Reference: Guilt
Hastings
1. Guilt may be defined in terms of relativity. It is rather the abiding result of sin than sin itself (see Pearson's Exposition of the Creed, ed. James Nichols, p. 514 f.). It is not punishment, or even liability to punishment, for this presupposes personal consciousness of wrong-doing and leaves out of account the attitude of God to sin unwittingly committed (Le 5:1 ff.; cf. Lu 12:48; Ro 5:13; see Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. 144). On the other hand, we may describe it as a condition, a state, or a relation; the resultant of two forces drawing different ways (Ro 7:14 ff.). It includes two essential factors, without which it would be unmeaning as an objective reality or entity. At one point stands personal holiness, including whatever is holy in man; at another, personal corruption, including what is evil in man. Man's relation to God, as it is affected by sin, is what constitutes guilt in the widest sense of the word. The human struggle after righteousness is the surest evidence of man's consciousness of racial and personal guilt, and an acknowledgment that his position in this respect is not normal.
We are thus enabled to see that when moral obliquity arising from or reinforced by natural causes, adventitious circumstances, or personal environment, issues in persistent, wilful wrong-doing, it becomes or is resolved into guilt, and involves punishment which is guilt's inseparable accompaniment. In the OT the ideas of sin, guilt, and punishment are so inextricably interwoven that it is impossible to treat of one without in some way dealing with the other two, and the word for each is used interchangeably for the others (see Schultz, OT Theol. ii. p. 306). An example of this is found in Cain's despairing complaint, where the word 'punishment' (Ge 4:13 English Version) includes both the sin committed and the guilt attaching thereto (cf. Le 26:41).
2. In speaking of the guilt of the race or of the individual, some knowledge of a law governing moral actions must be presupposed (cf. Joh 9:41; 15:22,24). It is when the human will enters into conscious antagonism to the Divine will that guilt emerges into objective existence and crystallizes (see Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, Eng. tr p. 203 ff.). An educative process is thus required in order to bring home to the human race that sense of guilt without which progress is impossible (cf. Ro 3:20; 7:7). As soon, however, as this consciousness is established, the first step on the road to rebellion against sin is taken, and the sinner's relation to God commences to become fundamentally altered from what it was. A case in point, illustrative of this inchoate stage, is afforded by Joseph's brothers in their tardy recognition of a guilt which seems to have been latent in a degree, so far as their consciousness was concerned, up to the period of threatened consequences (Ge 42:21; cf. for a similar example of strange moral blindness, on the part of David, 2Sa 12:1 ff.). Their subsequent conduct was characterized by clumsy attempts to undo the mischief of which they had been the authors. A like feature is observable in the attitude of the Philistines when restoring the sacred 'ark of the covenant' to the offended Jehovah. A 'guilt-offering' had to be sent as a restitution for the wrong done (1Sa 6:3, cf. 2Ki 12:16). This natural instinct was developed and guided in the Levitical institutions by formal ceremony and religious rite, which were calculated to deepen still further the feeling of guilt and fear of Divine wrath. Even when the offence was committed in ignorance, as soon as its character was revealed to the offender, he became thereupon liable to punishment, and had to expiate his guilt by restitution and sacrifice, or by a 'guilt-offering' (AV 'trespass offering,' Le 5:15 ff; Le 6:1 ff.). To this a fine, amounting to one-fifth of the value of the wrong done in the case of a neighbour, was added and given to the injured party (Le 6:5; Nu 5:6 f.). How widely diffused this special rite had become is evidenced by the numerous incidental references of Ezekiel (Eze 40:39; 42:13; 44:29; 46:20); while perhaps the most remarkable allusion to this service of restitution occurs in the later Isaiah, where the ideal Servant of Jehovah is described as a 'guilt-offering' (Isa 53:10).
3. As might be expected, the universality of human guilt is nowhere more insistently dwelt on or more fully realized than in the Psalms (cf. Ps 14:2; 53:2, where the expression 'the sons of men' reveals the scope of the poet's thought; see also Ps 36 with its antithesis
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And they said to one another, Truly, we did wrong to our brother, for we saw his grief of mind, and we did not give ear to his prayers; that is why this trouble has come on us.
Having mercy on thousands, overlooking evil and wrongdoing and sin; he will not let wrongdoers go free, but will send punishment on children for the sins of their fathers, and on their children's children to the third and fourth generation.
And if anyone does wrong by saying nothing when he is put under oath as a witness of something he has seen or had knowledge of, then he will be responsible:
If anyone is untrue, sinning in error in connection with the holy things of the Lord, let him take his offering to the Lord, a male sheep from the flock, without any mark, of the value fixed by you in silver by shekels, by the scale of the holy place.
Or anything about which he took a false oath; he will have to give it all back, with the addition of a fifth of its value, to him whose property it is, when he has been judged to be in the wrong.
And the goat will take all their sins into a land cut off from men, and he will send the goat away into the waste land.
So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins,
Say to the children of Israel, If a man or a woman does any of the sins of men, going against the word of the Lord, and is in the wrong;
And they said, If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it without an offering, but send him a sin-offering with it: then you will have peace again, and it will be clear to you why the weight of his hand has not been lifted from you.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. And Nathan came to him and said, There were two men in the same town: one a man of great wealth, and the other a poor man.
