Guilty by Association

It’s bad enough being guilty.

Being guilty means you’ve caught yourself in a position that, by agreement, you ought not to have been.

Maybe you didn’t catch yourself. Maybe you were caught.

Either way, you ought not have been doing what you were doing.

Or thinking what you were thinking… or avoiding what you were avoiding…

It’s only the true psychopath who thinks he’s incapable of guilt. Let’s all hope we never come into contact with that kind of evil.

For everyone else, human beings, we’re guilty and we know it.

I mean, we can debate somewhere else how important that guilt is.

But we don’t have the option of living in a world where we are never wrong, never guilty, perfect.

It’s an “absolute claim” about reality. We miss the mark.

And that would be bad enough.

What really ticks us off is when someone makes us “guilty by association”.

Like, ok, you got me. I’m guilty.

Just don’t accuse me based on my association with someone else you think is guilty.

We hate that.



Guilt by association is an experience within which we encounter a version of the world that is out of sync with the version of the world we know to be true.

Guilt by association feels exactly like injustice. I’m on the hook for someone else’s problem.

Maybe we call it false accusation or unrighteous bias or some other ugly name.

Racism, if we understand it to be a version of the world in which one race of people is superior to another, is nothing more or less than guilt by association.

It’s a form of injustice.

In a racist world, a person is guilty based on his or her race.

In a classist world, a person is guilty based on his or her class.

In an ethnicist world, a person is guilty by his or her ethnicity.

They are just different flavors of injustice.

Whatever world you live in, you're going to run up against guilt by association.

You’ll be its victim, and you’ll be its perpetrator.

Or do you suppose that you are that one person who is incapable of guilt?

Don’t be that person.



The most confounding thing about Christianity is that it is based on guilt by association.

Really, if Jesus isn’t the Christ, then we have no use for the concept of guilt (other than to manipulate it as a means of eliminating our own personal enemies).

But if Jesus is the Christ, then the only guilt of ours that really matters is whatever guilt of ours Jesus dealt with.

Think about it.

Maybe you want to admit that you’re guilty of A and B.

Fortunately for you, the "really bad things" to be guilty of are X and Y, things you wouldn't dream of doing.

You’re guilty of A and B, and you admit it.

What really ticks you off, though, are people who are guilty of X. or Y.

Funny thing about human nature... the people guilty of X and Y are pretty sure that it's worse to be guilty of A and B.

So whose list is more right?

Christianity believes that there is only one absolute truth claim, and that’s the Bible.

God - the Absolute One Himself - has defined what kind of a world this is, and in His world all guilt is GUILT.

It’s also the world where Jesus Christ has died for the guilty. All of them.

Jesus Christ is the standard of guilt by which any and all other human beings must be judged.

That’d be a fair paraphrase of Peter’s quote in the passage from Acts at the top of this article.

To be saved in the name of Jesus Christ is to have your guilt associated with Him.

If you are guilty in Jesus Christ, you are saved.

If you avoid guilt in Jesus Christ… well, you’d better have a better explanation for reality!

The only kind of guilt that is redeemed… atoned for… forgiven… is your guilt in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, on the cross, becomes the ultimate authority for what constitutes your guilt: A, B... the whole list.

Jesus knows that list better than you do, considering the fact that he quite literally died for its sake.

See what I mean?

You’re guilty by association.

Your willingness to allow Jesus to define that guilt with his life… we call that faith.

Being guilty by association with Jesus Christ has been the Christian experience ever since there has been Christianity.

Peter may have been the first to experience it deeply.

Peter got his first taste of guilt by association on the night when he and his friends abandoned Jesus.

Peter never regarded himself as one who could possibly be guilty by association with Jesus.

Like the time in Matthew 16 where Peter takes Jesus aside to rebuke him, and Jesus says, “get behind me, satan! You are a hindrance to me. You are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

I imagine that might have taken Peter by surprise.

He’s been rolling right along with the Christ, even impressing himself by confessing that Jesus is the “Son of the Living God”.

Peter might have agreed with you that he’s guilty of A, B, and C… but come on… D? He confesses Jesus, after all.

And yet…

There is a standard bigger than Peter’s.

That standard is Jesus Himself.

Peter may be guilty of all kinds of things that Peter himself can tell you all about.

But Peter is also guilty in ways that only God knows.

Nobody has the authority to look at a man like Peter and say, “get behind me satan” unless the person saying it has divine authority over all creation.

Only God says that.

No wonder it took Peter by surprise!

Not long after that unpleasant experience, Peter was directly asked, “aren’t you one of Jesus’ followers from Galilee?”

Meanwhile, of course, Jesus is being tried by a kangaroo court which will sentence Him to crucifixion.

Poor Peter. He’s just tagging along because he wants to see what happens to his friend… you know… Jesus…

And boy did Jesus hurt his feelings when He told him that he would deny Him before the crow of the rooster.

And then, where does Peter find himself?

“I don’t know Him…”

Oy vey.

It’s the one thing Peter tries to avoid: guilt by association.

Then Jesus takes Peter’s guilt with Him to the cross.

Along with your guilt… and mine.

It actually turned Peter into one of the most courageous men who ever walked the planet.

In Acts 4, Peter, James, and John are being tried by the exact same kangaroo court that crucified Jesus.

If there’s ever a moment to reject association with Jesus, Peter, this might be the moment.

Save yourself, after all!

But no. Peter has witnessed Jesus suffer and die for the atonement of his guilt.

Peter only ever wants to be in association with Jesus Christ.

Which is what leads him to say, “there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved.”

It’s the equivalent of saying, “there is no greater guilt than guilt by association with Jesus because there is no salvation outside of the forgiveness won by Jesus.”

In that ineffable way, we can only be saved through “guilt by association”.

And when you really get right down to it, it isn’t so much that we are guilty by our association with Jesus… it’s that He’s only guilty by His association with us.

At the end of the day (or should we say, “at the beginning of the day”!), Jesus’ willingness to be guilty by association with me saves me.

May you, like Peter, have faith in that truth.