Jesus Alone the Hope for the Human Conscience

Guilt is our emotional response to affliction of conscience. That is, when we are aware that we have done wrong, and are deserving of punishment, guilt is the emotion that haunts us, sometimes briefly, sometimes for an extended period, sometimes even for the rest of our lives. The severity and longevity of guilt depends on the severity of our wrong act and the sensitivity of each person's conscience. it is also possible to feel guilty when we shouldn't, as the conscience either blames us erroneously for someone else's action, or for something which should be considered wrong (I John 3:20).

The conscience is something that must be trained. That is especially obvious with children. However, it is a lifelong process, familiarizing ourselves with the Scriptures, so that our sense of right and wrong is brought more and more into conformity with God's standards. That training would have been unnecessary if not for the Fall of our first parents. While they had been created with God's standards as an inherent part of their psyche (Romans 2:15). However, in response to the false offer of Satan (Genesis 3:5), they chose to set their own standards of right and wrong above God's, and, thus, rendered themselves and all of their posterity (except Jesus) incapable of aught but sin. We still have enough of our created nature to know that our sin deserves punishment, no matter how much we strive to suppress that knowledge (Romans 1:18-22). Thus, we experience guilt.

How do we free ourselves from guilt?

"If guilt is the response of the soul to the justice of punishment, the only way in which its sting can be extracted is by an arrangement which shall make the punishment cease to be just and give the sinner a right to escape from the evils which conscience forecasts. By no other conceivable method can peace and tranquility, in conformity with the principles of eternal rectitude, be imparted to the mind" (James Henley Thornwell, "The Necessity and Nature of Christianity"). 

In order to shed our guilt, we must know that the justice due our sins has been satisfied. The unbeliever can never know this, apart from self-deception, because he goes into Sheol, the realm of death, with his burden of sin on his own shoulders. However, the believer can experience this deliverance in this life, because he, unlike the unbeliever, can know that the justice due his sins has been satisfied, but in the person of a surety, Jesus Christ, on the cross. 

"For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, 'Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but a body have You prepared for Me;  in burnt offerings and sin offerings You have taken no pleasure.' Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God, as it is written of Me in the scroll of the book.' When He said above, 'You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings' (these are offered according to the law), then He added, 'Behold, I have come to do Your will.' He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:1-10).