Guilt

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GUILT.—1. Guilt may be defined in terms of relativity. It is rather the abiding result of sin than sin itself (see Pearson’s Exposition of the Creed, ed. James Nichols, p. 514 f.). It is not punishment, or even liability to punishment, for this presupposes personal consciousness of wrong-doing and leaves out of account the attitude of God to sin unwittingly committed (Lev_5:1 ff.; cf. Luk_12:48, Rom_5:13; see Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. 144). On the other hand, we may describe it as a condition, a state, or a relation; the resultant of two forces drawing different ways (Rom_7:14 ff.). It includes two essential factors, without which it would be unmeaning as an objective reality or entity. At one point stands personal holiness, including whatever is holy in man; at another, personal corruption, including what is evil in man. Man’s relation to God, as it is affected by sin, is what constitutes guilt in the widest sense of the word. The human struggle after righteousness is the surest evidence of man’s consciousness of racial and personal guilt, and an acknowledgment that his position in this respect is not normal.
We are thus enabled to see that when moral obliquity arising from or reinforced by natural causes, adventitious circumstances, or personal environment, issues in persistent, wilful wrong-doing, it becomes or is resolved into guilt, and involves punishment which is guilt’s inseparable accompaniment. In the OT the ideas of sin, guilt, and punishment are so inextricably interwoven that it is impossible to treat of one without in some way dealing with the other two, and the word for each is used interchangeably for the others (see Schultz, OT Theol. ii. p. 306). An example of this is found in Cain’s despairing complaint, where the word ‘punishment’ (Gen_4:13 EV [Note: English Version.] ) includes both the sin committed and the guilt attaching thereto (cf. Lev_26:41).
2. In speaking of the guilt of the race or of the individual, some knowledge of a law governing moral actions must be presupposed (cf. Joh_9:41; Joh_15:22; Joh_15:24). It is when the human will enters into conscious antagonism to the Divine will that guilt emerges into objective existence and crystallizes (see Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, Eng. tr. [Note: translate or translation.] p. 203 ff.). An educative process is thus required in order to bring home to the human race that sense of guilt without which progress is impossible (cf. Rom_3:20; Rom_7:7). As soon, however, as this consciousness is established, the first step on the road to rebellion against sin is taken, and the sinner’s relation to God commences to become fundamentally altered from what it was. A case in point, illustrative of this inchoate stage, is afforded by Joseph’s brothers in their tardy recognition of a guilt which seems to have been latent in a degree, so far as their consciousness was concerned, up to the period of threatened consequences (Gen_42:21; cf. for a similar example of strange moral blindness, on the part of David, 2Sa_12:1 ff.). Their subsequent conduct was characterized by clumsy attempts to undo the mischief of which they had been the authors. A like feature is observable in the attitude of the Philistines when restoring the sacred ‘ark of the covenant’ to the offended Jehovah. A ‘guilt-offering’ had to be sent as a restitution for the wrong done (1Sa_6:3, cf. 2Ki_12:16). This natural instinct was developed and guided in the Levitical institutions by formal ceremony and religious rite, which were calculated to deepen still further the feeling of guilt and fear of Divine wrath. Even when the offence was committed in ignorance, as soon as its character was revealed to the offender, he became thereupon liable to punishment, and had to expiate his guilt by restitution and sacrifice, or by a ‘guilt-offering’ (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] ‘trespass offering,’ Lev_5:15 ff; Lev_6:1 ff.). To this a fine, amounting to one-fifth of the value of the wrong done in the case of a neighbour, was added and given to the injured party (Lev_6:5, Num_5:6 f.). How widely diffused this special rite had become is evidenced by the numerous incidental references of Ezekiel (Eze_40:39; Eze_42:13; Eze_44:29; Eze_46:20); while perhaps the most remarkable allusion to this service of restitution occurs in the later Isaiah, where the ideal Servant of Jehovah is described as a ‘guilt-offering’ (Isa_53:10).
3. As might be expected, the universality of human guilt is nowhere more insistently dwelt on or more fully realized than in the Psalms (cf. Psa_14:2; Psa_53:2, where the expression ‘the sons of men’ reveals the scope of the poet’s thought; see also Psa_36:1-12 with its antithesis—the universal long-suffering of God and the universal corruption of men). In whatever way we interpret certain passages (e.g. Psa_69:28; Psa_109:7 ff.) in the so-called imprecatory Psalms, one thought at least clearly emerges, that wilful and persistent sin can never be separated from guiltiness in the sight of God, or from consequent punishment. They reveal in the writers a sense ‘of moral earnestness, of righteous indignation, of burning zeal for the cause of God’ (see Kirkpatrick, ‘Psalms’ in Cambr. Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. lxxv.). The same spirit is to be observed in Jeremiah’s repeated prayers for vengeance on those who spent their time in devising means to destroy him and his work (cf. Jer_11:18 ff; Jer_18:19 ff; Jer_20:11 ff. etc.). Indeed, the prophetic books of the OT testify generally to the force of this feeling amongst the most powerful religious thinkers of ancient times, and are a permanent witness to the validity of the educative functions which it fell to the lot of these moral teachers to discharge (cf. e.g. Hos_10:2 ff., Joe_1:4 ff., Amo_4:9 ff., Mic_3:4 ff., Hag_2:21 f., Zec_5:2 ff. etc.).