The money of the offerings for error and the sin-offerings was not taken into the house of the Lord; it was the priests'.
The Lord was looking down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who had wisdom, searching after God.
God was looking down from heaven on the children of men, to see if there were any who had wisdom, searching after God.
Let their names be taken from the book of the living, let them not be numbered with the upright.
When he is judged, let the decision go against him; and may his prayer become sin.
And the Lord was pleased ... see a seed, long life, ... will do well in his hand. ...
For this cause he will have a heritage with the great, and he will have a part in the goods of war with the strong, because he gave up his life, and was numbered with the evil-doers; taking on himself the sins of the people, and making prayer for the wrongdoers.
And the Lord gave me knowledge of it and I saw it: then you made clear to me their doings.
Give thought to me, O Lord, and give ear to the voice of those who put forward a cause against me.
But the Lord is with me as a great one, greatly to be feared: so my attackers will have a fall, and they will not overcome me: they will be greatly shamed, because they have not done wisely, even with an unending shame, kept in memory for ever.
And in the covered way of the doorway there were two tables on this side and two tables on that side, on which the burned offering and the sin-offering and the offering for error were put to death:
And he said to me, The north rooms and the south rooms in front of the separate place are the holy rooms, where the priests who come near the Lord take the most holy things for their food: there the most holy things are placed, with the meal offering and the sin-offering and the offering for error; for the place is holy.
Their food is to be the meal offering and the sin-offering and the offering for error; and everything given specially to the Lord in Israel will be theirs.
And he said to me, This is the place where the offering for error and the sin-offering are to be cooked in water by the priests, and where the meal offering is to be cooked in the oven; so that they may not be taken out into the outer square to make the people holy.
Their mind is taken away; now they will be made waste: he will have their altars broken down, he will give their pillars to destruction.
What the worm did not make a meal of, has been taken by the locust; and what the locust did not take, has been food for the plant-worm; and what the plant-worm did not take, has been food for the field-fly.
I have sent destruction on your fields by burning and disease: the increase of your gardens and your vine-gardens, your fig-trees and your olive-trees, has been food for worms: and still you have not come back to me, says the Lord.
Then they will be crying to the Lord for help, but he will not give them an answer: yes, he will keep his face veiled from them at that time, because their acts have been evil.
Say to Zerubbabel, ruler of Judah, I will make a shaking of the heavens and the earth,
And he said to me, What do you see? And I said, A roll going through the air; it is twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.
Then he went on to say hard things to the towns where most of his works of power were done, because they had not been turned from their sins.
But he who, without knowledge, did things for which punishment is given, will get only a small number of blows. The man to whom much is given, will have to give much; if much is given into his care, of him more will be requested.
For God had such love for the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever has faith in him may not come to destruction but have eternal life.
Jesus said to them, If you were blind you would have no sin: but now that you say, We see; your sin is there still.
No one takes it away from me; I give it up of myself. I have power to give it up, and I have power to take it again. These orders I have from my Father.
If I had not come and been their teacher they would have had no sin: but now they have no reason to give for their sin.
If I had not come and been their teacher they would have had no sin: but now they have no reason to give for their sin.
If I had not done among them the works which no other man ever did, they would have had no sin: but now they have seen, and they have had hate in their hearts for me and my Father.
If I had not done among them the works which no other man ever did, they would have had no sin: but now they have seen, and they have had hate in their hearts for me and my Father.
Because by the works of the law no man is able to have righteousness in his eyes, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
But God has made clear his love to us, in that, when we were still sinners, Christ gave his life for us.
Because, till the law came, sin was in existence, but sin is not put to the account of anyone when there is no law to be broken.
What then is to be said? is the law sin? in no way. But I would not have had knowledge of sin but for the law: for I would not have been conscious of desire if the law had not said, You may not have a desire for what is another's.
For we are conscious that the law is of the spirit; but I am of the flesh, given into the power of sin.
For this cause those who are in Christ Jesus will not be judged as sinners.
You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God is in you. But if any man has not the Spirit of Christ he is not one of his.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; because these are opposite the one to the other; so that you may not do the things which you have a mind to do.
Among whom we all at one time were living in the pleasures of our flesh, giving way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and the punishment of God was waiting for us even as for the rest.
Because of which the wrath of God comes on those who go against his orders;
Waiting for his Son from heaven, who came back from the dead, even Jesus, our Saviour from the wrath to come.
Who, to make the measure of their sins complete, kept us from giving the word of salvation to the Gentiles: but the wrath of God is about to come on them in the fullest degree.
What will come on us, if we do not give our minds to such a great salvation? a salvation of which our fathers first had knowledge through the words of the Lord, and which was made certain to us by those to whom his words came;
As for those who at one time saw the light, tasting the good things from heaven, and having their part in the Holy Spirit,
But will not the man by whom the Son of God has been crushed under foot, and the blood of the agreement with which he was washed clean has been taken as an unholy thing, and who has had no respect for the Spirit of grace, be judged bad enough for a very much worse punishment?
He took our sins on himself, giving his body to be nailed on the tree, so that we, being dead to sin, might have a new life in righteousness, and by his wounds we have been made well.
And I saw another sign in heaven, great and strange; seven angels having the seven last punishments, for in them the wrath of God is complete.