Guilt Part 3
Why We Hide
The six-year-old sat strangely silent at the dinner table just staring at the plate of delicious rice and beans that his mother had lovingly prepared for him. It was his favorite, but little Alberto wouldn’t even pick up his fork to begin the feast, instead, he kept his hands out of sight, concealed in his lap. As the concerned Mother observed him, puzzled over his uncharacteristic restraint, she noticed the first tear starting its run down his sullen face. When she said softly, “honey, what’s wrong?”, only more tears answered. His head dropped with hard crying as she knelt beside her boy and began to take one of his little hands to comfort him. But the gesture only brought a deafening shriek of agony, so loud that it filled the entire house. The tiny hand she held was greatly swollen and hot to the touch, bright red with inflammation and clearly throbbing with excruciating pain inside her boy. He recoiled as she gently reached to examine his other hand. She could see that similar injuries were torturing that one too. Shocked, she cried “sweetheart, what happened?!”
He couldn’t dare tell her. Early that morning, he had tried to climb the old six-foot wooden fence that bordered the backyard. He knew better than to ever do this, because he had been told not to, several times. But the challenge of scaling that forbidden wall tempted his boyish curiosity past the rules, and the secrecy of the mission only heightened the adventure. Now dozens of splinters from that rotting wooden fence he had been warned about, were infecting his tender hands, and threatening to tattle on him.
The inner conflict between confessing what he had done, and silently enduring the agony of its consequences, had been warring inside him all day. Now the stress of that struggle was at the breaking point like a dam ready to burst, leaking out tell-tale tears he could no longer hold back. Keeping it all in was even costing him his favorite meal. His secret finally came gushing out in heaves of sobbing with many loud “I’m sorries!” His Mother’s tears joined in, as she poured in the much-needed reassurance for her darling son’s heart-breaking suffering.
The Mother’s heart is easy for us to comprehend in this situation. Compassion for her child and concern for his wounds was all she felt. What is so heart wrenching and enlightening is her little boy’s unnecessary anxiety that compounded his pain and denied him privilege? He expected only punishment and acted according to his expectation. Because he didn’t understand his Mother’s heart, he suffered needlessly.
This is why we hide from God with our guilt instead of coming to Him to get rid of it. It’s because we misunderstand His heart.
The Answer
The truth is, God’s compassion for our failures is not just a possibility, nor is it just a hope, it’s guaranteed, in writing. Mercy is a precommitted, contractual certainty, covenanted in Blood. We can count on it, it’s not even a question of appeal.
The sureness of this response comes from God’s heart, which is permanently and irreversibly set in favor toward us, all wrath for our sins having been fully absorbed by Christ in our place on the cross. Our behaviors do not affect that favor one way or the other, neither positively nor negatively. It’s what Christ did, not what we have done, that has permanently disposed God’s heart in Grace more unbendable than a Mother’s love for her baby. It’s what He thinks of Jesus, not what He thinks of you that sets you free forever.
It’s this heart of favor that promises, “I will be merciful to their unrighteousness’s, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more.” Punishing us would be ignoring the Blood of Christ. Compassion, not anger, is what awaits us in God’s heart.
Confessing sins releases mercy and forgiveness, just like it did for Alberto. There’s no need to hide.
Continued in Guilt 4 “The Challenge of Confession”
https://hedoesallthings.com/truth-be-told/guilt-part-4-the-challenge-of-confession