4. The final act in this great formative process is historically connected with the life and work of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Atonement, however interpreted or systematized, involves belief in, and the realization of, the guilt of the entire human race. The symbolic Levitical rite in which ‘the goat for Azazel’ bore the guilt (EV [Note: English Version.] ‘iniquities,’ Lev_16:22) and the punishment of the nation, shadows forth clearly and unmistakably the nature of the burden laid on Jesus, as the Son of Man. Involved, as a result of the Incarnation, in the limitations and fate of the human race, He in a profoundly real way entered into the conditions of its present life (see Isa_53:12, where the suffering Servant is said to bear the consequences of man’s present position in regard to God; cf. 1Pe_2:24). Taking the nature of Adam’s race, He became involved, so to speak, in a mystic but none the less real sense, in its guilt, while Gethsemane and Calvary are eternal witnesses to the tremendous load willingly borne by Jesus (Joh_10:18) as the price of the world’s guilt, at the hands of a just and holy but a loving and merciful God (Joh_3:16 f., Rom_5:8, Eph_2:3 f., 1Th_1:10, Rev_15:1; cf. Exo_34:7).
‘By submitting to the awful experience which forced from Him the cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and by the Death which followed, He made our real relation to God His own, while retaining—and, in the very act of submitting to the penalty of sin, revealing in the highest form—the absolute perfection of His moral life and the steadfastness of His eternal union with the Father’ (Dale, The Atonement, p. 425).
It is only in the life of Jesus that we are able to measure the guilt of the human race as it exists in the sight of God, and at the same time to learn somewhat, from the means by which He willed to bring it home to the consciousness of men, of the full meaning of its character as an awful but objective reality. Man’s position in regard to God, looked on as the result of sin, is the extent and the measure of his guilt.
‘Only He, who knew in Himself the measure of the holiness of God, could realize also, in the human nature which He had made His own, the full depth of the alienation of sin from God, the real character of the penal averting of God’s face. Only He, who sounded the depths of human consciousness in regard to sin, could, in the power of His own inherent righteousness, condemn and crush sin in the flesh. The suffering involved in this is not, in Him, punishment or the terror of punishment; but it is the full realizing, in the personal consciousness, of the truth of sin, and the disciplinary pain of the conquest of sin; it is that full self-identification of human nature, within range of sin’s challenge and sin’s scourge, with holiness as the Divine condemnation of sin, which was at once the necessity—and the impossibility—of human penitence. The nearest—and yet how distant!—an approach to it in our experience we recognize, not in the wild sin-terrified cry of the guilty, but rather in those whose profound self-identification with the guilty overshadows them with a darkness and a shame, vital indeed to their being, yet at heart tranquil, because it is not confused with the blurring consciousness of a personal sin’ (Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 130).
5. The clearest and most emphatic exposition of the fruits of the Incarnation, with respect to human guilt, is to be found in the partly systematized Christology of St. Paul, where life ‘in the Spirit’ is asserted to be the norm of Christian activity (Rom_8:9 ff.). ‘There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom_8:1) is a reversal of the verdict of ‘Guilty’ against the race (cf. Col_3:6 f., 1Th_2:16), in so far as man accepts the conditions of the Christian life (cf. Gal_5:17 f.). Where the conditions are not fulfilled, he is not included in the new order, for ‘if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.’ His guilt is aggravated by ‘neglecting so great salvation’ (Heb_2:3; cf. Joh_15:22; Joh_15:24, Mat_11:20 ff.), and the sentence pronounced against the disobedience of the enlightened is, humanly speaking at least, irreversible (Heb_6:4 ff; Heb_10:29 ff.).
J. R. Willis.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

gilt: The Christian idea of guilt involves three elements: responsibility (Greek aitı́a, ?cause,? depending upon a man's real freedom), blameworthiness (Latin reatus culpae, depending upon a man's knowledge and purpose) and the obligation to make good through punishment or compensation (Latin reatus poenae; compare Greek opheı́lēma, ?debt,? Mat_6:12). In other words, in thinking of guilt we ask the questions of cause, motive and consequence, the central idea being that of the personal blameworthiness of the sinner.
I. In the Old Testament
1. The Ritualistic and Legalistic Conception
Not all of this is found at once in the Old Testament. The idea of guilt corresponds to that of righteousness or holiness. When these are ritual and legal, instead of ethical and spiritual, they will determine similarly the idea of guilt. This legalistic and ritualistic conception of guilt may first be noted. Personal blameworthiness does not need to be present. ?If any one sin, and do any of the things which Yahweh hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity? (Lev_5:17). The man is guilty, not because he might or should have known; he may merely have touched unwittingly the body of an unclean beast (Lev_5:2, Lev_5:3). The guilt is here because the law has been transgressed and must be made good (compare Lev_5:15, Lev_5:16; Lev_4:2, Lev_4:3, Lev_4:13, Lev_4:22, Lev_4:27; see also Lev_5:2, Lev_5:3, Lev_5:4, Lev_5:17).
