The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1300, titled "Bible Questions and Answers."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.

Question

Is there any such thing as a healthy sense of guilt?

Answer

That’s a good question. When is it right and when is it destructive? Well, there’s a lot of talk about that and there are a lot of people trying to get off the hook on the area of guilt. Not too many years ago, there was a great big blow-up in evangelical circles over the factors of guilt; and people were going around saying that the Christian should never feel guilty for anything--that we have been forgiven, totally forgiven, totally liberated, totally set free--and that any guilt is artificial, unreal, and self-imposed and can do nothing but destroy us. It really bordered on antinomianism, or lawlessness.

Is there such a thing as healthy guilt? Yes, there is. That’s like asking, “Is there such a thing as healthy pain?” All pain is good. It’s good in this sense… You say, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not so hot on it.” Well, pain is good. It’s good because it tells you your body has a problem, right? If you don’t feel any pain, you just go on injuring yourself and you don’t know what you’re doing.

I don’t know what you call it, but there is such a disease as that. There is such a problem as people who can’t feel pain and they can be terribly ill and have no idea; therefore, they can seek no remedy. And so it is that in the area of spiritual life, in the area of the soul, a soul needs to be warned when it’s sick. I really praise God for guilt--real guilt--because I want to know when I have violated God’s law, don’t you? I don’t want to go blissfully on in disobedience and stupidity! I want the chimes to go off, and man, they do… Don’t they?

You know, you can tell yourself, “I shouldn’t feel guilty, I shouldn’t feel guilty”; go out and sin and see how you feel. You’ll feel guilty. God put that in you. That’s grace.

Now, if you can’t forgive yourself when God’s forgiven you, if you understand that God’s forgiven your sin and you’ve confessed it and repented of it and it’s still hanging on and pounding your brain, then you’ve moved from real guilt into psychological guilt and that’s destructive! Do you know what that means? That means you won’t forgive yourself and if you won’t forgive yourself, you’re better than God--you’ve got a god-complex--because God forgave you. The Bible says, “He removed your sin,” what? “As far as the east is from the west and buried them in the depths of the sea, and He remembers no more.” And listen; if God’s forgotten my sin, I’m sure not going to let myself get bothered by them. Real guilt is what I feel what I ought to feel; Psalm 51, “When my heart is broken.”

God wants a broken and contrite heart when there’s real sin. But once sin is repented of and once sin is turned from and sin is taken care of, God doesn’t want us playing god with our own lives and browbeating ourselves with needless, destructive psychological guilt. Forgive yourself; God has.

So, there is a need for real guilt. Incidentally, Psalm 51 is the best Psalm to study on the area of guilt.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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