King David once said that guilt makes you feel like your very bones are rotting. Guilt makes you feel weak… sick. Guilt can make it hard to focus on anything else… hard to function. And guilt is an inescapable fact of life. Everyone carries guilt about something. Worse, our efforts to deal with guilt—minimizing our mistakes, making excuses for our sin—don’t help, they only make us feel worse. What alleviates the burden of guilt?

Just one thing—God’s gift of grace. Christ’s love is undeserved and unconditional. He pardons every sin. This is the entire reason Jesus came to earth. This was his mission—to give the gift of grace! When we receive that gift, our guilt melts. Left in its place is the joy of our salvation.