Feeling Guilty?

Someone shared with me today that they wished they felt more emotion regarding what Jesus went through to pay for our sin.  This is something I have felt at times myself.  When I recognize some sin I have just committed, though I know in my head that that action put Jesus on the cross and drove the nails into His hands, I am somehow able to move on after a brief moment of repentance, and go about my day, as if no one was affected by my action but me.  Shouldn't I feel more shame?  How can I be so unfeeling?  I have questioned this at times, and wondered what is wrong with me.

But are we called to feel shame and regret?  Can lack of emotion be a sin?  Or would beating myself up over my short comings only be another subconscious attempt to pay for my own sins?

I was talking about this with Derek tonight, and while I don't know that it's all crystal clear in my mind or anything, I now believe that somehow Christ's victory over sin in my life is also victory over shame and guilt.  While I do regret my sin, and therefore confess it openly to my Heavenly Father, it has been paid for in full, and so any feeling of shame or guilt that I try to put on myself is only my own attempt to share some of the wait of it with Jesus.  But He took it all.  He felt all of the shame and guilt for me.  While He hung on the cross, He felt the full responsibility of having put an innocent man on a cross, even though it was He, Himself.  How's that for a mystery?

"This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything."  1John 3:19-20

 "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."  Hebrews 10:22

"For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."  Hebrews 9:13-14
      
"For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them."  Romans 2:14-15  

I think this last passage points out that in allowing our conscience to condemn us, we are seeking to live by the law or attain our own salvation.  

I believe that the greater we come to know and grasp the holiness of God, the greater our understanding of our own sinfulness will be, but this understanding and regret does not call for us to beat ourselves up over it.  Christ has already taken care of that for us, and an attempt to share the wight of it with Him only mocks His sacrifice.


Speaking of the emotion Christ experienced for us... I love this song by Keith and Kristyn Getty.