How to Be Free From GuiltSample

Overcoming Our Accuser

God promised us that once we are honest with ourselves and confess our sins, He will forgive us. In other words, as the children of God, we can live our lives with a clear conscience. Nevertheless, some believers are still haunted by guilt over sins they have already confessed and dealt with. The Scripture has an explanation for this struggle. As Christians, we have an enemy—Satan and his demons.

We live in a world of spiritual realities that we cannot see with our physical eyes. Nevertheless, they are real, and they strongly affect us. The Bible says that the devil is a liar and a father of lies. He is very crafty at what he does. As our enemy, he does not want us to focus on Christ. The devil wants us to focus on ourselves. When we continually deal with a guilty conscience, we are in the center of the picture. This is the devil’s tactic: he bombards us with the thoughts of guilt so that we remove our attention from Jesus and the cross.

That is why the Bible calls Satan the accuser of the brethren. He constantly appears before God to remind Him about our sins. The devil also consistently comes into our lives to give us thoughts of guilt.

The Bible provides many examples of Satan's attempts to deceive and accuse God's people, including his temptations of Jesus. The Scripture instructs us to not be surprised with Satan’s behavior; rather, we need to be aware of his schemes. We should remember that it is the devil’s goal to accuse us to God, to ourselves, and to each other in order to distract us from the truth.

To overcome Satan, we need to bring ourselves back to focusing on Christ. We should be reminded that we are not saved because of what we did; we are saved because of what Jesus did. When we humble ourselves before God, submit to His authority, and confess our sins, we can resist the devil. The Bible says that we can rebuke Satan directly in the name of God. When we are submitted to God’s authority, the devil must flee from us. We can reject any thoughts in our mind that makes us feel guilty for the sins we have already confessed to God. In Christ, we have overcome our accuser.