Is Feeling Guilty and Being Guilty the Same Thing?

When was the last time you felt bad as you zoomed past a speed limit sign? Or maybe the better question is, what number above the one you saw would make you feel bad if you were to drive that fast?

Feelings have been taking increasing ground in our society as the measurement for how we determine what’s right and wrong, good and bad or how we interact with the world. How we feel about the truth isn’t the same as what is actually true. How we feel about how we’re treated isn’t always the same as how we’re actually treated. What we feel we’re supposed to have may not be what we’ve earned or what we deserve.

But feelings are powerful. Incredibly powerful. They cause us to act, react, overreact and even sometimes fail to act based on how we feel about something. Emotions — whether we like it or not — may be one of the most powerful driving forces behind our actions. 

And the greatest collision between our actions and emotions may center around one fundamental thing in our lives — guilt.

The Facts of Guilt and the Feelings of Guilt

Let’s come back to speeding for a moment, because it can be a great example of how facts and feelings don’t always line up. Here are three examples:

Example #1: Let’s say you’re in a hurry to get to work because you’re late. That 65mph sign on the freeway looks a lot more like 85 to you. You’ll be careful, and you won’t text and drive, but your intent on making it to work on time. You’ll make up the time you lost cleaning up the coffee you spilled, and the dog vomit that happened right as you were heading out the door (this, sadly, is a real-world example for me). You don’t feel bad that you’re speeding, you’re just worried about being late.

Example #2: You got off work a little early and headed home to relax and spend time with the family. As you drive through your neighborhood at a reasonable speed, you realize that people in yellow vests are giving you the stink-eye. Several yell at you and shake their fist, but you can’t make out why they’re so mad. Then you look at the clock and realize it’s 3 pm, and school is getting out! You’ve been speeding through a school zone! You feel awful because you’ve put kids’ lives at risk, and you’ve become that person that you usually yell at as they speed through your neighborhood. 

Example #3: Your neighbor calls you to let you know that her water broke, and she thinks she’s about to give birth in a hurry. Her husband is at work and can’t get back in time. She needs you to drive her to the hospital, and fast! With your adrenaline pumping, you don’t even see any of the speed limit signs. You just know that you’d rather not attempt to give birth in the backseat of your SUV. You don’t feel anything, you’re just reacting in the moment.

You had a different feeling in every scenario. You didn’t feel bad in the first, did feel bad in the second, and felt nothing in the third scenario — but, in every one you still broke the law! The fact is, you were guilty even if you didn’t feel guilty.

And while speeding may be a serious thing in relation to the law, being guilty when it comes to our relationship with God is a far more serious matter.

How Do We Feel about the Facts When it Comes to Our Relationship with God?

Scripture does a great job of giving us the facts about our relationship with God if we do not know and trust Christ. It pulls no punches, ditches the kid’s gloves, and tends to smack us uncomfortably in the face with a 2x4 of truth. Or at least that’s how it feels. 

When we hear things like “all have fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); that “no one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18); or that”…whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Or if you just went to one verse, listen how the Apostle Paul pulls from eight different places in scripture to make one big bad case for humanity:

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Romans 3:11-18

There is no way to spin this positively, and Paul isn’t trying to make us feel good here. He wants us to see the facts — that without Christ, we are seriously guilty. And not just the temporary, get-a-speeding ticket kind of guilty. Or even the spend your life in prison kind of guilty. It’s the spend eternity without God kind of guilty. The worst kind of guilt one can have.

There are more than a few ways of dealing with guilt or, more accurately, the sentence that comes along with guilt.

I have sat in several courtrooms throughout my life while the verdicts of others were read. It’s a tense, stressful time as the judge hands down the sentence. Some were for simple things, like speeding, that were given a fine. Others were a little more serious, like a multiple offender of traffic violations who got their license revoked. 

But the one that I will always remember is when three men were on trial for the murder of someone. Each of them went through a lengthy trial, was convicted, and I just so happened to be there to support a friend while they were being sentenced. One of the three men who was sentenced to 70 years to life in prison began cussing at his lawyer. He got up angrily and had to be escorted out of the courtroom. There was no sorrow, regret, or anguish in his voice.

There may be nothing worse in life than someone who has no remorse over true, irrefutable guilt. 

How we feel about the fact of our guilt really matters. You and I are really guilty before God without Christ. That should make us feel something. But we shouldn’t feel anger at God for judging or sentencing us, which Paul makes clear God does indeed do (Romans 6:23). We also shouldn’t feel nothing and dismiss our guilt as trivial or simply a mistake we made, because sin isn’t that either. It’s a conscious decision against our God’s will and ways that pushes us farther from Him, and closer to death and eternal life without Him. And we shouldn’t feel self-loathing or shame that we’re worthless human beings either, as we’re incredibly valuable to Him. We are made in His image, after all.

So, What Should We Feel?

There’s only one thing we should feel when it comes to our guilt, and Paul tells us this answer too: 

“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” 2 Corinthians 7:10

Most likely, Paul is making this assertion to Christians in the Corinthian Church. That even though they are saved through Christ, they can (and have) sinned. While they aren’t guilty before God because of their reception of Grace through faith in Christ, they must have felt guilty because their sin led to a purposeful sorrow, a Godly sorrow. And as Paul points out, this is different from worldly sorrow. 

Godly sorrow examines the heart that is drifting away from God and painfully pushes it back toward the direction of God and away from sin. Godly sorrow takes ownership over personal sin, seeks God’s forgiveness, and attempts to minimize and ultimately kill the sin that will kill them.

Worldly sorrow does not examine the heart, but rather, laments the action. It does not see sin as a conscious, willful action away from God, but rather a mistake to be minimized and hopefully forgotten. Worldly sorrow does not lead toward a course correction of the heart, and therefore the sinful actions continue, pulling the heart further away from God. Eventually, the sin that is very much alive in their life ends up killing them.

Final Thoughts

As we said in the intro, feelings are powerful. Incredibly powerful. They have the power to reorient your heart to God if they are evaluated through facts; or they have the power to drown out God’s good grace if evaluate the facts through our feelings. You don’t have to feel guilty to be guilty, and in some ways, that is a good thing. 

If repentance depended on how we felt, then anyone who lived their life feeling like they’re a good person or spent their life feeling worthless would never be saved. But it’s not up to our feelings! 

The fact is, you’re guilty. But there is a greater fact than even this. The fact is, God can make you innocent and free through His Son. 

The question is: will you feel Godly sorrow, repent and turn or return to Him?

Then this feeling will lead you to the greatest fact of all: that someday you’ll feel only the joy, goodness, and love of God for all of eternity.

Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fizkes 

Kile Baker is a former Atheist who didn’t plan on becoming a Christian, let alone a Pastor, who now writes to try and make Christianity simple. Kile recently wrote a study guide to help people “look forward to and long for Heaven.” You can get one on Amazon here. He also writes at www.paperbacktheologian.com. Kile is the grateful husband to the incredibly talented Rachel, Dad to the energetic London and feisty Emma and Co-Lead Pastor at LifePoint Church in Northern Nevada. He single handedly keeps local coffee shops in business.