How to Find Relief from Guilt

I remember when I was in seminary and had just started a new job at my church. One of the things I did was work with the college ministry, and on one of my first weeks on the job, my boss, Gavin, was out of town, and he had asked if I would use his truck to pick up students from campus and bring them to church.

So Sunday comes, and I get his truck, pick up the students, drop them off, and then head to the back of the church to park the truck. Now, I was not used to driving this big truck of his, and somehow—I don’t even really know how it all happened—but somehow, I get all caught in the fence. All I know is that at some point during the debacle, I hear that dreaded, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound of me creating two long scratches along the side of his formerly-pristine truck.

When I heard that sound, my gut sank. And on top of that, when I look up, I see the church administrator watching the whole thing.

My heart was racing. Did I just ruin my relationship with my boss on one of my first weeks on the job? Could I repay him for the damage? I was a seminary student, living mostly off of loans, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to. But I knew there was no way around it. I had to tell him what happened. So I get out my phone, text him to tell him what happened, apologize, and offer to pay for the damage.

And then I waited…

And I’ll tell you what, the silence of the waiting was even worse than the sound of the scratching. But eventually, he responded, and this is what he said: “No problem, David! These things happen. I hope the morning went well!”

That’s it! No, “Ok, let’s talk about it when I get back.” No, “Ok, if you could get it fixed, that would be great.” Just, “These things happen. I hope the morning went well.”

And here’s the proof that he really did forgive me and didn’t hold it against me: A couple of weeks later, he again asked if I would use his truck to pick up students.

In the grand scheme of things, scratching my boss’s truck wasn’t a big deal. It was an accident that could be repaired with a quick trip to the body shop. I’ve sinned intentionally against God and others in far worse ways in the past week alone. But that morning is etched into my mind because, in it, I experienced the relief of guilt and shame and the joy of forgiveness.

When I reflect on that day, it reminds me of Psalm 32, when David describes the even greater blessing of God’s forgiveness and invites us all to experience the same.

“I Kept Silent”

In Psalm 32, David first describes how he felt before he confessed his sin to God. “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer” (Psalm 32:3–4). Today we might describe this feeling by saying that something is “eating us up inside” or that we feel “crushed by guilt.”

Do you ever feel like that? I know I do all the time. I have that thought again. I speak those words again. I do that thing again. And once I realize it, I feel the crushing weight of my guilt. I feel deeply ashamed.

And when we feel that way, we can be tempted to respond as David does here. We try to ignore, rationalize, or hide our sin from God. We keep silent before him. Our prayer life goes to zero.

But just like there was no hiding the damage I did to my boss’s truck, so we can’t hide our sin from God. Our attempts to do so lead only to feeling like our bones are wasting away with God’s hand heavy upon us.

“I Acknowledged My Sin to You”

The good news is that this isn’t where this Psalm ends. We don’t have to spend our lives in the misery of verses 3–4. This Psalm ends with rejoicing! (Psalm 32:11) So how do we get from the agony of verse 3 to the joy of verse 11, from feeling God’s hand heavy upon us to experiencing the blessing of God?

The key is in verse 5. “I acknowledged my sin to you.” It’s so simple! The turning point of David’s experience is when he confesses his sin before God. He goes from silence before God in verse 3 to speaking to God in verse 5. He goes from covering his sin to acknowledging his sin and letting God cover it (Psalm 32:1). The key to experiencing the blessing of God, to going from inner anguish to joy and gladness, is to acknowledge your sin before God.

And this change—from silence to speaking, from hiding to acknowledging—is what brings the change in the last line of verse 5. This is one of my favorite lines in the entire book of Psalms. “And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

What I love about that line is that there’s no space between David’s confession and God’s forgiveness. As soon as you confess your sin to God, in that instant, he forgives. There’s no hesitation, no delay.

That’s some radical forgiveness! It’s not like when we ask for forgiveness from a friend, and we have to wait to see how they’ll respond. When I texted my boss, I had to wait exactly 45 agonizing minutes for his reply. But with God, there’s no waiting. There’s no “…” in the text, no pause for him to think. As soon as you confess your sin, he forgives.

And there’s no qualification. There’s no “I’ll forgive you as long as it’s not too bad.”

“I’ll forgive some things, but not that.” There’s no uncertainty about how God will respond. God promises that if you confess even your most unspeakable sins, without the slightest delay, without question, he will forgive.

It’s like a floodgate.[1] God’s forgiveness is like the water building up on the other side, just waiting for us to open the gate. And as soon as we do, as soon as we confess our sin to him, his forgiveness comes flooding into our hearts.

A Costly Forgiveness

And now maybe you’re thinking, “That’s great, but you don’t know what I’ve done. If you knew me, if you knew the darkness inside, you wouldn’t be so sure about that forgiveness.” But here’s why I am sure: Because it actually has nothing to do with you. The forgiveness God offers you has nothing to do with what you have or haven’t done but has everything to do with what he has done. And while I don’t know what you’ve done, I do know what he has done.

God has revealed something to us today that David only longed to see. We know today that the answer to this Psalm is Jesus. And here’s what Jesus has done for you: Jesus experienced the heavy hand of God, that you might experience his mercy. Jesus groaned and cried out in agony, that you might shout for joy. Jesus was shamed, that you might rejoice. Jesus’s strength was dried up, that you might have life.

Our sin is not like those scratches on the truck that can be remedied with a quick trip to the body shop. This is a costly forgiveness. But because he so loves you, Jesus willingly gave his life so that now, because of what he has done, you can be forgiven no matter what you have done. And so you need not carry around that burden of guilt any longer, for Jesus has carried it for you.

Don’t let your feelings of guilt and shame lead you to be silent before God. Let them drive you to him. And when you do, you can experience the same transformation David does.

“Shout for Joy!”

David ends the Psalm with this call: “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!” (Psalm 32:11)

He goes from groaning all day long to shouting for joy, from feeling God’s hand heavy upon him to rejoicing, from his bones wasting away to being glad in the Lord. And the turning point was when he acknowledged his sin to God.

As much as it blessed me to experience my boss’s forgiveness, it’s nothing compared to the blessing of experiencing God’s forgiveness. Let us acknowledge our sin to him today, that we might experience with David, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.”

Note: This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition

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[1] Cf. Peter C. Craigie and Marvin E. Tate, Psalms 1–50, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 266.