Jesus Died To Make You Holy & Happy!
Romans 4:7-8
Did you know that doctors and psychologists believe that hypertension as a result of unresolved guilt is directly responsible for some 60,000 deaths a year and is a contributing factor in millions of deaths from strokes and cardiovascular disease.
Doctors are also finding that unresolved guilt plays a role in contributing to cancer and other illnesses. Interestingly enough, as early as 1978, Dr. Karl Menninger, stated that there is a spiritual dimension to every person and every person’s illness, whether mental or physical. That is quite a statement, coming from an unbeliever. Now Menninger and other doctors admit that their findings do not prove that every illness, disease, or common cold is the result of unresolved guilt but that all unresolved guilt has a negative effect upon a person’s health in one way or another. And the problem with guilt is that the person who has it cannot resolve it.
The only thing you and I can do with real personal guilt that is the result of our sin is to suppress it, deny it, or simply learn how to muddle through life with it hanging around our neck. We have a great big hound dog that we adopted out of the Estancia dog pound. I don’t think there is a fence big enough to keep in.
And every chance he gets he makes a run for the fence, jumps it and takes off. So that means he has to be tied to a run. Well, in a very rare moment of mercy for the dog, I thought why not just tie him to a chain and attach a large tire to it so that at least he can move around the yard but won’t be able to jump the fence. Well, it worked until I started to notice the damage that was occurring to the trees, plants, walkways, and grass in the backyard due to him dragging his tire everywhere he went. But you know what was interesting to me about that whole thing—Hank—that’s the name of our hound dog—learned to function very well dragging a huge tire around everywhere he went. And that is probably a pretty good description of how people who can’t get rid of their guilt live—they just drag it around and eventually get so used to it being there that it just seems normal.
Well again, all we can do with real guilt over real and personal sin is either suppress it, deny it, or learn to function with it so that we think it is normal to live with guilt. And the problem with these ways of dealing with guilt is that none of them resolve it because none of them can deal with the cause of the guilt and thus truly resolve it and take it away.
But turn with me to Psalm 32:1-5. Did you see what David says about guilt in verse 5? By the way, whereas the some versions translate the word “guilt” as “the iniquity of my sin” the word in Hebrew means the: sum total or the product in terms of the resulting internal consequences of sinful deeds against God or man. The word is most often associated with the guilt that accompanies all sin. Now David writes that once he brought his sin to God and confessed it as sin to God, which means that he agreed with God that what he did was sin and that he was guilty of doing it and had no excuses to offer for what he did—Then God forgave the guilt of his sin. The word “forgave” comes from the Hebrew word, which means to lift, to carry away, to take away and even to destroy. Wow! So what David is saying is that whereas, he could not do anything with his sin or his guilt—God could and did—once he confessed his sin to God. And what God did was to lift it off of David and carry it away because the sin that caused that guilt was going to be paid for by Christ Jesus at the cross and in paying for it—Jesus essentially destroyed it.
Listen, 1 John 3:8, tells us that one of the reasons Jesus came was “to destroy the works of the devil.” And one of the most effective works of the devil is to bind people in the guilt of their sin so as to destroy them. Jesus came to set us free from our sin and from the guilt of our sin. And that makes me wonder about Isaiah’s words in Isaiah 53:5, in which we are told that by our Savior’s scourging—we are healed. And it makes me wonder as well about David’s words in Psalm 103:3, in which he make the point that in Christ’s atonement all our iniquities are pardoned and all our diseases are healed. We have often dismissed these statements by saying that this is referring to when we go to heaven and there is no more sickness but if you look at the passages carefully—they are not talking about the future age in Heaven after we go home to be with the Lord but rather seem to be talking about this current age before Heaven. And if all the other blessings of the atonement are applied to us in this life why is the healing spoken of not applied now as well rather than later when we are in heaven and don’t need to be healed of anything.
Now, understand, I don’t think that these verses are making the blanket statement that believers should never get sick or that if they do they should always be healed.
But I do wonder if perhaps what these verses are saying is that in salvation we have the preventative antidote and healing agent to much of what doctors say causes a great many of our physical problems and diseases—which is unresolved guilt, which can only be resolved in Christ. Because you see in our justification, we are relieved from our sin penalty and the ensuing guilt that accompanies our sin so that we can live as guilt free people and thus as happy people who find their greatest joy in pursuing Christ and thus are holy people.
Now with all this in mind, let’s turn to Romans 4:7-8, which is Paul’s paraphrase of David’s words in PSALM 32, where I want us to see that because Jesus has dealt with our sin problem and has dealt with our guilt over sin so that it can be resolved rather than merely suppressed, denied, or tolerated—that we can truly live lives that are indeed free of the guilt of sin. It is important to understand that the reason we as Christians experience guilt for sin is to drive us back to God in confession of that sin. And as we confess that sin—not only are we agreeing with God that what we did was sin and that we are guilty of having committed it—we are also agreeing with Him that He sent Jesus to the cross to pay for that very sin.
