“If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18)

Anyone who judges himself according to how well he keeps the law of God will find himself guilty and condemned, because “by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight” (Romans 3:20). This can happen to the saint who become “shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins” (2 Peter 1:9). This backsliding can happen even to saints who knew for many years, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

All saints start off with “a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22). They experience, the moment-by-moment reality of being forgiven, and maintain a conscience free from guilt by immediately asking Christ’s forgiveness when they stumble. But, if they become mad at God for allowing something bad to happen to them, or if they become involved in a sin that they don’t want to repent of, they gradually lose the freedom of the Spirit, and return to the Old Man way of dealing with guilt… appeasing their conscience with dead works (Hebrews 6:1). Spiritual burnout happens when saints become sick and tired of being sick and tired under the tyranny of the law in their minds. The way out is the same way they got saved. Repent and submit unconditionally to Christ as Lord and Savior.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit: (Romans 8:1-5).