The GOOD NEWS: “I Messed up…”
Read James 4:1-12, and 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Have you ever replayed something you said or did and wished you could take it back? Maybe you hurt someone you love, broke a promise, or fell into the same sin again. Maybe you are in your 40’s and 50’s still thinking about what you did that one day in 5th grade!
Guilt reminds us that we have done something wrong. We might try to excuse it, hide it, or make up for it. But underneath those efforts the guilt never seems to go away. Which leads us to a question: “After what I’ve done, could God still forgive me?”
James comes swinging hard in James 4. He calls us out for selfishness, jealousy, quarreling, fighting, even calling people “YOU ADULTEROUS PEOPLE." And then he spends the second half going on about how we should live better Christlike lives!
On the surface it just feels like a lot of “You failed! You are a terrible person! Look at your mistakes!” and finishes with this feeling of “BE BETTER!”
It all feels like heavy law, doesn’t it? As you read it you can’t help but feel the weight of guilt mounting on your shoulders!
But there’s a phrase in the middle that breaks up this whole message from James. It’s quite jarring and disrupts the flow of what he says and I think its purely intentional…
James 4:6 says, “But He gives more grace.”
Like… what? That doesn’t seem to fit the flow of what you are saying James.
It’s true, though. James is right.
“But God, I have made mistakes in my life. I have hurt people. I have hurt myself. I have messed up.”
But God gives more grace.
“But God, you don’t know what I have done. You don’t realize the size of my failures. You don’t know how much I have seriously hurt people around me.”
Yes he does. And guess what, He gives more grace than your biggest mistake. His grace is always bigger!
“But God… I can’t stop messing up. I try, I try REALLY HARD, but always seem to let you down no matter how hard I try to be better than before. I am such a disappointment.”
But God gives more grace. Over, and over, and over, and over again.
The voice of grace is the only thing that can disrupt the voice of guilt. Thats the whole point of what James is doing in James 4!
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, “not counting people’s sins against them.” God knows the whole story - HIS and YOURS. He knows the things we regret and the things we hope nobody discovers. And Jesus carried those sins to the cross. The forgiveness he gives you rests on what he has done for you.
So, yeah, you’ve messed up in the past, you will mess up today, and you are going to fail in the future. But guess what? You don’t have to let the guilt weigh on you. You don’t have to carry it around! You can confess honestly because your Savior already knows—and his promise of forgiveness is always there for you.
This week, when you feel like guilt is speaking loudly in your ear, disrupt it with the voice of God’s grace. Bring the stuff that you have been carrying to God in prayer, to your pastor, or to a trusted Christian friend. Name it honestly, and hear his promise: in Christ, you are forgiven. Lay it at the foot of the cross and LEAVE IT THERE.
As we learn to speak the gospel, we can offer that same hope to someone who comes to us and says, “I’ve messed up.” We can acknowledge the hurt and still point them to Jesus, whose mercy reaches sinners like us.
Say it simply: “Jesus knows what I’ve done, and he gave his life so I could be forgiven.”
Pray: Jesus, I confess (Insert sin here) to you. Please forgive me. Help me rest in your grace. Empower me by the Holy Spirit to live like you. Amen.
