Understanding Our Guilt

There is none who does good, there is not even one.
–Romans 3:12

Years ago, when my mom was dying, a reporter asked her, “How does it feel to know that you are terminal?” My mom, with her great wit, shot back, “We are all terminal. The only difference is some of us know it and some of us don’t.”

That was the case with Simon the Pharisee and the prostitute in Luke 7. Both had contracted the disease of sin and were facing eternal death. The only difference was that the prostitute recognized it, and Simon did not. Simon felt contempt for the prostitute because he imagined there was a great moral gulf between them. But the Bible says we’re all sinners in God’s eyes.

That’s why Christians ought to be better forgivers than non-Christians–we understand our own guilt before God.

During World War II, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an officer in the Russian Army, was arrested for criticizing the inhumane actions of the Soviet regime. He wanted to change his country for the better. After his arrest, he and other prisoners were marched on foot to the counterintelligence headquarters at the front. When Solzhenitsyn was told to carry his suitcase for the march, he argued that since he was an officer, another prisoner should have to carry it. So his fellow prisoners took turns carrying his suitcase throughout that long march. Solzhenitsyn was so convinced of his superiority that he saw nothing wrong with the way he treated the other prisoners. Looking back on this time, Solzhenitsyn realized that in different circumstances, he would have been capable of the same inhumane actions he criticized. He wrote, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

We’re all capable of sinning, and we’re all guilty in the eyes of God. It’s easier to forgive somebody when you understand that the evil in their heart is the same evil that resides in your own heart. Forgiven people understand their own guilt.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Moving from Bitterness to Forgiveness” and “The Basis for All Forgiveness,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2021 and 2015.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956, abridged (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2007), 168.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.