The purpose and destiny of all we do is the community of love with God and His followers. This community is supposed to begin now, on earth, in our Christian fellowship. And one of the fundamental principles of Christian fellowship is the division we make between guilt and condemnation. This division gives us great freedom, even outside the body of Christ.
As Christians we make a big distinction between guilt and condemnation. We know that we are guilty of sin but we also know that God does not condemn us. Romans 8:1 states “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is no punishment for us except the natural consequences (e. g. jail for crimes). So because of Jesus’ death there is a huge chasm between our guilt and our condemnation.
Normally, when someone is judged guilty of a crime then we say they must suffer the consequences. But since Jesus died for us, we don’t suffer the consequences even though we are guilty of the crime. The Judge hits his gavel on the bench and cries “guilty” but after that He declares us forgiven and sets us free. Thus God establishes a chasm between our guilt and our condemnation.
This chasm gives us freedom in our relationship with ourselves, with unbelievers, and with fellow believers.
First , it is extremely important for understanding ourselves. We know from many scriptures that God wants us to be aware of our flesh so that we can put it to death. But in order to be aware of our flesh we have to be open to knowing ourselves. That requires us to ignore the fear of seeing our guilt. And the reason we don’t fear seeing our flesh and guilt is that we know there is no condemnation for us. So we can drop the rationalizations and defenses that we like to use.
Thus, we need to keep this chasm in mind when we become aware of our sinfulness. It keeps us from being afraid of our sinfulness and it keeps us from self-condemnation. Instead, we can just see our sin, accept forgiveness and pursue holiness.
Even more, we are able to accept it when others point out our faults. We are not like children who just react and complain. We do not defend our ego by pointing out some defect in the way someone mentioned our fault. Rather, we accept correction easily because we know God does not condemn us. And we are thankful that they exposed our fault.
The chasm between guilt and condemnation also helps us in our attitudes towards destructive unbelievers. For example, in public or political interaction we often encounter people who are just plain hostile or unfair to Christians. Facts and reason have no impact on them. Their goal is to see how much they can hurt their foes. Our natural reaction is to hope that they will suffer the consequences of their sin – right away. But even though they have not yet been set free from their sins, since we are ambassadors of Christ we adopt the same attitude towards them as Christ did. We find this attitude in John 3:17 which states “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Thus, we do not condemn others who are hostile towards us, or express ourselves in anger, but rather we are free to love them and pray for their salvation. In this way we are offering them the same grace that God gave us. We are offering them the gift of the chasm. We can still speak out for religious freedom, but we do it with the right attitude. God will judge them if and when he sees fit.
Finally, the chasm gives us freedom to correct other believers. This may be hard to do because of our fear of alienating a friend. Many people try to rationalize away other’s faults by pretending there was no sin. (We understand “sin” to mean anything that breaks God’s ultimate law of love.) For example, if our friend gives a talk to a church group and we notice that they are obviously misusing scripture to support their point what do we do? We can tell ourselves that this is common, it is not so bad, and so it’s not really a sin, and so we don’t have to do anything about it. Thus, we have saved ourselves from an uncomfortable situation.
But is this how God views it? It is really okay with God that our friend is twisting scripture? Are any damaging faults okay with God? And is it okay with God that we not say anything? Obviously we need to be wise and diplomatic about when and if we should say something. But if we are a friend and we saw the fault then often we should say something. This is for the benefit of our friend. We are free to point out a fault because we know that we are doing it in love, and not for condemnation. We can say it in a friendly way because of the chasm. Hopefully our friend is as aware of the chasm as we are so that he or she can receive it.
Thus, the chasm gives us freedom in our relationships. This only makes sense because everything God is and does is supposed to lead to the community of love with Him and His followers.
