It seems to me that there are two kinds of guilt. The first kind is the guilt of breaking God’s law. It’s like a judge in a court room that says “you’re guilty” whether you actually feel like your guilty or not. You just are because you broke God’s law. The Old testament often talks about this because God would command people to go make a sacrifice in the temple if they had sinned. Then they would not be held guilty for their sin. These sacrifices were a picture of Jesus Christ. He sacrificed himself for all sins that we have done. So it’s covered. Even though you are guilty of sinning God doesn’t hold you guilty; he puts the guilt on Jesus on the cross.

The second kind of guilt is what I would call psychological guilt. When you sin there is a voice in your head that says “that was bad.” It’s a good voice because you’re supposed to listen to it and stop doing what you were doing. But guilt happens when that voice keeps saying it over and over: “that was bad, that was bad, that was real bad.” And before long it starts saying “you’re bad because you do bad things”. When it says starts to say this, you start to feel trapped: “If I’m bad, then all I can do is bad.” Do you see what has happened? That voice–or rather, listening to that voice–has effectively taken the cross back out of your life.

Remember, Jesus actually took the guilt for your sins on himself. But that voice keeps on accusing you! What’s up with that? This voice is telling a half truth. It is true that you are a sinner and that you do bad things, but this does not determine your identity; it has no more power to define who you are because you do not belong to yourself anymore.
You are forgiven. That is what you are. You are in Christ, you are a new creation, you are clothed in righteousness. But this voice would have you think about the old self, the one that died with Christ. That is why the voice of guilt is what we call the accuser, or Satan. Jesus shows us the way to combat Satan: you tell him what God says about you. Some of the best passages for this are Romans 8 and Ephesians 1.

When you tell the accuser that you now belong to Christ and are a new creation, freed from the accusations of your sin, you are not merely playing mind games with yourself in order to promote positive thinking. God’s word has power for salvation. That means it has the power to actually change you. So when you rebuke the accuser and tell him that God’s word says you are forgiven, that same word can change you and your behavior. That’s what repentance is. It is an actual change. God’s truth causes you to turn away from sin and toward the the life of doing what it good. Notice: this change is not what makes you forgiven! You are forgiven when you are made one with Christ: you and I ARE forgiven. The work is done; Christ’s promise assures it. Repentance is tyour response to that truth. If you really receive the forgiveness of Jesus, then you don’t want to throw that in the trash by sinning more! In Romans 6 the Apostle Paul says “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?…Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

We see this beautifully demonstrated in the story of Zacchaeus. When the Word of God comes walking by in the flesh and blood of Jesus he immediately receives him saying “Come to my house!” then he responds to that Word with repentance, turning away from a life of fraud by giving half of his possessions to the poor. That was great, but he did one more thing, and it is very instructive for us.

Zacchaeus is now a forgiven man; he is repentant, having turned away from his sin by God’s grace, full of good works. Now when he thinks upon the sins he has done previously he knows that his sin does not just hurt himself, but it also hurts other people. So he does something that we call “making restitution”, or making things right. He says: “If I have defrauded anyone I will restore it four times over.” I repeat, Zacchaeus is already forgiven; this act is not earning his salvation. But the point of being a follower of Jesus is not just being forgiven, but living the good life! That is what Jesus wants for us. The good life is a life of love for others, and you can start with the ones you’ve wronged. You may be sure that the accuser had no power over that man.

So after you have spoken Christ’s truth to the accuser and have turned away from your sin to a life of doing good, the surest fire way to be done with guilt is to go make restitution. Anything less would have you mired in a fog that falls very short of the life Christ has for you. Restitution has many different forms. If you have spoken with anger, tell that person that you are sorry and seek their forgiveness. If you have stolen, go pay it back. If you have acted indecently toward a young woman or man, you go tell them that you have sinned against them and commit to purity. Be very specific. If you have looked at things that draw your mind away from the love of Christ and focused on lust or greed or coveted what you cannot or should not have, then you take your Bible to a quiet place and take a long time to talk to and listen to the True Lover of your soul. I will say it again: none of this will get you forgiven; YOU ARE FORGIVEN! Restitution puts you back in a place to be living free of the accusing lies of guilt. It allows Jesus to take you to more beautiful places.