Moreover, the element of personal responsibility is sometimes lacking where guilt is assigned. The priest may sin ?so as to bring guilt on the people? (Lev_4:3). One man's wrongdoing may ?cause the land to sin? (Deu_24:4). Israel has sinned in Achan's greed and therefore suffers. Even when the guilty man is found, his children and his very cattle must bear the guilt and punishment with him, though there is no suggestion of their participation or even knowledge (Josh 7; compare 2 Sam 24). Here the full moral idea of sin and guilt is wanting because the idea of personality and personal responsibility has not come to its own. The individual is still merged here in the clan or nation.
The central idea in all this is not that of the individual, his responsibility, his motive, his blame. It is that of a rule and the transgression of it, which must be made good. For this reason we see the ? ideas of sin and guilt and punishment constantly passing over into each other. This may be seen by noting the use of the words whose common root is 'shm, the distinctive Hebrew term for guilt. In Lev 5 to 7 in the adjective form it is rendered ?guilty,? in the noun as ?trespass offering.? In Hos_5:15 it seems to mean punishment (see margin, ?have borne their guilt,? and compare Eze_6:6), while in Num_5:7, Num_5:8 the idea is that of compensation (rendered ?restitution for guilt?).
2. Prophetic Teaching
With the prophets, the ideas of sin and righteousness come out more clearly as ethical and personal, and so we mark a similar advance in the conception of guilt. It is not ritual correctness that counts with God, incense and sacrifices and new moons and Sabbaths, but to cease to do evil, to learn to do well (Isa 1). Thus the motive and the inner spirit come in (Mic_6:8; Isa_57:15; Isa_58:1-12), and guilt gains a new depth and quality. At the same time the idea of personal responsibility comes. A man is to bear his own sins. The children's teeth are not to be set on edge because the fathers have eaten sour grapes (Jer_31:29, Jer_31:30; Eze_18:29-32; 2Ki_14:6; compare 2Sa_24:17).
II. In the New Testament
1. With Jesus
Here as elsewhere Jesus came to fulfill. With Him it is the inner attitude of the soul that decides. It is the penitent publican who goes down justified, not the Pharisee with his long credit account (Luk_18:9-14). That is why His attitude is so kindly toward some notorious sinners and so stern toward some religious leaders. The Pharisees are outwardly correct, but their spirit of bigotry and pride prevents their entering the kingdom of heaven, while the penitent harlots and publicans take it by storm.
Because it is not primarily a matter of the outward deed but of the inner spirit, Jesus marks different degrees of guilt as depending upon a man's knowledge and motive (Luk_11:29-32; Luk_12:47, Luk_12:48; Luk_23:34). And yet Jesus does not lighten the sense of guilt but rather deepens it. The strength of the Old Testament thought lay in this, that it viewed all transgression as a sin against God, since all law came from Him. This religious emphasis remains with Jesus (Luk_15:21; compare Psa_51:4). But with Jesus God is far more than a giver of rules. He gives Himself. And so the guilt is the deeper because the sin is against this love and mercy and fellowship which God offers us. Jesus shows us the final depth of evil in sin. Here comes the New Testament interpretation of the cross, which shows it on the one hand as the measure of God's love in the free gift of His Son, and on the other as the measure of man's guilt whose sin wrought this and made it necessary.
2. With Paul
Paul also recognizes differences of degree in guilt, the quality of blameworthiness which is not simply determined by looking at the outward transgression (Act_17:30; Eph_4:18; Rom_2:9; Rom_3:26; Rom_5:13; Rom_7:13). He, too, looks within to decide the question of guilt (Rom_14:23). But sin is not a matter of single acts or choices with Paul. He sees it as a power that comes to rule a man's life and that rules in the race. The question therefore arises, Does Paul think of guilt also as native, as belonging to man because man is a part of the race? Here it can merely be pointed out that Rom_5:12-21 does not necessarily involve this. Paul is not discussing whether all men committed sin in Adam's fall, or whether all are guilty by virtue of their very place in a race that is sinful. It is not the question of guilt in fact or degree, but merely the fact that through one man men are now made righteous as before through one sin came upon them all. This no more involves native guilt as a non-ethical conception than it does the idea that the righteousness through Christ is merely forensic and non-ethical. Paul is simply passing over the other elements to assert one fact. Rom 1 suggests how Paul looked at universal sin as involving guilt because universal knowledge and choice entered in. See also SIN.
Literature
Mueller, Christian Doctrine of Sin, I, 193-267; Schultz, Old Testament Theology; Kaehler, article ?Schuld,? Hauck-Herzog, Realencyklopadie fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Guilt
SEE SIN.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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