John Owen on Guilt

"Guilt-free" is one of the ubiquitous idols of a modern generation. From eating to sex to entertainment to crime, people do not want to experience guilt about anything, whether real guilt (liability for punishment) or emotional guilt (feeling bad about doing something).

Even Christian counselors, yes, even biblical counselors, spend much time exhorting people on ways to deal with guilt and live in the grace and forgiveness of God.

In his book, On the Mortification of Sin, John Owen takes the opposite tack. Rather than trying to escape guilt, he says,

"Load thy conscience with the guilt of [sin]. Not only consider that it hath a guilt, but load thy conscience with the guilt of its actual eruptions and disturbances" (p. 56).

And then:

Bring thy lust to the gospel , — not for relief, but for farther conviction of its guilt; look on Him whom thou hast pierced, and be in bitterness. Say to thy soul, “What have I done? What love, what mercy, what blood, what grace have I despised and trampled on! Is this the return I make to the Father for his love , to the Son for his blood , to the Holy Ghost for his grace ? Do I thus requite the Lord? (p. 58).

How many of us counsel people to consider the guilt of their sin even more? Do we take them(or ourselves) too quickly to grace?

While that might seem a strange question, perhaps (and I think this is Owen's point) too little meditation on the guilt of sin has led to an attitude towards sin which does not take mortification seriously.

We don't want to kill it, to pulverize it, to remove every last vestige from our souls. Why? Because we do not really grasp its guilt. No, not the way it makes us feel. But rather what it did to our Savior.

We simply want to get over it, to not think about, to live "guilt-free."

Perhaps Owen could be meditated on with some profit here.