Surrender Guilt to God's Grace

This is one of six responses that we have built into our life systems to deal with our guilt.

The biblical story of David and Bathsheba, focusing on Nathan’s timely entrance, probably exemplifies this best. Think of the number of ways David could have dealt with his guilt:
     – Nathan could have been arrested and killed
     – could have blamed Bathsheba
     – could have claimed the divine right of kings
     – could have abrogated the seventh commandment

Instead, he fell on his face before God and cried out…

Do you remember Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and their PTL ministry (PTL stands for "Praise The Lord" but the press said it stood for "Pass the Loot"). In 1986 PTL's income was $129 million and included Heritage USA – a 2300-acre religious theme park, a hotel and a shopping mall in North Carolina and its own TV station on 1200 channels.

Jim Bakker had an affair with the church secretary Jessica Hahn in 1980 and resigned in 1987 when it came to light that he had paid her about $265,000 in blackmail money over the affair.

After his resignation, it was discovered that the Bakkers had been taking large amounts of money from the ministry fund, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in salaries for Bakker and his wife, insurance, property and other fees. The IRS investigated and discovered that the couple had diverted $4.8 million for personal use.

Part of that sum came from fraudulent $1,000 partnerships, which secured each partner three days per year of free lodging at the hotel in Heritage USA. However Bakker took the money from so many partners that it was a promise that he was unable to keep. Indeed the fraud was on such a scale that it was estimated that about 1500 people a month were being defrauded of their free time-share.

Jim Bakker was indicted for fraud in 1988 and sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000.

When the scandal broke, Bakker's Christian friends quickly deserted him. He became an outcast in the Christian world. And when he was sentenced, his wife Tammy Faye left him and then divorced him.

Six months into his sentence, Bakker was surprised one afternoon when the prison warden called him into his office. Bakker had a visitor: Billy Graham. When Graham came in, Bakker asked him why he had come to visit – because he knew that any association with Bakker would tarnish Graham's reputation.

Graham replied that Bakker was his friend in good and in bad times – and now when things were bad, he would stand by his side. And Billy Graham was true to his word.

Bakker's sentence was eventually reduced, on appeal, to ten years and when he came out of prison on parole, he had nowhere to stay.

So the Grahams invited him to stay with them.

On the Sunday following Bakker's release, Ruth Graham took him to church with her.

Disregarding what people would think about her, she stood up in church and introduced Jim Bakker to the congregation as her friend Jim Bakker.

I think that this illustrates the idea of what happens when we surrender our guilt to God.  Sin scorches us most after we receive the grace of forgiveness, not before.  The forgiven one realizes the gravity of the sin more when they are genuinely repentant and have been forgiven.

Summarizing our six points:

1. When expelled by irreverence, guilt makes life in mutual harmony unliveable
2. When smothered by pride it makes one’s life unaccountable
3. When concealed by fear it makes the pain unbearable
4. When dismissed as cultural it makes morality untenable
5. When claiming absolute innocence before God it makes the claim unjustifiable 
6. When guilt surrenders to the grace of God, it makes the sin forgivable

In religion:

• Hindus pays his Karma through millions of reincarnations 
• Muslims intones hopefully, “Insh Allah” – if God wills – and even at death never knows any certainty of forgiveness

In Christianity – anyone who comes to the cross know with a certainty that the debt has been paid