How a Christian should deal with feelings of guilt regarding past sins, whether pre- or post-salvation?

On the other hand, the conscious sins and failures of a Christian, are, when confessed, forgiven things. The faithfulness of God secures this (1 John 1:9). Confession of sin, or of shortcoming, casts the matter confessed, with the person who confesses it, on the righteous advocacy of Jesus. The blessed Lord acts thus for the instantaneous removal of all that can defile or darken the conscience, or afflict the soul with a sense of guilty deficiency. Confession of deficiency and shortcoming is at once met, in the fulness of that grace which flows evermore towards the once purged worshipper, by the intercession of our great High Priest. Peace thus is again restored to the conscience, while the heart yet retains its humbling sense of personal vileness. For it is the true discernment of the gracious action of restoring mercy that effectually humbles, and keeps low the soul.

But forgiven sin is no subject of the Lord's judgment at that day. Having acted as the advocate for the lightening of our faces when ashamed before God, He is not going to revive and reproduce the pardoned sin, to the denial of His own work, and the contradiction of the perfect truth of God. "Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more," is the testimony of the Holy Ghost, concerning the abiding state of God's mind in Christ towards believing sinners. But things thus willingly forgotten by the grace of God (whose Spirit thus, by words so full of precious meaning, declares the Omnipotence of Love to extend even to the forgetfulness of what has been, in the present contemplation of what is), are surely not again to come into mind with Him who has already welcomed us with perfect acceptance in the Son of His love. The ashes of an heifer, when, according to the lustral ordinance of God, they sanctified to the purifying of the flesh, prefigured not alone the efficacy of the blood of Christ, as once felt in its peace-giving power in the heart and conscience of a newly awakened sinner. They showed forth the perpetual efficacy of that once shed blood to restore to the worshipper, purged once for all, the consciousness, which sin might have disturbed, of the pristine and incontaminable purity in which the blood-cleansed soul for ever stands before God (Heb. 9:13-14; 10:2, 10, 14).

Here the Christian is characterised by a spirit wholly different from first to last. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness." If we have been betrayed into sin, what do we do then? It is so at conversion; it remains so throughout when the need arises. For our God cannot bear sins. We do not hide them; we confess them to God, and, where it is necessary or edifying, to man too. Thus the pride of will is broken; and by grace one renounces his own poor reputation. We care for Christ's character whom we bear. It is His name henceforth; and what is ours compared with it? If we confess our sins therefore, He is faithful and righteous to forgive. What an encouraging word this is, and true from the very time of first turning to God! Here again it is in principle true; and there is no limit to particular time here as in other cases. It is a first principle, and a standing one, for the Christian; it is meant to govern his new walk from the start to the end, a living fact always in the Christian.

How sad to be in a measure always learning, and never coming to a knowledge of the truth! The Jew, under law, could not avoid this constant need of renewal; but what are Christians about, who so forget the gospel? It is unbelief of what grace now gives through Christ Jesus. What can more evidently weaken and darken the glad tidings God sends us? All spring is gone for a holy walk; and you cannot worship in the Spirit unless you know that all is clear between Him and you. Far am I from saying that you are to gloss over any failure. Confess all fully, and at once; but go to Him with the certainty that He welcomes you to His presence which you must have slighted when you sinned. But are you not in living relationship with Him, and with the Lord Jesus, His Son? You have dishonoured Him; but if He denies not your relationship, you should not, who need it more than ever for the restoration of your soul. Perhaps you may have said, or done something, wrong this morning. But is there no appointed remedy, no adequate way, of getting practically clear? Certainly there is. Retire into your closet, shut the door, and have it out with God. It is not that He revokes His grace, and that you are back in the world, but that having partaken of His grace in the gospel, you should humble yourself deeply for any sins into which carelessness has let you slip.

Christians often, when they have failed, find their joy gone, and say, ,How did I get my joy first? was it not by thinking of Jesus?" Then they try this again, but they do not find their joy. When you have not confessed your sin, the Spirit will not let you have joy, although you may try to force it; He says, "No, you are a child; you have done wrong; — go back and confess your sin, or else I will not go on to show you and teach you; you must be brought to confess." When we have confessed, we do not labour to believe again, nor continue confessing, but we know His word is true, "If we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive."

One describing this feeling, says, "It is like this: if you wrong your mother and ask her forgiveness, you cannot go to her just the same as before." But that is just the mistake; you can go; you ought to go to her. And it is also true in divine intercourse. If ever you need to go to God it is when you have sinned. And when He forgives, the whole thing is cleared away. All His heart is towards you in love, and He restores your soul. "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, etc." So that defilement which was on your conscience is, cleansed by His word of assurance. It is one of the subtleties of the devil to seek to keep a Christian from his knees, and from the presence of God his Father, and of Jesus Christ the Advocate.

