We all have a judge residing inside us. We usually call it a conscience. He is beyond our control, a bit like our emotions... Just like we don't control what we feel, only how we react to that feeling, the same it is with our conscience. For example, when something bad happens, we can't decide to feel good about it. That would be insanity. If I had a dog and someone killed that dog, I couldn't decide to feel happy or glad that my dog was dead. So we see that emotions are beyond are control and separate from our will. We call that physical law. The same it is with our resident judge. Every time we act in opposition to that inner judge or the law of our mind (our standard of right and wrong, or the truth that we hold), that resident judge screams, "Guilty!" He constantly accuses us and we try to drown out his voice or to soften it, but we cannot.
When we were little children, we were alive without that judge once, because our knowledge of right and wrong and our knowledge of God, was extremely limited. We didn't feel guilt like we do now. We were innocent. As we grew older, the truth that we held also grew. We developed the knowledge that we should always do what is right, we should never be selfish, and we should always care for our fellow man before our own needs. There was and is always a struggle though... To obey that knowledge that we held, or to disobey it and follow after the natural desires of our bodies. Our bodies do have a desire to eat, sleep, copulate etc. There is nothing wrong with those natural drives, except when we follow those drives past their natural course and go against the law of our minds.
James 1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.
James 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
As you see, the lust wasn't the sin. The "drawing away of his own lust" and "when lust has concieved" is the sin. For instance, we know that sex is for marriage and between a man and a woman. It is when we go against that knowledge and against better judgment, that we sin.
So what am I getting at? The end product of our life of continuously going against this truth that we hold, is guilt. All our lives we have been storing up guilt, and trying to hide it. The problem is, nothing we do, can permanently remove this constant feeling of guilt. We go through our lives attempting to bury it, and try to justify ourselves through many different means. One of the means would be, comparing ourselves against those around us and trying to ignore that resident judge, through temporal pleasures.
Another would be religion. Religion temporarily brings relief from guilt through some ordinance or activity. All the "man made" means of diminishing that feeling of guilt, are empty and vain. They may make a person feel better for a short while, but they don't work in the long run. They are nothing but shallow attempts at removing that feeling of guilt that just won't go away. They are nothing but a progression of an empty, meaningless life of holding truth, aggressively going against that truth by following after selfish and carnal desires, all the while trying in vain to justify oneself. You know where this leads besides eternal punishment?... Depression, loneliness, in some cases mental illness, and always a life of misery.
There is only one way to remove this feeling of guilt permanently. No religion can do it. No church, no denomination, no pastor, no priest can do it. Why? The sin issue must be dealt with. Someone must pay! Only then can we be free from this guilt and condemnation!
As our sin grows, so does God's wrath. God has emotions just like we do and he is angry, he hates and his wrath burns not only against sin, but against sinners. The wrath of God is revealed from the supreme court of the universe (in Heaven) against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth and deliberately chose to disobey it. God's wrath had to fall and it did. On His own Son Jesus, who took the wrath of God for us. It actually pleased the Father to bruise His Son and make His soul an offering for sin, because He placed all our sin on Jesus. He made Jesus to be sin for us... He who had never sinned. The flood gates of God's wrath, that was kindled because of our transgression, fell on His only begotten Son and He died on a cruel cross, where his blood was shed, and He went to hell for us! The perfect righteous blood of God was shed so that He could justly forgive sinners freely without any effort! That's not all though. God raised Jesus from the dead and seated Him at His right hand to signify that Jesus was who he said he was and that the payment had been made in full. That's not all though... God now calls all who believe this gospel, perfectly righteous and justifies them as a free gift! This way, God gets all the glory. Jesus did all the work, and all He now requires from us is that our faith not be in ourselves but in Him, in order to be saved and have our sins forgiven. This belief that I speak of is not with the head but with the whole heart.
When a person turns to God and believes this message, he knows his sins are forgiven and his eternity is assured. The guilt is gone because the sin has been paid for and God remembers them no more. Not only that, all future sin is also paid for. The wonderful thing is, this message when it is truly believed from the heart also produces an obedience and a righteousness that far supersedes anything that religion ever could. This gospel produces a new creature out of that miserable, sinful, lonely old creature that then was and transforms a him to a person filled with love, joy and peace. All this through a relationship and a salvation that is entered into by faith. Not faith in oneself but in the Son of God who died and rose again. It's a beautiful thing.
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