It's difficult leaving all of our guilt at the cross and walking away. But that's the beauty of God's love for us.

Last year a sad thing happened at our Good Friday service. As people entered the chapel, they each received a large nail. In the front of the chapel stood a large cross with hundreds of holes drilled in it. Toward the end of the service I invited the worshipers to come forward and place their nails in the cross. While they were doing that I encouraged them to think of any guilt that was burdening them and symbolically nail that guilt to the cross.

One woman who came forward was a Mormon friend of a member. From my vantage point in the darkened chapel I could see that she was emotionally affected as she lingered at the cross. As she placed her nail in the cross, I prayed that the gospel she heard that night would remove her heavy burden of guilt. Later I learned that as she was leaving church, she went over to the box in the front hall containing the nails and took one home with her.

Jesus gave his life for us

How many of us have done the same thing? How many of us have gone to Christ's cross to leave our guilt there only to pick it up again as we walk away? Guilty consciences still gnaw at us. Guilt, like acid, still eats away at our relationships. Guilt still keeps us awake at night and can even keep us away from the Lord's house. As a Mormon leader once wrote us, "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving."

Worse yet, how many of us think that this is what the Lord wants? It's easy to think that it's normal and even a sign of Christian maturity to have some guilt. We might even conclude that something is wrong with believers who don't feel guilty. As strange as it sounds, have you ever caught yourself feeling guilty for feeling good in the Lord?

Jesus came to remove our guilt from us. Lent is not about our giving something up for God. On the contrary, during Lent we remind ourselves of how much God gave up for us! We marvel at Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac. We breathe a sigh of relief as we see God intervening at the last minute to spare Isaac. But when it came to God sacrificing his Son, nobody intervened. "He . . . did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all" (Romans 8:32). To free us from guilt God gave up—he sacrificed—his precious Son.

To free us from guilt the Son willingly went along with his Father's plan and gave up his life. "[Jesus] gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice" (Ephesians 5:2). Each Lenten season we come away shaking our heads in awe at Jesus' love for us. As we revisit the details of his passion and see the pain he suffered for us—the death he died for us—our hearts again overflow with love for him.

We give our guilt to Jesus