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The Guilty Mind and the Great Cover
Up
There’s
an old saying, “Suspicion haunts the guilty mind”.
I have always used this expression when confronted
by anyone l
eveling a false accusation against me. Early
on in life I realized that when I’m
suspected of something, it may mean one of
two things. First, I stand guilty as
accused, or
secondly, more often than not, what’ I’m being accused of is what the
accuser
is himself guilty of, which is why his
accusation is on the tip of his mind, ie., “suspicion haunts the guilty
mind”.
Another
expression I’ve heard that dovetails nicely with the first is, “The
person that
accuses, excuses”. In other words, a
person will tend to excuse in themselves the very behavior they are
encountering others about. Kind of like,
“remove the log
from your own eye before looking to remove a splinter from the
eye of another”, (Matthew 7:3,4). Jesus
called this tendency,
“hypocrisy”. In
verse 5 he went on to say “…first take out the log in your eye and then
you’ll
be able to clearly see so as to take
out the splinter from the eye of
another”. Hypocrisy is commonly defined
as “two-faced”, “holier than thou” and “sanctimonious”.
This was the core sin of the legalistic Pharisees
who Christ was at constant loggerheads with.
These were self righteous, holier
than thou (sanctimonious) sons of
Satan (ie., not yet adopted into Godly sonship, via regeneration). Someone has rightly ob-
served, “you can take a
person out of legalism, but it’s much harder to take the legalism out
of the
person”.
Actually,
in varying degrees, we are all Pharisees at heart.
We’re all two-faced or liars, putting up a
false front to protect the self.
And
when push comes to shove, with various life encounters, most can be
found
excusing their own behavior as they accuse and
condemn others of the very same
unholy conduct.
What
really interests me about all this is not what man does to cover over
his base
nature and inner chamber of horrors that leads
to nefarious patterns of behavior,
but rather what God has done in order to clean up the mess created by
man’s
fallen, satanic
nature, the nature he’s constantly trying to hide, or cover up. Scripture calls this “nature” the “old man” –
the polluted monster within.
The secular
humanist/psychiatrist Sigmond Freud called this perverse and depraved
self, the
“id” or the undifferentiated source of a
person’s energy from which both the
ego and libido (one’s emotional/sexual mindset) are derived. Just like “a rose by any other
name is still
a rose”, the “old man” by any other name is still the one thing in each
person
that hides like a cockroach in the dark,
and scampers away into deeper darkness
whenever the light of scrutiny is brought to bear.
So
how does God deal with our hidden and repressed guilt from all the
garbage
we’ve spent a life time creating and then stuffed
down deep inside for no one
to see? Indeed, how does God deal with
His creatures (like Adam and Eve) trying to hide under the
fig leaves of self
justification and self righteousness?
You may be surprised and overjoyed at the answer.
And to fully appreciate
the answer we have to
spend some more time outlining and defining the battlefield.
Page 2
Some
people describe life (God calls it “death”) as “a living hell”. This is an interesting expression in lieu of
my use of the term
“cover up”, as in people trying to cover over their self
centered old man cesspool. This concept
of covering over is where our English
word “hell” comes from. It’s derived from
an old English word which
means to bury, or cover up and it was used in reference to “helling”
potatoes
in the winter, or covering them up and over with soil so as to keep
them out of
the light and at just the right moisture and temp-
erature during the wet and
cold months of the year. It was not a
word that denoted torture, but a term that spoke to preservation, just
the
way
God preserves each person underground in the sleep of death, so as to
resurrect
them at precisely the right time. The wonderful
theological term for this all
important work of Christ, is called “expiation”, or the canceling out
of sin,
by “helling” or covering over. Expi-
ation
tells us that Christ’s death covers our sins.
It’s almost as if Christ is saying to humanity – “Hey, not to
worry,
I’ve got you covered!”.
Soon all mankind,
during the general millennial resurrection, will know firsthand this
word by
heart, in their hearts.
So
when someone coined the term, “a living hell”, had they been savvy to
God’s
Plan, they could have just as rightly said a “living covering
over” by the One
Who lives. Not understanding this Godly
cover up, a person will do their own cover up, designed to hide the
real
immoral,
depraved “old man” from the prying eyes of contemporaries.
