It wasn’t the kind of reception I expected. Ruth had been rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. A blood clot had formed in her lung, and the clot needed to be removed.

As I stepped into the room, she looked at me and said, “Pastor, I’m so angry at you!”

Quietly I asked, “Why are you angry at me?”

“You told us in Bible class that Christians can be afraid to die because of guilt over past sins. But I thought Christians shouldn’t ever be afraid to die! But you were right! I’m afraid to die because of my sin!”

By the “twinkle” in her eyes I could tell that Ruth’s anger at me wasn’t real, but by the sound of her voice I could tell that her fears about dying were.

Guilt over sin when facing the last enemy

In his letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul refers to death as the “last enemy.” Although Christ has conquered death for us and in him we have no need to fear death, it still is an enemy with which we must contend.

Certainly, there is the obvious physical struggle as we fight to stay alive. But there is a spiritual side to that struggle too, and the old evil foe never fights nicely. As Christians get ready to meet their Maker, the devil and a sinful conscience can resurrect “skeletons” from the closet of one’s memory. Guilt over a life’s worth of misdeeds can terrorize the heart and conscience of even the most faithful Christian as he or she does battle with that last enemy, death.

The assurance of forgiveness through Jesus