Conviction Vs Condemnation: Knowing the Difference

You know this all too well. There goes that heavy feeling in your chest again. You can no longer concentrate on anything else but that incessant throb in your heart, that overwhelming and suffocating feeling of guilt and shame that just poured over you. Before you know it, you have put yourself down to the point where you feel so horrible, so guilty, dirty, ashamed and unworthy and that condemnation you are in is causing you to isolate yourself and retreat from God’s presence. Not because you don’t want to be in God’s presence, but because your shame is speaking so loud and it’s telling you that you don’t deserve it therefore causing you to run further away from God in attempt to “hide” (as if we could hide from the one who created us!). Well, if this sounds like something quite too familiar, then this blog is for you.

I’ve been there before. I know how the cycle of condemnation can really mess you up! It’s no joke. There’s a reason why the enemy tries so hard to inflict that upon believers. Before we move on, let’s define condemnation.

Condemnation: to sentence to punishment, or to pass judgement against, to pronounce to be guilty.

Condemnation essentially tries to convince you that it wasn’t just a sin or a mistake.. it’s your identity. It causes you to view your mistakes as who you are. So we end up putting this punishing sentence on our lives and we somehow believe that God is the one making us carry it. The enemy wants you to live in a constant state of guilt over your past (whether it’s something you did 5 years ago or yesterday) because he knows that if he can get you to do that then he doesn’t even need to try and sabotage the purpose or plans God has for your life – because you already disqualified your own self from it.

Romans 8:1 tell us “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Obviously this isn’t a free pass to go out and sin as much as you want, but there is a difference between conviction and condemnation. Whenever we sin, it grieves/hurts the Holy Spirit, and he’ll let us know that by our convictions which is that feeling on the inside of us and it’s usually pretty specific and can be in the form of a precise thought of where we messed up.

Here’s the difference: Conviction is basically a product of our relationship with God. The closer we draw to Him, the more we know about God’s nature, grow in our discernment of right and wrong, gain vision of His purpose for our life and the more sensitive we will become to the Holy Spirit’s nudging. When the Holy Spirit convicts us when we sin and we have that feeling in our gut that we messed up, the purpose of that conviction is to lead us to repentance and in the open arms of our loving, merciful and forgiving Savior. Conviction is necessary for us to be put on the right path. Condemnation on the other hand fills you with hopelessness, it has you living in shame and makes you feel like a lost cause. Condemnation traps you.

There is a difference between actively sinning/wanting to live a lifestyle that pleases your flesh and “doing your own thing” and “whiling out” and making a mistake. As Christians, we are going to make mistakes. I’m not condoning it, but it’s important to understand that while sin is a symptom of humanity it is not your identity. If you buy into the lie that your past mistakes define you, you can be sure that the enemy will keep you stuck in the cycle of condemnation – and what do we want more than anything when we fill ourselves with all of these negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves? Comfort. We want a temporary escape and we end up looking for it in all the wrong places as we are too ashamed to turn to God because we feel unworthy which then leads us back to sin and the condemnation cycle begins again.

So if you only take one thing from this blog post let it be this:

Your identity is not found in your sin. Who you are is not defined by what you’ve done or what mistakes you’ve made. Jesus knew we would all mess up big time in many different ways living in this fallen world. He doesn’t want you to live feeling condemned but instead use your conviction as a sign to run to God asking Him for a clean slate and KNOWING that as soon as you ran to Him, He removed your sins as far as the east is to the west. He doesn’t see you as dirty or filthy or those lying feelings the enemy wants to label you. Through Jesus and His sacrifice you have been made right with God and that right there is something to be joyful about.