I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. (1 Cor. 4:4–5)
Have you noticed that you have less confidence in your relationship with God on days when you wake up feeling vaguely guilty? You can’t put your finger on any one thing in particular, but there’s this nagging sense that you’ve done something wrong and that God is frowning at you.
Paul would dismiss that feeling, because he knows how God operates. When God judges, he brings to light what is hidden and exposes the motives of the heart. In other words, he’s specific. He exposes something that can be identified and linked back to an equally identifiable cause. And Paul is confident that God is much better at identifying and judging those things than he himself is (see 1 Cor. 4:3–4).
Jesus said something similar when he described how the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (see John 16:8–11). When wickedness is involved, God does not bring a generalized feeling that something’s wrong. He brings conviction.
And that only makes sense. If you bring a charge against someone in court, it has to be specific. You can’t accuse someone of being “a bad person.” They might be—but that’s a summary of their character based on individual things they have done. Charges are not a character assessment; they’re specific allegations. Why would God have a lower standard of specificity than we do?
Think about the cross. The wrath of God that Jesus endured on your behalf was not a generalized wrath. God directed specific wrath against Christ for specific things that you would do against him and his holiness. To absolve you of those things, Jesus paid the exact penalty that was generated by each particular evil that God identified and judged.
In other words, it’s not your job to convict yourself of sin. It’s God’s. And that’s a good thing, because you’d be horrible at it. None of us is very good at being good, which means that we’re not good at identifying where we are bad or the extent of our badness. Our spiritual blindness and our inexperience with true goodness mean that human judgment is superficial at best. If it were up to us, we would identify far too few things as sin and would assess far too small a penalty for them. The resulting payment would be inadequate, leaving us still separated from God.
Thankfully, God examines and reveals your heart to you … which would be terrifying if he hadn’t also taken the responsibility of paying for everything that he convicts you of.
Your role is to be open and sensitive to his Spirit. When he convicts you, repent. His conviction will be specific, which allows you to ask for specific forgiveness. When you’re just feeling uneasy, you can confidently push that feeling aside as you trust God to do his job.
Is there something that God is clearly putting his finger on in your life? If so, then ask his forgiveness just as clearly.
If there’s nothing explicitly wrong in your life but you feel vaguely guilty, ask God to either make clear what you’ve done wrong or give you greater trust that he will do so when something stands between the two of you.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT, THINK ABOUT IT.
PASTOR ANDRA HIGGINBOTHAM
EVERLASTING SALVATION CHURCH OF GOD MINISTRIES
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