt?
The word guilt refers to two different things. In the first sense, guilt refers to the fact of having committed a specified or implied offence or crime or injury, or of failing to fulfil some obligation or promise. When we have done wrong, we are morally guilty for our sins before God, as well as potentially legally guilty for crimes against human laws. How do people deal with being guilty?
The solution to our status of guilt is repentance leading to forgiveness. We must acknowledge that we have done wrong and confess our sin to receive God’s forgiveness. We should also seek to be reconciled to any persons we have wronged. Then we must also come to forgive ourselves.
In the second sense, guilt refers to the normal and natural feeling of remorse or unhappiness or worry or shame from something we have done or failed to do. How should people deal with feeling guilty? We are created with consciences so that when we do something wrong we will feel guilty, and our conscience will bring us to repentance for our actions. Such feelings of guilt are both rational and emotional. People who are feeling guilty because they have done wrong need to be encouraged to confession and repentance – that is the purpose of feeling guilty. Paul wrote to the Corinthians about “godly sorrow that leads to repentance”
2 Corinthians 7 8 Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while—9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.

When we have done something wrong the most important thing is to seek God’s forgiveness. But how can we know for sure that God WILL forgive us? And how can we help other people to experience God’s forgiveness for themselves?

Isaiah 55 6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
God’s forgiveness is unconditional. Remember the words of Jesus to the woman caught in the act of adultery.
John 8:11 … “neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Prayers of confession deal with our status of guilt but they also deal with our feelings of being guilty. We should confess our own sins, and we can point other people to the value of confession if they are feeling guilty.
1 John 1 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
The act of confession brings us assurance that God has indeed forgiven us.
Psalm 32 1 Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the one whose sin the LORD does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
We can be assured that God has forgiven us. And we can assure other people that they can claim God’s promises to forgive them too. But sometimes people struggle with believing that God has forgiven them. In that situation it can be very helpful to confess our sins to another Christian, a friend or sometimes a minister although it doesn’t have to be a minister of course.
James 5 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
When somebody confesses their sins to us, we can declare to them that God has forgiven them. This will give the person assurance that that God has indeed forgiven them. To help us receive and embrace God’s forgiveness, Jesus invites us to the Lord’s Supper. Receiving the bread and wine at communion unites believers with Jesus’s death and resurrection and gives us the greatest assurance of God’s pardon.

God’s forgiveness deals with us being guilty. And if our wrongdoing has affected other people, it is important to seek their forgiveness as well
Matthew 5 23 ‘Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.
In helping other people who are struggling with guilt, it can be helpful to encourage them to seek reconciliation with anybody they have hurt or offended. However it is important to stress that God forgives them, even if the other person does not or cannot.
Note that Jesus says, “if your brother has something against you”. It is not about our feelings towards other people but how they feel about us. That does mean that if the other person is not aware that you have done anything wrong, it may not always be helpful or necessary to burden them with knowing that you have.
Sometimes people say, “I know God has forgiven me, and I know the people I have hurt have forgiven me, but I just can’t forgive myself.” Again, we will need to reassure such people that they are indeed forgiven, and so now their conscience can be clear. If God no longer condemns us, we should not condemn ourselves.
1 John 3 19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 if our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.
So this is how guilt should work. When we stand guilty of some sin or offence, our conscience gives us feelings of guilt. These bring us to confession and repentance and receiving forgiveness from God. These guilty feelings also prompt us to seek reconciliation with others. When all of that has worked properly, our conscience will be clear and our feelings of guilt and shame should then go away. We will be left with memories which will help us to avoid falling into the same sins again but we will receive God’s peace which passes all understanding. That is how guilt should work.
Sadly, sometimes in some people the mechanism of guilt can go wrong. Sometimes people can feel guilty when actually they have nothing wrong – that is called unwarranted guilt. Or sometimes great feelings of guilt can be totally out of proportion to the small seriousness of the thing they have done wrong – that is called exaggerated guilt. Sometimes feelings of guilt can become detached from any actual wrongdoings. Guilt can lead to a very generalised feeling of not being a good person, or feeling like a failure, or feeling that you let other people down all the time, or a preoccupation with past mistakes. This is called free-floating, or toxic guilt.

Unwarranted guilt or exaggerated guilt or toxic guilt can show itself in all kinds of symptoms, such as anxiety, discouragement, crying, shame, insomnia, fatigue, stomach problems or difficulty in concentrating. Guilt can even lead to depression, self-loathing and suicidal thoughts. Such problems due to misplaced feelings of guilt may have roots in events in the past, even so long ago that we have forgotten what actually occurred and are just left with residual feelings. It may be to do with the way other people have treated us in the past, especially our parents or our peers, often in teenage years. Sometimes religion can lead to feelings of guilt. Unwarranted and exaggerated guilt may come from unrealistically high expectations of ourselves. Toxic guilt can emerge when victims who should rightly be angry and blaming others for things they have suffered turn their anger inwards and wrongly blame themselves. Sometimes people feel guilty about things over which they had no control and actually were not responsible for in any way – this is termed maladaptive guilt. Psychiatrists also recognise what they term “survivor guilt”, feelings which some people experience when they have come through some traumatic event like an accident or a fire where others have died or been terribly injured. Over the last two years many people have been experiencing “pandemic guilt.” Some have felt guilty because they have been doing fine while other have become desperately ill or lost their jobs or even their lives. Others have ended up feeling guilty from thinking they weren’t coping as well as they could have been. “Pandemic guilt.”
What can I say? How can we help people who are trapped by those unhelpful and damaging kinds of feelings of guilt? Talking helps. In cases of inappropriate guilt, the person needs to be helped to see their situation as it really is. They don’t need somebody telling them what to do but they will be helped by a friend who listens and supports them in their struggles. They need help to let go of unwarranted or exaggerated or toxic guilt. So we should listen. We should pray for the person and we can offer to pray with the person. We can share Scriptures with them and we can share our testimonies of times God has forgiven us with them.
However, we must recognise that there will be some people who are trapped by guilt to such an extent that they cannot receive the assurance of pardon which usually comes through confession and repentance and reconciliation. If that is the case we should be ready to point somebody who is trapped by toxic guilt to professional counselling. Medications and cognitive behavioural therapy can usually help. We should also recognise that sometimes obsessive guilt can be a symptom of mental illness or various psychiatric disorders. If nothing we are saying is helping a person with their feelings of guilt, we must be ready to refer them to specialist help.
Summing up, if somebody is wrestling with guilt, what can we say? We begin by listening to them. We pray for them and with them. We should then encourage them to repentance and confession. We should encourage them to be reconciled to anybody they have hurt. We can assure them of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. We can invite them to confess their sins to us and give them assurance of God’s pardon. If after we have said and done these things, the person is still burdened by feelings of guilt and cannot find any peace, or there are signs of depression, then we should recognise that their guilt may be unwarranted, exaggerated and even toxic. we should begin by encouraging the person to seek the help of somebody more experienced such as a minister. And we should be ready to point them to specialist help. All the while, we are still listening. And we are still praying.

If the burden of guilt is affecting you or somebody you know, do feel free to get in touch by email or Messenger.