Audio Transcript

When someone accuses you of sin, what do you do? What do you do when the accusation is true? What do you do when that accusation isn’t true? Do you accuse back? Fight back? And is it possible to receive criticism — fair criticism or unfair criticism — with grace? That’s the question up today on Ask Pastor John, as John Piper looks at one of our frequent texts — one we talk about a lot.

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So, Micah 7:8–9 is where we’re headed today. Our old friend. What a profound text, one we have hardly exhausted. It’s in our reading tomorrow, which is why it’s on my mind today, and it’s also our question today from Ava, a 25-year-old woman in Vancouver. “Pastor John, thank you for frequently teaching on ‘gutsy guilt’ here on the podcast, from Micah 7:8–9. The prophet’s response to his own sin shows a profound balance between owning his guilt before God and trusting in God’s ultimate vindication.” Yes, that’s what makes it so profound. “When others point out our sin, especially when it feels harsh or humbling, how should we respond? Micah’s ‘gutsy guilt’ seems to model a response that refuses to hide or deflect blame. Yet, it can be difficult to maintain this posture when others confront us, particularly when their judgment feels less merciful than God’s. How can we humbly receive correction from others, in the spirit of gutsy guilt, in a setting that feels like a personal attack?”

Gutsy Guilt

This is a pretty insightful question, but I don’t think our listeners will be able to see that until they hear the text. So, let me refresh everybody’s memory. I’ve often described, as Ava points out, that this text describes something that, it seems to me, is best called “gutsy guilt.” She comes at it, then, from a unique angle. So, let me give the text. This is Micah 7:8–9:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
     when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
     the Lord will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord
     because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
     and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
     I shall look upon his vindication.

That’s one of the most amazing passages about our sinfulness and God’s merciful justification.

“When God is about to welcome you into perfect happiness, personal slights lose their power.”

So, it is a complete and honest admission of guilt. That’s the first thing. “I have sinned against the Lord.” And alongside it, amazingly, is a complete confidence that God is for him and not against him, and will only leave him in the darkness as long as it’s good for him, and then he’ll bring him out and vindicate him. I call that amazing, gutsy guilt, and I think it’s the way justified sinners in Christ should deal with all of their sins that they commit as Christians.

1. Acknowledge it.
2. Bear the darkness of discipline willingly.
3. Defy the accusations of the devil.
4. Hold onto your imputed righteousness in Christ.
5. And then walk out into the light of your vindication through the blood of Jesus.

Amazing. It’s great to be a Christian.

Gutsy Guilt and Accusations

Now, what Ava has done is notice that this is how we deal with our own self-accusation, because we have really sinned; we’re aware of it. And she wonders what it looks like when others are accusing us of sin or correcting us, and how we might apply this text in those situations.

And I say “those situations” because there are just so many different ways that we can be corrected or criticized. We might be corrected when the correction is warranted: We really did make a mistake; we really did sin grievously or not so grievously, or we had a bad attitude. Or the correction might be unwarranted: We didn’t make any mistake; we didn’t have a bad attitude; we’re being accused wrongly. Or the correction might come in the form of sheer ridicule: They’re not really correcting us; they’re just mocking us; they’re just shaming us, putting us down — even in public.

So, there are all kinds of degrees of seriousness and degrees of legitimacy and degrees of hurtfulness. And in every one of those different circumstances, what it takes to respond as a Christian is going to be slightly different. So, I can’t respond to every one of those circumstances; I don’t know what they are. Let me see if I can say something more general that might be helpful in all of those circumstances. This passage in Micah 7 is really relevant, not just when we are aware of our own accusations, but also, as Ava is asking, when we’re aware of corrections or accusations from others.

And there are two key things that produce gutsy guilt in all the cases in this text. One is humility that freely admits that even in a believing soul — our own soul — there is indwelling sin that feels and says and does things that are wrong, sinful, and out of character for a Christian. That’s one thing. We should be humble because we know sin can sometimes get the upper hand in our lives.

And the other is, alongside humility, deep confidence that, in our union with Christ, I am counted righteous before God — forgiven, accepted, adopted, loved, with a certain and glorious future. And it’s this confidence, I think, that undergirds the humility. It frees us from needing to be self-defensive, and it enables us to humbly accept correction or even criticism, even unwarranted criticism. So, those are the first two suggestions that this text helps us with, in receiving warranted or even unwarranted criticism: humility before others and confidence before God.

Encouragements in Bearing Ridicule

And I see at least four other helpful encouragements embedded in Micah 7 for our help in patiently bearing the corrections or even the ridicule of others.

1. Look to past grace.

We should always keep in mind the past grace of our totally undeserved forgiveness. In fact, ten verses later, coming near the end of the book, Micah says, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?” (Micah 7:18). We haven’t sung this hymn for a bazillion years at our church, but we used to sing it a lot:

Who is a pardoning God like you?
And who has grace so rich and free?

I love that song, and we don’t ever sing it, but it comes from this text in Micah 7:18. And of course Ephesians 4:32 says, “[Forgive] one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” So, keeping an eye on your massive debt that you have been forgiven goes a long way to helping receive correction — even mistreatment — patiently and graciously.

2. Look to future grace.

Don’t only look back on the past grace of forgiveness; keep your mind on the future grace of eternal life and joy. Micah says, “He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication” (Micah 7:9). That’s a glorious future of acceptance with God. Jesus said, when you’re criticized for his sake, “rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). When God is about to welcome you into perfect happiness, personal slights lose their power.

3. Let God be judge.

Keep in mind that God sees everything spoken to you, spoken against you. If anything is spoken wrongly against you or to you, falsely, hurtfully, God is going to make it right, and you don’t have to. He doesn’t miss anything. You don’t need to return evil for evil (Romans 12:17). Even the tiniest slight from your spouse, say. He sees that; he knows that. You don’t need to take a dig at her or him because it’s got to be made right. No, God can make things right.

“If anything is spoken wrongly against you or to you, God is going to make it right, and you don’t have to.”

So, by grace, you really can let it go. You can let it go a thousand times. That’s how marriages work. If you want to be happy, you’ve got to just let it go. It doesn’t matter how it bothers you or whether you think it ought to be fixed: Just let it go. There’s grace for that, and God will deal with whatever needs to be dealt with. Hand it over “to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23; 4:19). God will put everything right in due time. We don’t need to play the judge when we’re being corrected or criticized or ridiculed, whether properly or improperly.

4. Don’t be surprised.

One last thing. The verse before this, in Micah 7:6, is quoted by Jesus to his followers in Matthew 10:35–36, and it says, “The son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.” In other words, some of your closest relations will try to correct you or say hurtful things about you. And it helps, it really helps — Jesus believed it helped; Micah believed it helped — not to be totally surprised when that happens. Jesus said it’s coming.

So, I think Ava is right to draw attention to Micah 7:8–9, not only because gutsy guilt applies to our own proper self-accusations, but also because it applies to corrections and criticisms and even ridicule that we receive from others. And I’m sure that there is more here than I’ve seen. And I would just encourage all of us, everybody who’s listening to me right now, to linger long over these very precious verses.