We are invited by God to know the difference between real guilt and false guilt. Real guilt is simply triggered by our God-given conscience. No one makes you “feel” guilty; it is your conscience that convicts you. Real guilt is a gift from God that results in acknowledging your sin.

The challenge to real guilt comes from people with character disorder who have a difficult time experiencing real guilt. They are always placing blame for everything outside of themselves. So, how do they ever feel they are guilty? Like everyone, they need the supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit to show them their sin.

False guilt occurs when a person allows their neuroses to take over. Then they take the blame for everything. A classic scenario is the battered wife who agonizes about what she has done wrong to provoke her husband’s anger. False guilt makes it impossible to live the abundant life of Jesus because strongly neurotic people never sense the power of Christ working through them. They have a hard time believing he can do this. Again, supernatural intervention is necessary to bring about a sense of forgiveness and worth.