Do You Ever Feel Guilty?
By Dr. Brandon Steenbock, Family Minister
Isaiah 53:6 – We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Do you ever feel guilty?
I have these moments where it hits me. I’ll just be doing my thing, taking care of the business of life, and suddenly something jogs a memory of some stupid, wrong-headed thing I did. It might not even be recent; it could be something I said around a lunch table twenty years ago. Or the way I treated a friend in high school. Or a time I let my ego get in the way.
And suddenly I’m just… pressed down with guilt. Feeling almost breathless in my inability to forget my own stupidity. Like something inside has been twisted, bent, a tight knot that can’t be undone. Ever feel that?
Iniquity isn’t a word we use often, but it describes perfectly that feeling of something knotting up inside, twisting our insides with guilt. The original word picture is of a crooked branch, a twisted path, a bent stick. It becomes synonymous with guilt. We wander a twisted path away from God and we ourselves become twisted, bent, and broken.
But that twisted branch, that bent-ness that we have brought on ourselves and into our lives, that guilt and shame of being not right – God places it all on Jesus. Look at Jesus hanging on the cross, the burden of sin pressing down, pulling his body out of shape. Pulling his bones out of joint. Twisting his body into an unnatural pose as he hangs fastened to the beams.
And as Jesus is twisted, bent, pressed down, our guilt and shame weighing on his shoulders, we find ourselves standing up. Straightening out. The knot comes undone, our breath comes easier. We don’t carry the broken, bent-ness anymore. We’re healed. Forgiven. Restored.
Isaiah uses that picture of sheep who have wandered off on our own way – wandered twisted paths that have led us into a pit where we lie broken and bleating for help. And then almost without warning he shifts the picture to Jesus. Jesus as the one twisted and broken in our place. The sheep are pulled out of the pit, because the shepherd goes in himself. It’s an exchange only God would have devised, one we never would have imagined. He removes us from the place of brokenness at the cost of his own Son. We bring nothing but our own failure, and he gives us complete restoration. Complete peace. Complete hope.
Next time I feel that weight of guilt, I’m coming back to Isaiah 53. And back to the cross. To see how my guilt has been taken by Jesus, and I’m not bent or twisted or broken anymore. You’re invited to come there with me. To see that the Lord has laid your iniquity on him, and you are healed.