From the Pulpit: How do I deal with a sin that I still feel guilty about?

The reminder comes without warning.

Maybe someone brings it up. Maybe a song, a place, or a face triggers the memory. But suddenly, you’re back there – standing in a moment you wish you could undo. A time you are not proud of. A sin you carry like a stone.

You wish you could go back. You can’t. So, what do you do when it surfaces again?

The first wrong turn is familiar: guilt. Not just a passing pang, but a flood. The memory arrives and the shame arrives with it, as fresh as the day it happened. You wallow. You beat yourself up. You pick up the weight again as if you never set it down.

The second wrong turn is subtler. You don’t want the guilt, so you swing hard the other way. You laugh it off. You play it down. You reframe it as a funny story, a quirky chapter, maybe even something to be proud of. You’re not fooling anyone – least of all yourself. It’s just self-protection wearing a smile.

Paul knew both of these roads. And he chose a third.

Before Paul was the great missionary of the early church, he was its most dangerous enemy. He didn’t just disagree with Christians – he hunted them. He approved of their imprisonment and death. He was, by his own admission, a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. He didn’t stumble into sin; he built a career out of it.

Then Jesus met him on a road to Damascus, and everything changed.

So how did Paul handle his past after that? When his accusers brought it up – and they did – how did he respond? He didn’t brag about it. He didn’t pretend it never happened. And he didn’t collapse into self-pity either.

He placed every ounce of his confidence in the grace of Jesus Christ.

Paul wrote that he received grace “in overflowing measure” – not a trickle dispensed reluctantly, but a flood poured out generously. The logic is almost staggering: the worse the sin, the more clearly grace shines. Paul’s terrible past didn’t disqualify him from grace – it became the very canvas on which grace was displayed most brilliantly.

He could have been a worse sinner still, and grace would have been sufficient.

That is not permission to sin carelessly. It is an invitation to stop carrying what has already been forgiven.

If something in your past keeps dragging you back – if someone keeps reminding you, or your own memory keeps accusing you – you don’t have to wallow, and you don’t have to pretend.

Bring it to Jesus. Trust his forgiveness – not as a vague hope, but as a settled fact. Find your rest not in how well you’ve moved on, but in how completely he has covered it.

Your sin was real. His grace is greater. That’s not wishful thinking. That’s the gospel.