When Our Sin Makes us Doubt God's Love and Live in Fear

Throughout my life, the law and my conscience have felt like a phantom haunting me with self-hate and self-condemnation. Again? Won’t you ever get it right? Don’t you realize you need to make up for those sins from yesterday? Look at all your Christian friends; consider how much more pleased he must be with them! What’s wrong with you? I thought God was disappointed in me. I believed every major and minor trial was a splatter of his wrath. When God didn’t feel near, I assumed my pile of sins drove him away. 

Does any of this sound familiar? Does repentance never feel like enough? Do you wonder how God could love someone as wicked as you? Do you doubt your salvation every time you sin? Sister, you can have assurance of your salvation and escape those weighty feelings of self-hate and condemnation—all through the gospel.

The problem isn’t guilt itself. Good guilt leads us to repent and rejoice in the gospel. Guilt goes wrong when it leads us into heavy, sorrowful burdens. Paul told the Corinthians, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death,” (2 Cor. 7:10–11). Worldly sorrow strives in self-forgiveness, self-condemnation, and self-flagellation. We become cruel masters over ourselves, demanding acts of penitence. We speak harshly and bully ourselves in vain efforts to punish ourselves for our depravity—something we’d never do to a loved one.

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