And because all other inner old men are
playing the same hide and please
don’t seek game, no one blows the proverbial
whistle on their fellow liars. It’s just
another form of the Mafia’s “code of silence”.
But horror
of horrors, guess what?
God’s Spirit sees and knows all, and if you don’t believe me,
read the
account of Anaias and Saphira in the New
Testament. You can lie to man, but
lying to God is a different story. Most
people deal with this “inconvenient truth” by yet another lie -
publicly
denying His existence, as if that’s going to make Him go away! Everyone but a certified imbecile knows God
exists, but in order to not
have to be consciously accountable to Him, they
devise all sorts of rationales as to why “He’s dead”, doesn’t care
about His
creation,
doesn’t exist (atheists), not sure He exists (agnostics) or the
really delinquent human creature who ignores the whole issue like an
ostrich
with his head in the sand. Ask any combat
seasoned vet about atheists and he’ll tell you that the rankest
non-believer
will be crying out
for God to save him as soon as the enemy mortar fire begins. Again, all men are liars!
So
here we now come to the main theme or point of this paper.
What has God done to clean up the
extraordinary mess that lies just be-
neath the surface of this open air insane
asylum we call society? It is here,
thank God, that the Sovereignty of the Almighty shines forth
as a beacon of
hope and light. And what that light
illuminates is a Plan so Wise and Loving and Just and Powerful that no
rational
person
can hear it without being convicted of their sin, caused by that
monstrosity,
the fallen Adamic self. So why do so few
ever come under
conviction? It can’t be
because it’s not being broadcast world wide, because it is, in just
about every
language known to man, with per-
suasion techniques that would make a car
salesman blush. In both word and print,
God’s Word and Gospel have pervaded into almost
every nook and cranny on the
planet, but never the less, few there are that respond with heart felt
repentance. How can this be if these
are
the words of Life from Mr. Life, Himself?
Page 3
It
is here that Augustine, and later, Calvin, at least on this point, are
“right
on”, along, of course, with the witness from Scripture which
was the source they
used to deduce the following:
Mankind
is totally depraved and dead in sin, not drowning and just needing a
life ring
thrown to him, (the way Arminianism would have
us believe), but rather lying at
the bottom of the ocean of sin, stone dead, and this, from the womb to
the
grave. That’s God’s analysis
of the
situation, not mine or Calvin’s. Man’s
heart is shot so full of pollution and toxic waste that it makes the
latest oil
spill in the
of Mexico
that surgery takes place (by His determinant Will, not ours),
man remains deaf, dumb, and blind in their sinful “old man” state of
death.
This is why God’s message of reconciliation
cannot be heard or acted upon outside of His determinate Will. Dead men
not
only “tell
no tales”, they can’t hear any either! But
by the Word of God, I declare to all
those who do have ears to hear, there is coming, soon,
a time (a 1,000 year
period), when Christ will raise all mankind out of the sleep of death,
into the
dawn of the Millennial Reign of God’s
Anointed Lamb (Head and Body, Christ and
His Bride/Church). And it’s at this time
that all ears will be unstopped and the scales of
blindness will fall from all
eyes, and in one accord humanity will experience restored sensory
perception through
Divine resurrection life.
Our Savior
Life Guard will drag each person ashore and by divine decree, and they
will be
resuscitated into an environment free from
all satanic influence. This then will be
the time when the Good News
of God’s saving Grace will be shed abroad in every heart, and the
living hell
cover up syndrome will then be a living heaven on earth.
So
this is how God will deal with guilt, the consequence of sin. He will remove guilt in the psyche of
all. And where guilt is removed, there
is righteousness, for the opposite of righteousness is guilt, or God’s
Spirit
convicting of sin, thus creating a guilty conscience.
And it is by
this righteousness, revealed in
the Gospel, that His Kingdom comes and will be preserved in mankind in
the
Millennium. The Gospel will
be heard by
all, because all will be made alive with resurrection life and thereby
have
ears to hear and eyes to see. See
what? Their
past inner heart pollution
(before the grave), a condition, that once seen, will stimulate true
repentance.
