GUILT
personal
consciousness
of
wrong-doing
and
leaves
out
ot
account
the
attitude
of
God
to
sin
unwittingly
com-mitted
(Lv
S"-;
cf.
Lk
12",
Ro
6'*;
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
(Eo
7"^).
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
con-stitutes
guilt
in
the
widest
sense
of
the
word.
The
human
struggle
after
righteousness
is
the
surest
evidence
of
man's
consciousness
ot
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
per-sistent,
wilful
wrong-doing,
it
becomes
or
is
resolved
into
guilt,
and
involves
punishment
which
is
guilt's
inseparable
accompaniment.
In
the
OT
the
ideas
ot
sin,
guilt,
and
punishment
are
so
inextricably
inter-woven
that
it
is
impassible
to
treat
of
one
without
in
some
way
deahng
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'
(Gn
4is
EV)
includes
both
the
sin
com-mitted
and
the
grolt
attaching
thereto
(cf.
Lv
26").
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.
Ju
9"
15*^-
^).
It
is
when
the
human
will
enters
into
conscious
antagonism
to
the
Divine
will
that
guilt
emerges
into
objective
existence
and
crystaUizes
(see
Martensen,
Chrislian
Dogmatics,
Eng.
tr.
p.
203
£f.).
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.
Ro
3™
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
conse-quences
(Gn
42^';
cf.
for
a
similar
example
of
strange
moral
blindness,
on
the
part
of
David,
2
S
12"'-
).
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
(1
S
6',
cf.
2
K
12"').
This
natural
instinct
was
developed
and
guided
in
the
Levitical
institutions
by
formal
ceremony
and
reUgious
rite,
which
were
calculated
to
deepen
still
further
the
feeUng
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-ofiering'
(AV
'trespass
offering,'
Lv
Sitff.
giff.).
To
this
a
fine,
amounting
to
one-fifth
ot
the
value
of
the
wrong
done
in
the
case
of
a
neighbour,
was
added
and
given
to
the
injured
party
(6^,
Nu
5"
).
How
widely
diffused
this
special
rite
had
become
is
evidenced
by
the
numerous
incidental
references
ot
Ezekiel
(40''
42"
442»
46«°);
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'
(63'°).
3.
As
might
be
expected,
the
universality
of
human
GUILT
guilt
is
nowhere
more
insistently
dwelt
on
or
more
fully
reaUzed
than
in
the
Psalms
(cf.
Ps
14^
and
632,
where
the
expression
'the
sons
of
men'
reveals
the
scope
of
the
poet's
thought;
see
also
Ps
36
with
its
antithesis
—
the
universal
long-suffering
of
God
and
the
universal
corruption
of
men).
In
whatever
way
we
interpret
certain
passages
{e.g.
Ps
69^8
log™-)
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
ot
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.
Ixxv.).
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.
lliffl-
IS""-
20U1-
etc.).
Indeed,
the
prophetic
books
of
the
OT
testify
generally
to
the
force
of
this
feeUng
amongst
the
most
powerful
religious
thinkers
of
ancient
times,
and
are
a
permanent
witness
to
the
vaUdity
of
the
educative
functions
which
it
fell
to
the
lot
of
these
moral
teachers
to
discharge
(cf.
e.g.
Hos
10™-,
Jl
l""-,
Am
4"-,
Mic
3«-,
Hag
22"-,
Zee
S^-
etc.).
4.
The
final
act
in
this
great
formative
process
is
historically
cormeoted
with
the
Ufe
and
work
ot
Jesus
Christ.
The
doctrine
of
the
Atonement,
however
interpreted
or
systematized,
involves
beUef
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
'iniquities,'
Lv
16^2)
and
the
punish-ment
of
the
nation,
shadows
forth
clearly
and
unmista-kably
the
nature
of
the
burden
laid
on
Jesus,
as
the
Son
of
Man.
Involved,
as
a
result
ot
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
Is
53'2,
where
the
suffering
Servant
is
said
to
bear
the
consequences
of
man's
present
position
in
regard
to
God;
cf.
1
P
2?*).
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
wiUingly
borne
by
Jesus
(Jn
10'*)
as
the
price
of
the
world's
guilt,
at
the
hands
of
a
just
and
holy
but
a
loving
and
merciful
God
(Jn
3'"-,
Ro
5»,
Eph
2"-,
1
Th
1'°,
Rev
15';
cf.
Ex
34').
'By
submitting
to
the
awful
experience
which
forced
from
Him
the
cry,
"My
God,
my
God,
why
hast
Thou
foisaken
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,
revealine
in
the
highest
form
—
the
absolute
perfection
of
His
moral
lite
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
ot
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
conscious-ness
in
regard
to
sin,
could,
in
the
power
of
His
own
inherent
righteousness,
condemn
and
crush
sin
in
the
fiesh.
The
suffering
involved
in
this
is
not,
in
Him,
punishment
or
the
terror
of
punishment;-
but
it
is
the
fun
realizing,
in
the
peraonal
consciousness,
of
the
truth
of
sin,
and
the
dis-ciplinary
pain
of
the
conquest
of
sin;-
it
is
that
full
self-
identification
of
humannature,
within
ran^eofsin'schalienge
and
sin's
scourge,
with
holiness
as
the
Divine
condemnation
of
sin,
which
was
at
once
the
necessity
—
and
the
impossi-bility
—
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
