Guiltless

We may all be thinking a lot about Ukraine at the moment, but what’s going on there is utterly horrific, and this will be remembered in history for years to come, so I think we need to try not to get fatigue from all the news we’re hearing. I’m recording this a little in advance, so I don’t know what’s happening in that country as you’re listening. Something I saw recently is the Daily Mail frontpage headline “Pray for Ukraine”. Which is an interesting comment, as the question arises – who are they suggesting you pray to? If you don’t believe in God, how can you pray? I do in fact believe in God, and believe that he hears our prayers, so I do pray for Ukraine, and I think we all should. But pray to the God of creation, the God of the Bible, not just a being thought up by human imagination. 

Anyway, what I want to say this morning is about guilt. I have a Russian friend who I spoke to last week, and she was talking about how she doesn’t support the war in Ukraine, but feels a strange sense of guilt, because she’s paid taxes to the Russian government, inadvertently funding the attack. 

It’s a feeling that I reckon many of us have when the government we voted for does something we don’t support, or friends of ours do hurtful things. Or even when we look in the past at our lives and see the things we’ve done. None of us are guiltless. We can criticise the evil of the Russian army bombing Ukraine, but we can’t sit in our glass houses and throw stones of criticism as if we’re perfect and flawless.

The good news of the gospel is that if anyone turns back to God, their guilt is taken away. Romans 8v1 says “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” 

There’s a song I love with the lyric – “Is it real, you believe you’re guiltless”. And those who trust in Jesus can say, yes, it is real, I am guiltless, Jesus has taken my guilt away. Thanks for listening, have a wonderful day.

Matt Gurtler 8/3/22