But
this Millennial reign of Christ with His work of giving resurrection
life to
all who have ever lived, this task will not be administered by
Christ Alone,
but rather, it will be a glorious work shared with His
Bride/Body/Church. When the Millennium
begins, and Christ (Head
and Body) brings all back to life, it will be seen that between the
Cross and
the Sabbatical Millennium (His 1,000 year reign), there will
have been a special
calling out of an elect Bride, called out of darkness into His Glorious
Light. This special calling (out of the
fallen
world
of sin and death) has now been going on for the past 2,000 years, with
the
express purpose being to choose a “wife” (the anti-
typical Rebecca) for Jesus
Christ (the anti-typical Isaac). And
it’s this espoused Bride that will any moment be translated up and off
this
fallen planet into the realm of what we all refer to as “heaven”. And once the wedding vows are exchanged and
the Church and
Christ are fully one, then this “marriage made in heaven” will
have produced the completed “seed of Abraham” and the King and
Queen will
return to earth, inaugurate the earthly phase of God’s Kingdom (the
Sabbatical
Millennium) and begin the delightful task
of resurrecting all mankind out of
their sleep of death into regenerated life.
Regeneration is every man’s right, as it was bought and
paid for by
Christ’s Atonement, and His applied Blood in heaven.
Page 4
The
Divine saga will continue on, until the 1,000 years are over, at which
time Satan
will be released for a short season.
This will allow
him to once again do what he does best, be used of God
to test all those (as he was used in Eden), who by then will have
experienced
peace and harmony and love never before known or lived out. But as the elect Church is now being loyalty
tested for its place as living
stones in ‘God’s Temple, so all mankind must
also be tested (just as Adam and everyone else in the Bible were
tested). And this is
why we see in God’s Word a
reference to the release of Satan so as to once again give him access
to a then
enlightened mankind
(just as God gave him testing access to Adam and Eve in
their “new creation” enlightened state, and to the Church, in their
enlightened
state). And those who follow after Satan
at the close of the Millennium, these will be labeled as incorrigibles,
and
along with Satan be
cast away forever into the lake of fire of destruction (not
torture). At this point, Christ will
turn the now sanctified Kingdom over to His
Father, cleansed and fully
righteous with all submitted to the rule of God. This
then, will result in Almighty God’s
everlasting reign as
the great “all in all”.
This,
and more, then, is the bare bones story or plan that we are all
currently a
part of, a basic narrative that leaves room for a lot of flesh
and muscle and
sinew to be added on to by the reader.
So
keeping all the above in mind, we are now ready to better understand
the
syndrome of guilt and how God is dealing with it in those
He has raised to life
in this Gospel Age. Most
regenerated/born again from above believers don’t view their new
creation life
as some-
thing to be thought of as having been “raised to life”.
But this is pure Pauline doctrine and can be
found through out his epistles. In other
words, as far as God’s concerned, everyone that’s born of flesh comes
into
existence via a “still birth”, ie., born dead (born with Adamic
death by having
been in Adam when he died spiritually, due to original sin). When Adam sinned and his spirit “died”, his
flesh also was
as good as dead, but for his body it was a slower death that
took almost 1,000 years to catch up with his separated-from-God spirit
(God
calls this separation “death”). The
grave was (and is) only the belated announcement of what Adam’s
condition was
after the fall.
And our grave experience
is no different. We are all born the
first time in a dying condition with the grave showing forth and
reminding
all
of those still “alive” that Adamic sin is ours also, for we were all in
Adam
when he sinned.
When
Adam sinned and the slow, physical death (corruption) penalty began to
take
effect, God looked upon Adam as already being
dead, for as Scripture says, “God calls those things which
are not yet,
as though they were”. And this
is a
crucial concept that must
be grasped if one is to properly understand what
actually occurs when someone is born from above, or regenerated. What takes place
is what took place in
is that the fallen flesh
catches up to the renewed spirit. This
is what will happen at the “rapture”, or Christ’s return for His Bride. If a
believer goes to the grave before Christ
returns, from the moment of death (now called “sleep” by Christ, due to
His
atoning work),
to the next moment of being translated at the rapture, between
these two moments there’s no passage of time.
We all experience
this same timeless “miracle” every night at bedtime
till our awakening the next morning. And
this is why Christ changed the word
death in the Bible to the word sleep –
Christ’s Atonement and applied Blood brought to light, that the one was
now the
other.
Page 5
What
we’re left with is that God is in the process of cleaning up the mess
created
by Lucifer’s fall into the sin of rebellion, and then
subsequently enticing
Adam and Eve to follow suit. All of
which produced guilt, due to having sinned.
