A Real-World Example of Overcoming Guilt: John Bunyan
John Bunyan, the author of the classic work “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” went through a particularly difficult season early in his walk with Christ. There is some debate as to when Bunyan was actually converted, but we do know that at some point in the late 1640’s he was awakened to his need for the gospel; at some point within the first five years of his marriage he did profess Christ. But we also know that in the early 1650’s Bunyan endured severe trials (a horrendous experience of guilt). Bunyan had what he called “blasphemous thoughts” and he feared he had committed the unpardonable sin. This is how he was feeling:
“And now was I both a burden and a terror to myself, nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die. Oh, how gladly now would I have been anybody but myself! Anything but a man! And in any condition but mine own! For there was nothing did pass more frequently over my mind, than that it was impossible for me to be forgiven my transgression, and to be saved from wrath to come.”
Bunyan was afraid that he had committed the unpardonable sin. His feelings of guilt were intense. This lasted for some time (upwards of seven years). He had confessed his sin multiple times. He was trusting in Christ, but he still could not overcome this sense of guilt and dread. Would he actually be forgiven? Bunyan tells the story of how God rescued him not only from his actual guilt but from these feelings of guilt:
“One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “The same yesterday, today, and forever.” . . .Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God [e.g., Hebrews 12:16-17] left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God.”
The answer for Bunyan was the same for every one of us—the completed work of Jesus Christ. Feelings of guilt will never go away (fully) while we are still under a sentence of condemnation. And if they did somehow go away that would be terrible news. How horrible would it be to wrongly assume your complete innocence, not knowing that you stood guilty of a horrendous crime?
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Thomas Sadler/Public Domain