A Letter to my Focus Family

Hello all,

This is to anyone who recalls the discussion we had on guilt many weeks back.

If you do recall, I mentioned that I felt all guilt was bad. What do I mean by guilt? Guilt is the feeling that you've done something wrong and is a feeling that will put you into emotional and spiritual paralysis. You will mope. You will feel unworthy. You will feel bad. Will you do anything about it though? Or will you with just every bone in your body keep telling yourself how bad you are? There's no need for this. I mentioned this one before:

Romans 8:1
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

This is speaking on the eternal stamp of guilt that you had been stained with through sin. If you are saved in Christ, that stain no longer remains and in fact, you are looked upon as righteous by God, the Father. The same righteousness of Christ's. We are free from sin so there is no need to mope or feel unworthy. They don't do anything for us. Let's repent and turn to God. Guilt will not tell you to do that. Guilt will tell you to hide your face in shame. This does nothing.

That is what I've said previously. Now, I found a new passage a while ago about this:

2 Corinthians 7:10
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

This is probably what some of you were still unclear about. That it still felt necessary to feel bad for what we had done. We have sinned. We need to repent. And here it says a "godly grief" produces repentance. A worldly grief produces death. This is what the MacArthur study bible has to say about this passage, "That kind of sorrow leads only to guilt, shame despair, depression, self-pity, and hopelessness."

So how are we to know which kind of grief we possess? Is it one that leads us back to God or into guilt?