He carried our guilt

Isaiah 53 is one of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible. Written about 700 years before Christ, it speaks of the Servant as if everything had already happened, because it reveals God's eternal plan: despised, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our sins, bearing the guilt of many and interceding for sinners.

I want to walk you through a progression: sin, the war between the two natures, the guilt that this war produces and the forgiveness the Lord has made available.

1. What sin did to us

The sin of Adam and Eve corrupted all our faculties. We are born in sin, with a dead spirit, with no connection to God.

The body suffers the influence of sin: diseases, genetic flaws, predispositions.
So do the mind and the emotions: one day we feel like winners, the next we want to give up on everything.
Sin did not make man as bad as he could possibly be, but it gave him the potential for it.

We need to be clear about how far sin has reached, without denying its influence.

2. The war between the two natures

When we believe and go through a true conversion, a change in the way we think, God gives us a new spirit. From then on we have two natures: the living spirit, holy before God, and the old nature, the flesh, which leans toward sin.

2.1 Why life seems to get worse after conversion

Many people feel they have more problems after coming to know Jesus. Before, there was no war: you did whatever the old nature told you. Now sin wants one thing and the Holy Spirit wants another. The hardest wars are the inner ones, and those who understand them win the outer ones more easily.

2.2 The soul is the battlefield

This war happens in the soul, the seat of the mind, the emotions and the feelings. That is why we need discernment, and it comes from prayer and the Word. If something goes against the Word, you already have your answer.

The flesh will never tell you to pray, fast or give.
The flesh keeps accounts and doesn't think about others.
The Spirit sometimes tells you to do for others what you don't have yet, like Abraham, who prayed for Abimelech's household while his own wife was barren (Gen 20:17).

The Holy Spirit speaks within you, in the same mind where the desires of the flesh arise.

2.3 What about the devil?

The devil is outside of you. He doesn't know your thoughts; he is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. But he knows human behavior and shoots flaming arrows that always back up the flesh: "You don't need to try so hard, enjoy yourself." That is why we need the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation for the day of evil (Eph 6:13-17), when the soul is weakened.

3. The guilt the war produces

Every sin produces guilt, and we were not prepared to deal with it.

3.1 Outsourcing and hiding

We try to put the blame on someone else: "that's how I was raised", "it was because of her". Guilt brings shame, makes our face fall and damages our relationships with God and with people.

3.2 The smile waiting for approval

When I correct my five-year-old daughter, she breaks into a smile and waits for me to smile back, because she felt the correction as rejection. For a child, that's normal. The problem is when we spend our lives smiling at God, waiting for a smile back so we can feel accepted.

So we turn every blessing into approval. The disciples were astonished when Jesus said it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom (Matt 19:23-25), because they saw money as a sign of approval. And when the blessing comes, guilt won't let us enjoy it: we buy the house and feel unworthy because our brother doesn't have one. Free people produce free people; guilty people produce guilty people.

4. Jesus carried our guilt

Many know that Jesus forgives sins, but have never thought that he carried the guilt away.

4.1 Don't diminish Christ's sacrifice

We ask for forgiveness today and tomorrow we sin again. And the guilt doesn't leave. But in Isaiah 53 there is no condition. Jesus is not going to die tomorrow for the sin you commit: the cross has already made forgiveness available and has already carried the guilt away. The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), and Jesus died in your place.

This is not a license to live any way you want. Sanctification is drawing near to God to enjoy who he is, not what secures salvation. What secures our sonship is what Christ has done.

4.2 Speak honestly with God

As a teenager, I would go a week without praying out of shame for my sins, then come back full force, and the cycle repeated itself. What an enslaving cycle. We need to tell God our sins honestly. Jesus calls: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28).

4.3 Guilt leads nowhere

The religious mind likes guilt as a kind of martyrdom to feel worthy. You must take responsibility for what you do, but carrying guilt only makes you hang your head and blocks your relationships. There are valleys where God tests us, but much of what we suffer doesn't come from him: it comes from the guilt that makes us believe we can't have a better life, family or job.

We keep sinning because the old nature is still under the influence of sin. When Jesus returns, we will receive a new body and this war will end. Until then, we fight knowing that he has torn the guilt away. That is grace.

Conclusion

Paul asks who will bring any charge against those God has chosen. No one, for God declares us righteous. Who will condemn us? No one, for Christ died, was raised and intercedes for us. Nothing separates us from his love, and we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom 8:33-37).

What guilt are you still carrying, as if the cross had not been enough to take it away?