The extent to which sin troubles the believer often depends on the extent to which he fails to understand the gospel or on the measure in which he fails to rest on its promises. It is easy work for the Christian counsellor to say that sin ought never to trouble any believer. Much here depends on what is meant by being troubled by sin. There is found among some Christians an 'extrovert' attitude to sin which seems to think that the greatest sin is to be worried by sin, and that if believers have soul-trouble they ought out of decency to keep it to themselves. We are not to imitate those who are obsessed with their sinfulness, or who can talk of nothing else but their own guilt. However, there is a place for compassion towards those Christians who are plagued with fear on account of sin.

The fact is that a growing awareness of the guiltiness of sin in the believer usually accompanies a growth in holiness and an advancement in spiritual­ity. Not only does our theological literature bear out this statement; it is clear also from the biographies of our most eminent men. The less men know and love God, the less they are worried by disobedience to his will. A shallow believism produces a shallow love for God. However, once the soul begins to advance in grace and to see the character of God more perfectly, the iniquity of the heart is both perceived and felt to be heinous and hateful.

It may be the curious and uncomfortable experience of those who make progress in sanctification that they become increasingly lonely in this life. This is because there are fewer and fewer who can understand them or follow their experience. The advanced Christian is not only an alien to his worldly neighbours; he is in a good measure even a stranger to many of his fellow-Christians. They do not enter into his deeper thoughts and they do not appreciate his deeper fears or spiritual exercises. This may be a temp­tation to him for a time. But he must realise that his reward will be great in heaven. After all, none was so lonely in this life as the Man who never sinned. From him all men hid their faces and into his experiences none entered more than a very little.

When we are honest with ourselves there are sins in our past lives which follow us all and which regularly snap at our heels. An honest review of our sins will surely humble us in a variety of ways. Some of our past sins we recall because we know that they brought smarting chastisements to us after we committed them. Some believers have sins which they remember as the beginnings of a course of action which would have ruined them had God not mercifully intervened. Some believers have past sins which they remember with a sigh of gratitude to God that they never became public knowledge. Had they done so they would perhaps have walked in disgrace afterwards all their lives. Some of our sins we recall with a mixture of emotions because they were done with a good deal of stubbornness and wilfulness, and yet for all that they were marvellously covered over and pardoned by God. Those who claim to have had no such sins are either not honest or else they have been the subjects of exceptional divine preservation.

One reason why sin is a burden to some believers is because the fruits of it may remain with him all through his earthly life. It often pleases God to mark a particular sin with a life-long and visible presence which we cannot wipe away. The disfigurement or disability, let us say, which a man might receive before conversion in a drunken brawl; or else the bed-ridden friend who had suffered in a car crash as a consequence of a believer's reckless driving while he was as yet unconverted — these and many similar things may be ordained of God as life-long reminders to him and those around him of the sinfulness of sin.

While such experiences should humble him, it would be foolish for the Christian to wring his hands in inconsolable sorrow all the rest of his life. Yet it would be inhuman of him to give no thought to the evils he had brought on himself or on others through his former behaviour, even though all is now fully pardoned by God. It is fully consistent with a Christian's assurance of salvation and certainly of personal glory to be in a measure troubled for past sins, and at times to recall them with warm tears of self-loathing.

The believer, however, need not always have visible reminders of his past sins before his eye to give him reason for sorrow. Indeed, the reason above all others why he weeps for past sins is not to be found in the outward consequences of them so much as in the essentially evil nature of sin itself. Those who weep for the consequences of sin but not for the evil of sin are not Christians but worldly persons, who have become the victims of their own lusts. The drunkard and the drug addict might weep in a sense for sin but they rather do so because they are in bondage to it. That they do so does not prove that they have a principle of grace in their soul. Their regret is not for having committed sin but for having become casualties to it.

The Christian, on the other hand, hates sin first and foremost because it is against God and is a contradiction of his holy will. It is not always appreciated that the believer may sorrow for his sins without his having the least doubt about his own conversion. On the contrary, a high degree of assurance often accompanies a deep repugnance at one's own shortcomings. Those who are most unconcerned for their sins are those who have no grace, or only very little. To them it is of no consequence if they offend God. To worry about wickedness is, to graceless persons, like wasting one's breath. But increasing grace in the life of the Christian leads him more and more to hate sin. This is what is meant by being 'led of the Spirit' (Romans 8:14). For the Spirit's leading is always away from sin and always towards an increased detestation of it.

There is, therefore, a place in the Christian life for confessing our sin. And there is sometimes a place for seeking advice on how to face our hours of guilt. If such advice is these days seldom sought or seldom given it may be because we are living at a habitually low spiritual level. There is plenty of evidence in the Word of God that the saints of old took seriously the power of sin in their own lives. The Psalms are full of such concern. So is the Book of Job. So shall we all be if we take our religion from the Bible and not from one another. A wise believer, especially a minister, must learn how to guide and comfort those of the flock who suffer with guilt.

Sin, therefore, is something which we are to take most seriously if we are professing Christians. But from time to time we shall meet with believers who go too far and who take their guilt to a point which goes beyond Scripture. Persons like this need to be reminded of the fulness of our salvation and the freedom from guilt which is theirs in Christ. This may not be easy work for several reasons: sometimes because of a melancholy temperament or because of the spiritual habit of their soul. Some believers react to all situations with fear whatever the advice they are given. Such fear­ful souls may be true believers. We are to take care of them and to comfort them as those who are 'feeble-minded' (1 Thessalonians 5:14). All their lives they are under a burden of fear and doubt. This may well be the result of a deep-seated temperamental insecurity or for some similar psychological reason.

