There is one person I can think of who never showed signs of guilt. I find no place in the scripture where he did anything that would make him feel guilty. Unlike all the other disciples who fled when Jesus was taken prisoner or Peter who denied the Lord, John followed Jesus through the inquisition, the trial, and the crucifixion; he never wavered. But, John knew he sinned; he wasn’t perfect and didn’t pretend to be. His solution was to get it out of the way. “If we claim to have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that His word has no place in our hearts.” 1 John 1:8-10 (NLT).
How often do we carry guilt around because we do not confess our sins? Instead, we often want to justify our actions instead of admitting what they really are. I have used the phrase and heard others use it also, “the Lord knows who I am, and He understands”. Yes, it is true, but that is not a good excuse. The truth is we know it’s wrong, but we don’t want to admit it, or we do it so often we just give up on ourselves. How sad that is because sin breaks our fellowship with God. We really don’t feel like praying until we have dealt with the sin; it just doesn’t seem right to ask God to do certain things when we have sinned against Him. Even after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, he said, “It is against You only, O God, that I have sinned”.
Besides dealing with sin immediately, John had another advantage. Six times between John 13 and 21, John described himself as the disciple Jesus loved. Wow what a wonderful feeling that must have been for him to live with. Jesus loved the other disciples, but John couldn’t speak for them in the same way he spoke for himself. His feeling of love and acceptance must have been at the top of the scale. But the truth is we can all feel that way if we confess our sins as we commit them. We often speak of living in reality, but, to do that, we must live with our eyes on both worlds, the physical and the spiritual. So often, we see only the physical world when stress confronts us.
The Apostle Paul said it a little differently in one of his letters ( I can’t remember the reference right now). “We are the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.” Can you imagine that comparison? God makes everything else complete including us, but we make God feel complete because He loves us so much. If we really understand the love God has for us, we will not want to live with guilt for another moment.