By guilt we mean desert of punishment, or obligation to render satisfaction to God's justice for self-determined violation of law. There is a reaction of holiness against sin, which the Scripture denominates “the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18). Sin is in us, either as act or state; God's punitive righteousness is over against the sinner, as something to be feared; guilt is a relation of the sinner to that righteousness, namely, the sinner's desert of punishment.
Guilt is related to sin as the burnt spot to the blaze. Schiller, Die Braut von Messina: “Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht; Der Uebel grösstes aber ist die Schuld”—“Life is not the highest of possessions; the greatest of ills, however, is guilt.”Delitzsch: “Die Schamröthe ist die Abendröthe der untergegangenen Sonne der ursprünglichen Gerechtigkeit”—“The blush of shame is the evening red after the sun of original righteousness has gone down.” E. G. Robinson: “Pangs of conscience do not arise from the fear of penalty,—they are the penalty itself.” See chapter on Fig-leaves, in McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 142-154—“Spiritual shame for sin sought an outward symbol, and found it in the nakedness of the lower parts of the body.”
The following remarks may serve both for proof and for explanation:
A. Guilt is incurred only through self-determined transgression either on the part of man's nature or person. We are guilty only of that sin which we have originated or have had part in originating. Guilt is not, therefore, mere liability to punishment, without participation in the transgression for which the punishment is inflicted,—in other words, there is no such thing as constructive guilt under the divine government. We are accounted guilty only for what we have done, either personally or in our first parents, and for what we are, in consequence of such doing.
Ez. 18:20—“the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father”—, as Calvin says (Com. in loco): “The son shall not bear the father's iniquity, since he shall receive the reward due to himself, and shall bear his own burden.... All are guilty through their own fault.... Every one perishes through his own iniquity.” In other words, the whole race fell in Adam, [pg 645]and is punished for its own sin in him, not for the sins of immediate ancestors, nor for the sin of Adam as a person foreign to us. John 9:3—“Neither did this man sin, nor his parents”(that he should be born blind)—Do not attribute to any special later sin what is a consequence of the sin of the race—the first sin which “brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:195-213.
B. Guilt is an objective result of sin, and is not to be confounded with subjective pollution, or depravity. Every sin, whether of nature or person, is an offense against God (Ps. 51:4-6), an act or state of opposition to his will, which has for its effect God's personal wrath (Ps. 7:11; John 3:18, 36), and which must be expiated either by punishment or by atonement (Heb. 9:22). Not only does sin, as unlikeness to the divine purity, involve pollution,—it also, as antagonism to God's holy will, involves guilt. This guilt, or obligation to satisfy the outraged holiness of God, is explained in the New Testament by the terms “debtor” and “debt” (Mat. 6:12; Luke 13:4; Mat. 5:21; Rom. 3:19; 6:23; Eph. 2:3). Since guilt, the objective result of sin, is entirely distinct from depravity, the subjective result, human nature may, as in Christ, have the guilt without the depravity (2 Cor. 5:21), or may, as in the Christian, have the depravity without the guilt (1 John 1:7, 8).
Ps. 51:4-6—“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in thy sight; That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest”; 7:11—“God is a righteous judge, Yea, a God that hath indignation every day”; John 3:18—“he that believeth not hath been judged already”; 36—“he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; Heb. 9:22—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission”; Mat. 6:12—“debts”; Luke 13:4—“offenders” (marg. “debtors”); Mat. 5:21—“shall be in danger of [exposed to] the judgment”; Rom. 3:19—“that ... all the world may be brought under the judgment of God”; 6:23—“the wages of sin is death”—death is sin's desert; Eph. 2:3—“by nature children of wrath”; 2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”; 1 John 1:7, 8—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin. [Yet] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Sin brings in its train not only depravity but guilt, not only macula but reatus. Scripture sets forth the pollution of sin by its similies of “a cage of unclean birds” and of “wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores”; by leprosy and Levitical uncleanness, under the old dispensation; by death and the corruption of the grave, under both the old and the new. But Scripture sets forth the guilt of sin, with equal vividness, in the fear of Cain and in the remorse of Judas. The revulsion of God's holiness from sin, and its demand for satisfaction, are reflected in the shame and remorse of every awakened conscience. There is an instinctive feeling in the sinner's heart that sin will be punished, and ought to be punished. But the Holy Spirit makes this need of reparation so deeply felt that the soul has no rest until its debt is paid. The offending church member who is truly penitent loves the law and the church which excludes him, and would not think it faithful if it did not. So Jesus, when laden with the guilt of the race, pressed forward to the cross, saying: “I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50; Mark 10:32).
All sin involves guilt, and the sinful soul itself demands penalty, so that all will ultimately go where they most desire to be. All the great masters in literature have recognized this. The inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very essence of tragedy. The Greek tragedians are full of it, and Shakespeare is its most impressive teacher: Measure for Measure, 5:1—“I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy; 'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it”; Cymbeline, 5:4—“and so, great Powers, If you will take this audit, take this life, And cancel these cold bonds!... Desired, more than constrained, to satisfy, ... take No stricter render of me than my all”; that is, settle the account with me by taking my life, for nothing less than that will pay my debt. And later writers follow Shakespeare. Marguerite, in Goethe's Faust, fainting in the great cathedral under the solemn reverberations of the Dies Iræ; Dimmesdale, in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy; Bulwer's Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the murder he had committed, all these are illustrations of the [pg 646]inner impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of justice upon it. See A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 215, 216. On Hawthorne, see Hutton, Essays, 2:370-416—“In the Scarlet Letter, the minister gains fresh reverence and popularity as the very fruit of the passionate anguish with which his heart is consumed. Frantic with the stings of unacknowledged guilt, he is yet taught by these very stings to understand the hearts and stir the consciences of others.” See also Dinsmore, Atonement in Literature and Life.
Nor are such scenes confined to the pages of romance. In a recent trial at Syracuse, Earl, the wife-murderer, thanked the jury that had convicted him; declared the verdict just; begged that no one would interfere to stay the course of justice; said that the greatest blessing that could be conferred on him would be to let him suffer the penalty of his crime. In Plattsburg, at the close of another trial in which the accused was a life-convict who had struck down a fellow-convict with an axe, the jury, after being out two hours, came in to ask the Judge to explain the difference between murder in the first and second degree. Suddenly the prisoner rose and said: “This was not a murder in the second degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I ought to be hanged.”This left the jury nothing to do but render their verdict, and the Judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged, as he confessed he deserved to be. In 1891, Lars Ostendahl, the most famous preacher of Norway, startled his hearers by publicly confessing that he had been guilty of immorality, and that he could no longer retain his pastorate. He begged his people for the sake of Christ to forgive him and not to desert the poor in his asylums. He was not only preacher, but also head of a great philanthropic work.