However, as Scripture tells us,
where there is no law, there is also no
sin, for sin is transgressing the law.
So to remove guilt from His creatures, God had to deal
with His
laws. Not only the Old Testament Mosaic
laws, but also the law (decree) He set in place over Adam.
First there was an
Adamic law, then Mosaic
laws. Both of these had to be dealt with
by Christ’s obedience before God’s Just decrees (His Laws)
could be fulfilled
and thereby set aside as satisfied. And
it is here, precisely, that Christ’s Life comes into sharp focus, for
He
fulfilled (by Perfect obedience) all of the Divine decrees spoken to
man. And once fulfilled or satisfied, the
laws of
God became
a non issue, thereby relegating guilt to the attic of time. Where there is no law, there is no sin. And where there is no sin, there is
no guilt. And with no guilt there is no
need for a fleshy
cover up. However, and this is a big
however, this logical and reasonable
expose’ about guilt is only for those who
are regenerated from above and have thereby been enlightened as to
Christ’s
work on
their behalf. And along with
Paul, I’ll quickly add that using this truth as a license to do as one
pleases
is a syndrome that still bears
negative consequences in the lives of
believers.
In
one accord, all believers thank God daily for Christ’s final
declaration on the
Cross, “It is finished”. What was
“finished” had to do
with His Incarnation, His sacrificial Life and Death, and
that part of God’s Plan that called for the work of redeeming all
mankind.
What was not finished, is what has evolved
out of that sacrifice, and I suspect those Divine consequences will
resound in
the guilt-
less halls of eternity.
Remember, when He said, “It is finished!”, He meant it. So for the believer, there need no longer be
inordinate,
fearful guilt, followed by “the great cover up”. When
our “old man” rears his ugly head and
we’re drawn back into self centered (as
opposed to Christ centered) choices,
all we need to do is realize that we have an Advocate with our Father
God and our
elder
Brother Jesus that pleads our cause, Who also reminds “the accuser of
the
brethren” (Satan) that we stand forgiven and set apart
as sons of God.
A
modicum of guilt about ongoing sins is a valid and important emotional
mindset,
for it leads to repentance and therefore ongoing
forgiveness. But inordinate guilt has no
place in God’s
economy or with His regenerated children.
Excessive or inordinate guilt is
that huge inner burden that’s carried
around prior to regeneration. What that
causes is a mountain of emotional pain that has to be
medicated. And the drugs of choice to
medicate the pain
of guilt are food, entertainment, legal and illegal drugs, shopping,
work
addictions – anything that will preoccupy the mind in an attempt to
sidestep
the corrosive effects of onerous guilt.
Fortunately,
however, after regeneration, because of Christ’s shed
Blood, that heavy load is lifted and in its place the believer takes on
the
light
burden of Christ. In Matthew
11:27-30 He puts it this way, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are
heavy
laden, and I will give you
rest…my burden is light…”.
Page 6
So
remorse and sadness and regret (as opposed to crushing guilt) over past
sins is
normal and appropriate. Paul in the
latter part
of Romans 7 makes this crystal clear when he cries out, “oh
wretched man that I am!”. But in his
next breath his cry turns into jubilance
when he says, “but thanks be to
God…”. Like Paul, all true Christians
live in the shadow land of what was and what will be.
So until
we finish our course of sanctification,
we will sin, either by what we do, or don’t do (commission verses
omission). And
it’s
here,
precisely, why Christ initiated and left His followers with the
ordinance
of the the Lord’s Supper, or communion.
“Do this in remem-
brance of me”, was not spoken so His brothers and
sisters would take a few moments to recall the general story about His
last
supper
and crucifixion. Not at all, for
true consecrated believers have His sacrifice constantly on the tip of
their
minds. No, this ordinance
was given to
believers in order to continually cleanse themselves of accumulated sin
and
guilt AFTER regeneration. And not by
rote
or some repetitive meaningless ritual, but a cleansing process that
Christ
knew would be needed by His followers to keep their slate
of life clean and
undefiled. Communion is our felt eraser
that eradicates sin from life’s blackboard, the sin that has
accumulated since
the previous communion. Unfortunately,
Catholics
have immortalized this formal and public acknowledgment of sin with the
non-Biblical
confession booth. And in the place of the
Biblically sound practice of communion they have substituted a
ritualistic, theologically
un-
sound version they call “the Mass”. To
me, this “Mass” is short for massive ignorance.