If you do not confess that fact as well in your confession of sin you will have really missed the whole point of why God tells us to confess our sins as believers.
Listen, even as believers, we struggle with guilt over sin—don’t we?! And there are two fundamental reasons for this—one we won’t confess our sin or we while confessing our sin so that we agree with God that we are guilty of having broken His law do not or will not confess—that is agree with God—that the sin has already been paid for by Jesus. Most of us struggle with the second aspect of what it means to confess our sins. Oh we have no problem coming to God and confessing that we have sinned and are guilty and responsible of sinning against Him but for some reason we have great difficulty in confessing and agreeing with God that that sin has already been paid for by Jesus and thus the positional judicial guilt of that sin has already been removed and resolved in Christ Jesus. And because we will not confess this to God and will not agree with God that our sin has already been dealt with effectively by and in Christ we carry it around and subject ourselves to feelings of unresolved guilt that makes us very unhappy people.
The reason people have unresolved guilt is because they cannot resolve the sin that causes the guilt. In other words, since they cannot ever really pay for what they have done wrong—they can never really resolve their sin debt and thus their guilt over that sin. So they either spend the rest of the lives absolutely miserable set on a path of destruction which in their minds is their way of paying for their sin and hopefully will resolve the guilt, or they spend the rest of their lives giving themselves to every humanitarian work they possibly can to somehow make up their sin and hopefully relieve the guilt, or they just stay busy—so that they don’t have to think about their sin and their guilt.
Well, God has provided a better way—in fact the only way that sin and guilt can be resolved and that is through Christ Jesus and His work at the cross. Listen, when we confess our sins to the Lord as we are told to do in 1 John 1:9, it is for the purpose of relieving our sense of guilt that if left undealt with comes between us and the Lord and the wonderful fellowship He wants us to have with Him. Because again, in true confession of sin, you are not only confessing that you have sinned and are responsible for that sin—you are also confessing that God has already dealt with that sin because it was paid for by Jesus on the cross. And as you confess that fact, you realize that the sin is not unresolved but very much resolved and that the sin is not unpaid for but very much paid for and thus your guilt is resolved. And because your sin has been resolve—and your guilt is resolved—you can be happy in Christ Jesus, which is why both David and Paul make this point in their respective writings.
Listen—the Gospel promise is that God sent Jesus to die for sinners in order to make them holy and happy. As we move section by section through the chapters in Romans, don't forget that we are unfolding of the flower of the gospel.
And gospel means good news. And good news is designed to lift not only our sin burden but our guilt burden and in lifting our burden of guilt we are able to experience peace with God and that allows us to enjoy God and this gives us incredible joy.
Effective, biblical, godly, and Christ-honoring confession of sin always includes the confession or the agreement that because of Christ I am at peace with God because my sin, the very sin I am confessing right now, has been paid for by Jesus and thus everything is well between God and me. Again, don’t forget that the Gospel is not only the good news that your sins have been forgiven and removed from you—it is also the good news that your guilt has been resolved and you don’t have to dray it around the yard anymore.
This is the unfolding of the gospel - the good news. It's designed to you’re your burden of sin and your burden of guilt—make you holy and also make you happy in Jesus. This is so basic. And yet how easily we forget it. Please don't miss the note that I am striking today. It is triggered by the word "blessed" found twice in Romans 4:7-8. God wants us to see that his work and his Word are aiming not only at our holiness but also at our happiness. And we cannot be happy in Christ when we are not truly believing and resting in the fact that in Christ Jesus our guilt problem has been resolved because our sin problem has been resolved. And so in saying in Romans 4:7-8, that happy is the person whose sin has been completely, totally, and comprehensively dealt with and resolved in Christ Jesus—he is telling us that God’s desire is that we not just hope for this happiness or dream about this happiness or wish for this happiness—He is telling us that we should be experiencing this happiness but that can only take place if we believe God and agree with God that our sin and thus our guilt has been resolved.
And I can’t help but think that this is exactly what Jesus had in mind on the original Palm Sunday when as He approached Jerusalem He said the words recorded for us in Luke 19:41. Turn there—you need to see this. The word in Greek for peace is eirene and He is using it here to mean a “state of well being” with God. In other words, if only they had searched the Scriptures and had believed that Jesus was coming to pay for sin and deal with the guilt of sinners in such a way as to allow sinners to be at peace with God—they would have experienced great happiness.
And I wonder how many Christians there are in this room who although having come to Christ for salvation have not really accepted the fact that in their salvation—God has also made provision for your guilt—so that you too can be happy.
And I also wonder who is here today who is trying to resolve their own personal guilt and their own personal sin and finding it to be an impossible task that is draining the very life out of them—when all you need to do is come to Christ for the salvation He offers you freely if you would just trust in Him. God sent Jesus to the cross to die for our sins and resolve our guilt so that we can not only be holy but happy in the fact that all is well between you and God.
Are you?
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