I don’t know if you’re like me, but I still carry the weight of past guilt. Old failures don’t feel distant or resolved—they feel present, as if they happened yesterday. Some are recent. Some reach back years. All of them seem to follow me.
Once, a boss asked me a question that never left me: Would you be proud of your behavior if your story were printed in the paper?
The honest answer is no. If everything I’ve done—or even thought—were made public, I would lose most people I love. And before you rush to judge me, pause for a moment. Think of the most hidden, unspoken thing you’ve ever done or wished. Are you truly free from the soot of your deepest secret?
Have you ever wished someone would fail—or disappear, even die? Felt a quiet satisfaction at another’s downfall? Laughed or gossiped about someone’s public failure? Had inappropriate thoughts of someone other than your partner? Would you want those moments—those sins of action or imagination—placed before the world?
God already knows them.
This is where grace begins.
Scripture tells us plainly:
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
This is not condemnation—it is the great leveling of the human condition.
God sees the shame we hide and the ways we come up short again and again. He knows we will fail—not once, but repeatedly. And still, He forgives.
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
Our human condition struggles with this kind of mercy. We remember. We keep score. Especially when we’ve been wronged. Forgiveness, for us, is often partial, conditional, or temporary.
But God’s forgiveness is of another kind.
“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12)
What we carry long after the fact, God does not keep.
Would you allow your own son or daughter to be slaughtered for loved ones? For strangers? For those who would mock, reject, or betray them? And after that—would you still forgive them? Would you still love them?
God did.
“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Grace did not wait for us to become worthy.
I don’t have that kind of forgiveness in my human condition. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But knowing it exists fully in God is the only reason I can stand, repent, and try again.
Grace doesn’t deny our failures.
It meets us there—and refuses to leave us.
Closing Prayer
God,
You know every part of me—what I’ve done, what I’ve thought, and what I still carry.
I confess that I fall short more often than I’d like to admit.
Thank You for a grace that meets me there, not with condemnation, but with mercy.
Help me release the guilt You have already forgiven,
and teach me to live from gratitude instead of shame.
Amen.
