Guilt, in its proper theological sense, is the liability or obligation to punishment that justly attaches to a person because of his sin—his standing as one who has broken the law of God and is therefore answerable to divine justice. It must be carefully distinguished from the mere feeling of guilt, which is the subjective sense of having done wrong. True guilt is objective: it is a legal and moral reality before God whether or not the sinner feels it, just as a criminal is guilty before the law whether or not his conscience accuses him. The older divines distinguished the guilt of pollution (the defilement of sin) from the guilt of liability (the obligation to suffer its penalty); it is the latter that the Latin called reatus. Guilt arises from two sources: the imputed guilt of Adam’s first sin, charged to all his posterity, and the personal guilt of one’s own actual transgressions. Because God is just, guilt cannot simply be ignored or waved away; it must be either borne by the sinner under condemnation or borne by a substitute. Herein lies the glory of the gospel: Christ, the sinless one, was made sin for us, bearing the guilt of His people—their liability to punishment—in His own body on the tree, so that the demands of justice were fully satisfied and the guilty are reckoned righteous. Justification is precisely the removal of guilt: the believer’s liability to punishment is cancelled because it was discharged at the cross. Thus the doctrine of guilt makes plain both the necessity of the atonement and the completeness of the pardon it secures.