Our task in such cases is to be patient and to lend them a helping hand towards heaven. It is probably something that we shall have to do again and again — perhaps, in some cases, even daily. Such persons turn all comfort into poison. They see all the promises as for others and all the threatenings of Scripture as for themselves. Generally speaking, when we meet Christians of this sort we must recognise that their problem is not entirely a spiritual one but often has also some basis in actual illness of the mind.

There is nonetheless a place in the normal and healthy Christian life for speaking to one another of the sins which beset us. When done wisely this is an exercise of real profit. Here certain rules are observed. For one thing we must never speak of sin in a way which excites others to commit it. For another thing, we must not speak of our past sins so as to entertain people. Sometimes one hears a 'testimony' which is touched up with unedifying details of past sins, under the pretext of magnifying the change which God has brought about in their life. This is offensive and to be avoided. At worst it is a method of entertaining godly people with ungodliness. It is better to frame our testimony in company so as to draw attention to what God, by his grace, has done in us. Past sins need only be referred to in a cursory and modest way. To use them as savoury meat to spice our story in a religious meeting is to do the devil's work for him.

When we meet a person who is troubled for sin, and have reason to think him or her to be a true believer, we must try to proceed with our advice in some such way as this. 'Although God may bring sin to our remembrance with pain to us yet he will never condemn us for it. Indeed, he may rebuke and chastise us for sin, but he will never damn us for it. The thing, therefore, which we have most reason to dread about sin, namely its power to condemn us, is the very thing which it cannot do. We are in Christ.'

This may not, however, be the perception of the person we are speaking to. 'Fear hath torment' (1 John 4:18). Saved sinners may at times suppose themselves abandoned by God and under his condemnation. It is all very well for the counsellor to say that it ought not to be so. Observation teaches that it is so. One of the strange facts about the human soul is that it can imagine itself to be under God's wrath and judgment when this is not the case. A good man's opinion of his state may for a time be the reverse of the truth. Under the impression of strong temptations he may think himself to be lost and eternally undone. Whatever comfort he has known in the past may be hidden from him for a while, like the sun behind the cloud.

One of the skills the counsellor needs in conducting the uneasy conscience back to its peace is the calm use of good reason. 'No matter how great your sins may be, they are not too great for God to pardon for Christ's sake. If you suppose your sins to be unpardonable, you make them greater than God himself. There can be but one infinite being. If sin is infinite then God is not so. We are to have a high view of God's justice, yet we must not doubt his power to pardon even the worst of sins. Though sin is immensely evil, yet it is not beyond divine mercy to forgive it. If you say that your sins are too great for God to forgive, you make them greater than Christ's merits as our Redeemer.'

The problem with the soul which has lost its comfort is that it refuses to take the comfort which even God's Word provides. Conscience will tyrannise over the gracious person when it unseats the intellect and casts all right reason to the ground. Conscience, however, is not our guide. It is Scripture which is our guide. Satan knows how, as an angel of light, to manipulate the conscience so that it may work for him and thus work against ourselves. This is one of his craftiest mysteries, as it turns our God-given faculty of judgment on its head. The most perfect fanaticism is developed by Satan in this way. Educate the conscience to side with falsehood and against God's Word and you have a master-servant of the devil, who will glory in his shame and think that he does God service when in fact he is destroying all righteousness.

It is 'Rabbi' Duncan, probably, who somewhere says that we must not let conscience overspeak the Word of God. There is a mine of wisdom in that saying. The soul tormented with guilt must not consult its own feelings or attempt to read its own condition in the light of its present sensation of misery. It must rather take God's Word in all the fulness of its promises as the only exit from torment. Till the prevailing mood of self-condemnation has passed over, the believer must hold the tiller of his mind relentlessly in the way of God's Word. He must not trust either his feelings or his sickly conscience. This is hard work at the time but it is the true road back to comfort.

Let our advice to the guilt-ridden Christian be as follows: 'All sin and blasphemy will be forgiven to the sons of men. He will blot out as a cloud our sins and as a thick cloud our transgressions. He will cast them into the sea. He will remember them no more for ever. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If the Son shall make us free we are free indeed. Though our sins be crimson and scarlet he will make the penitent sinner like snow.' These and similar evangelical promises must be held up before the mind of the believer in his hour of darkness. In these promises and not in his own disordered self-accusations is the way back to solid ground for faith and comfort.

Sacred is the moment when the Holy Spirit makes the comfort of the gospel powerful in the experience of a man, whether till now he has been a saint or sinner. Deep floods of the soul break up within him. Gushing emotions unman him. Overwhelming feelings of delight master his emotion till he weeps like a child and pours out his tears unashamedly into a heavenly Father's bosom. How precious then does the Cross of Christ become! How worthy of our love does Jesus then seem! The soul finds vent for its pent-up feelings and pours out its tribute of worship to the God of all mercies. Angels look down on such a sight with grateful rapture and saints below who see it before their eyes turn aside to shed their own tears of sympathy and love.

Of all the great things God has done, nothing is so great or so God-like as his readiness to forgive sin. This is his crowning glory. He is a pardoning God. Those who have recent experience of this sublime goodness do not need others to tell them that it is so. They feel it and fall on their knees in adoration.

There are times of darkness in the human soul. It is not always noon with God's children here below. The winter may come down upon the soul with a thick covering of frost and ice. But God has his reasons for these times of misery. As surely as the sun in springtime, so surely will He arise with healing in his wings when the set time to favour our soul comes round again. Let us learn to be compassionate to our brethren when they fall spiritually ill and when they fall into temptation. Let us be kind when they go through the valley of darkness and when they lose their peace. It is poor comfort for them to be told by us that it ought not to be so with them. Perhaps it ought not. But we live now in a world in which many things ought not to be, yet are. If we would be perfect, let us seek grace to be good comforters of Christ's beloved people.

Very soon they will be where misery and darkness can enter their experience no more. O happy day!