Well; after a while we are overtaken with a fault, and we lose all joy, and hang our harps on the willows; and why? because we have sinned. What, then, do you say to such an one! You do not call him to the blood on the mercy-seat again. When once I have seen the Lamb, my person is for ever accepted. The moment a saint sins, the Spirit is quenched and grieved, and all joy is gone. Confess, then, your sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive, because you are accepted. There is a controversy between you, as a child, and God; and you must get your conscience washed; and until you confess, you will not get peace. The blood is getting connected with the conscience. Here I get the blood in connection with the Trespass and Sin offerings. This question is not about our persons being accepted. Until you confess, and, as it were, dip your conscience in the blood of Jesus, you cannot get peace. That is the way we must purge our consciences; by confession. If I sin, and do not confess, my joy is hindered. As a poor sinner, blood upon my conscience will not do, but I must find that God can be just, and the justifier of the ungodly, — and the proof is, the blood upon the mercy-seat. But this will not do for the Spirit of God dwelling in me; He will not minister joy and peace if I allow a spot to continue on my conscience; and the place where the blood of Jesus then comes in is, not on the mercy-seat, but in connection with my conscience.

Sin is never viewed as a necessity for the Christian, but as a possibility; and if we sin our communion is broken. For restoration there must be conviction, self-judgment and confession; and confession brings with it forgiveness and cleansing which are necessary for restoration. We cannot be in communion with the Father with guilt on the conscience and defilement on the spirit; and even when there is not the sense of guilt the defilement is there. It is then the Lord as Advocate comes to our help, making us conscious of our guilt and defilement so that there might follow self-judgment, confession and restoration.

All this is most dreadful. It is Satan's way of hardening and deceiving the heart. Oh that we may watch against it, and ever keep a tender conscience! We may rest assured that when a true-hearted child of God is betrayed into sin the Holy Ghost will produce in him such a sense of it &mddash; will lead him into such intense self-loathing, such an abhorrence of the evil, such thorough self-judgement in the presence of God — as that he cannot lightly go and commit the sin again. This we may learn from the words of the apostle when he says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and" — mark this weighty clause — "to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Here we have the precious fruit of the double advocacy. It is all presented in its fullness in this part of the First Epistle of John. If any man sin, the blessed Paraclete on high intercedes with the Father, pleads the full merits of His atoning work, prays for the erring one on the ground of His having borne the judgement of that very sin. Then the other Paraclete acts in the conscience, produces repentance and confession, and brings the soul back into the light in the sweet sense that the sin is forgiven, the unrighteousness cleansed, and the communion perfectly restored. "He restores my soul: He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake." (Ps. 23:3)

The truth then is, that once cleansed from the guilt of sin we are cleansed for ever. "By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." (Heb. 10:14.) On the ground of the efficacy of that one perfect sacrifice, God in His grace not only forgives our sins, but He never more imputes guilt to the believer. He cannot tolerate sin in His people, and thus, if they sin, the Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, undertakes their cause, on the foundation of His one perfect propitiation for their sins, prays for them, in response to which God, acting by His Spirit, brings home, through the instrumentality of the Word, the sin to their consciences, produces self-judgment and confession, and then, as the apostle also says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Every believer is under the abiding efficacy of the precious blood, and as a consequence there is no further question of guilt. But God will surely deal with His children in the way of chastisement if they sin, and continue in sin, with the object of humbling them in His presence, that they may tell out their sins before Him. Then they are washed by the water of the Word — by the action of the word of God upon their hearts and consciences — not cleansed by the blood, for that has been done once and for all, and cannot be repeated. It is therefore absolutely true, as stated in this scripture, that the sins of all the children of God are forgiven — forgiven for His (Christ's) name's sake, and forgiven eternally.

No doubt if you believe the gospel, you are one of God's elect, you are one of His children, crying, Abba, Father. Now you know from His word that you were the object of God's love before the world was made; but you had no right to appropriate one word about it until you believed in His Son. Till then all beyond was outside you; the fact is that you were a child of wrath like another. But when the soul confesses Christ, when the blood is owned in its propitiating value, then you have a true title from God to hear, "Your sins, which are many, are forgiven." Then the full truth can apply unhesitatingly to the soul which believes and repents. For there never is a divinely wrought repentance without a divinely given faith, nor a divinely given faith without a kindred repentance. Be ready to comfort a soul whenever there is either the one or the other apparent. For in some cases the soul is fuller of joy in Jesus as the Saviour than in judgment of self; in others it is filled with anguish of its sins before God, so as to cloud the sense of pardoning love. This should not be, for the gospel is plain. Yet what can be more wholesome for the soul than to pass through a searching self-judgment in the sight of God? Be not uneasy about such a tried one, nor hurry it too much. Do not turn him away prematurely from these profitable exercises of conscience, along with looking to Christ and the cross. Let him bow to an overwhelming sense of his own evil, while learning what the grace of God has wrought in the Lord Jesus; but do not enfeeble that deep work of unsparing self-judgment before God. You may now say confidently in the Lord's name, "Your sins are completely borne away." This for any believer is just the teaching of the scapegoat.