With
regards to the Lord’s Supper, when Christ said, “as often as ye do
this…”, He
in essence was saying, as often as you feel the
need to do this. These words weren’t
spoken so that 2,000
years after the fact, groups could argue over whether it should be
observed
once a day, once a week, or month or once a year. That’s
only satanically induced argumentation
designed to take the mind off of the
real issue, accumulated sin and the need
for on going cleansing. Only Satan is
the winner when believers allow themselves to be drawn
into conflict over the timing
of one of the few New Testament precepts Christ left for His people to
observe. This same preoccupation
with details, finds
folks arguing over baptism, as well. And
just about anything else of any importance in the New Testament. As any
lawyer will tell you, “the devil is in
the details”. “Nit picking” will always
lead to a loss of awareness as to the overall Spirit and intent
of
something. You can pick apart a flower
down to its cellular or atomic structure and thereby miss the beauty
that God
intended for
it to convey. Satan’s mind
is almost infinitely creative in drawing the mind of man into the
illusion of
specifics, at the expense of the
reality of the Spirit. In this regard, it
would be hard to top what
Christ said in Matthew 23:23-24 where He upbraids the Scribes and
Pharisees for
majoring on minors. In verse 24 He
bottom lines their mindset by calling them “blind guides” who “strain
out a
gnat,
and swallow a camel”. Here we see
the pattern of behavior of all legalists, whether they be Jew or
Gentile. In fact, it’s interesting to
note that this
legalistic “pharisaic” behavior is not restricted to Bible folks, but
practiced
by all law based religions. Buddhist
monks
who take a vow to abstain from the taking of life carry with them, as
one
of their few possessions, a filter to strain insects from their
drinking water,
lest they inflict suffering on living things.
And don’t think this kind of nonsense is the exclusive practice
of only
non-
Christians. Just the other day I
received an article on integrity written by a professing Christian, and
he
asked the question as to
what the reader would do if he received a letter in
the mail where the stamp had inadvertently not been canceled by the
post
office.
The implication was that if one
were to reuse the stamp, thereby saving himself forty-three cents, then
his
integrity is flawed! Again,
the devil is
in the details.
Page 7
What
we need to do as disciples of Christ is not to get too legalistic about
our
sanctification walk, to where our lives are consumed
with so many incidentals
that we fail to step back and enjoy the look and smell of the roses. The old guilty mind that was part and
parcel
of the “old man” has been dealt with by Christ.
Any new transgressions, we are to
deal with by on going repentance and
communion, knowing that Christ’s moment by
moment ministry to us covers a multitude of sins. Understanding
this to be so, we
can now depend
on and trust in the cleansing effects of communion, rather than
allowing sin
and guilt to accumulate in our lives.
Neglecting to take advantage of God’s
provision for personal accumulated sins (communion), the believer’s
heart will
begin to
harden. And this will be
followed by self-justification, self deception, and once again the need
for the
“great cover up” with the use
of all sorts of self medicating addictions that
indulge our fallen appetites. Satan is
all too ready and happy for us to frequent his
banquet, a veritable smorgasbord
of worldly temptations that are designed to captivate our time and
energy so as
to keep out
minds off of the sense of guilt.
God, on the other hand, wants our minds to be freed up from the
bondage
of addictions in order
for us to be able to focus mainly on our transgressions
and the guilt that follows, and our need to be cleansed of that guilt
in an
on
going way, via the Lord’s Supper and repentance. This
assures us of a guilt free mentality and
therefore no more need for a
cover up, thus allowing our minds to remain clean
and open to receive more and more of the Mind of Christ, via His Spirit
of
Truth.
And once an on going state of
guiltlessness is achieved and maintained, then our haunting suspicions
of the
motives of others
automatically disappear for there’s no more a guilty mind,
but in its place the Mind of Christ. May
this be our quest and also our
experience.
And
last, you may want to read a recent paper I wrote, “Do
This in Remembrance of Me”, that speaks in more detail about
The
Lord’s Supper and the need for Christ’s universal Church to partake
regularly of the communion ceremony for their on going
cleansing from
accumulated sins.