After Cain carried out one of the most heinous crimes by killing his brother Abel, when God pronounced the judgment on him he felt that the punishment was more than he deserved (Ge.4:13). He didn't see the seriousness of his sin. Our sinful nature is also the same. We look for mercy and compassion from God when we sin but we think the others deserve greater punishment even when their sin is smaller than ours. When we have had a quarrel with someone else, we say, "I just said/did this, but he..." Jesus was right when He asked us to take off the beam in our eye before attempting to remove the speck in another's eye (Lk.6:41,42).
This needs training ourselves to think differently than how it is natural for us. Instead of trying to wriggle out of the responsibility for our sins/mistakes, we must determine firmly that we want to face up to them and deal with them. We can ask God to open the eyes of our understanding and help us so that we can turn away from our focus on other people's sins and give attention to what we have done wrong. Psychology has identified many 'defence mechanisms' which people use, and one common use is to turn the attention away from our mistakes to others.
We must understand that without cleansing ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit we are not going to partake of the divine spirit and become like Jesus (2Co.7:1). We mustn't attribute to Satanic accusation every conviction the Holy Spirit brings about things that must be set right in our life. The sense of guilt we feel when we do wrong must not be confused with condemnation that comes from the Devil. This guilt is a pointer from the Holy Spirit towards the area in our life that needs to be dealt with. When we confess our sins we can get rid of the guilt (1Jn.1:9), but without recognising and dealing with the guilt we will not confess our sins!
We can come to the place where recognition of our sin does not drive us into hopelessness because we have come to see the compassion and understanding of God towards us coupled with His hatred for sin. But if we draw back from facing our sins because of the fear of feeling the guilt and shame, we effectively close up the path of being set free from sin more and more in practical life – sanctification.
The path of sanctification involves the renewal of the way we think about sin, ourselves, God's character of holiness and mercy, other people, etc. There is pain when we get wounded from our sins but healing can come only after we clean up the wound thoroughly by facing up to our sins and confessing them to God and then applying the balm of His forgiveness. If we try to avoid the pain and then claim healing straightaway we will have those sins festering inside us. We will remain the same without any transformation. But that is not God's plan for us. For everyone who takes up his cross daily and follows Jesus God promises the life of the Master (Lk.9:23) – from death to life, from ashes to beauty.