Why We Must Face Our Sinful Selves

Our Spiritual Condition

We cannot fully comprehend the horror of our spiritual condition, and our spiritual condition is the reason why. Our sin prevents us from seeing the scope and depth of our sin. But as the nature of our condition becomes clearer, we might recoil at what we do see. Think of the prophet Isaiah when he had a vision of the Lord. He saw the glorious presence of God, which was hailed by angelic voices. The seraphim cried out,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
     the whole earth is full of his glory! (Isa. 6:3)

In the presence of glory and holiness, Isaiah had a keen sense of his own sin. “Woe is me!” he declared. “For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5). The prophet’s recognition and confession are refreshing. He doesn’t sound like Adam. Isaiah knew God’s holiness, so he had a better understanding of his guilt and desperate condition. The response of the Lord is seen in the action of a seraph, who touched Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isa. 6:7).

Loincloths and tree coverings cannot atone for sin. We need confession and forgiveness. We offer the former, and God provides the latter. A true sense of sin confronts us with our unworthiness to receive mercy, yet the beauty of mercy is that it is undeserved. To mix metaphors, our loincloths are just filthy rags (Gen. 3:7; Isa. 64:6). We need our guilt removed. We need our sins covered, and only God can cover the deeds we have done against him. Sin, says Mark Jones, is “the soul’s disease, blinding the mind, hardening the heart, disordering the will, stealing strength, and dampening the affections.”¹ We are helpless before God, and our only hope is God.

Our admission could sound like the words of Peter. In Luke 5, Jesus performs a miracle from a boat, and the fishermen witness an extraordinary catch of fish (Luke 5:6–7). In the presence of such power and wonder, Peter immediately senses his own unworthiness. They have never met anyone like Jesus. The holy, holy, holy God is walking among sinners. Peter says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

Peter’s instinct is like Adam’s: in the presence of such greatness and glory, create some distance. But the sinfulness of Peter is not new information to Jesus. He knows Peter’s condition before getting into the boat! Peter knows he is a sinner, but that doesn’t bring the scene to an end; sinners are the people Jesus came for. Peter wants to put up some distance, but Jesus has already crossed the distance to come to him. Jesus tells Peter words that calm the soul of anxious and terrified sinners: “Do not be afraid” (Luke 5:10). Jesus knows the fear in Peter’s heart, so he addresses it. In the presence of unrivaled glory and holiness, fear seems reasonable. But Peter’s fear isn’t a reason to distance himself, and his sin isn’t a reason to send Jesus away.

Jesus has come to call sinners out of the darkness and into the light. He came—and still comes—for the hiding and the fearful, the ashamed and the sinful. Do not be afraid. The rescuing grace of God has stepped into the boat.

This Christian Life

The promise of the new covenant is a deep cleansing of the heart.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezek. 36:25–26) Do you see the truth of your defilement? There is cleansing in Christ.

Do you understand your hardness of heart? There is a new heart in Christ. The new covenant consists of sinners who are now united to Jesus by grace through faith. They have forsaken the loincloths and tree coverings. They have come out of hiding in order to find a new refuge. The work of Jesus is the burning coal to purify us.

The promise of the new covenant is a deep cleansing of the heart.

Because Christians have not experienced the resurrection of the body and the fullness of God’s sanctifying work, we are still short of glory. Nevertheless, we are free in him from the penalty and power of our transgressions. We can walk in honesty, confessing our sins and rejoicing in the finished work of Christ on our behalf. It would be futile to err in the ways that John wrote about in his first letter: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Or, “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). Let’s not be deceived, and let’s not call God a liar. We have sinned and have sin.

The believer’s answer to the question “Where are you?” is different from the Genesis 3 context. We now answer “Where are you?” by saying, “I am in Christ.” My covering comes not from fig leaves but from the old rugged cross. Our refuge is not among the trees but under the tree. The cross has become the tree of life for sinners. It is there that our atonement was accomplished.

We may feel tempted to say to Jesus, “Depart from me,” but he is saying to us, “Come to me.” As the light of God’s word reveals our transgressions and we sense greater depths of our shame, we may feel overwhelmed. But your sin does not overwhelm Christ. If you say to him, “I am afraid, for I cannot bear my sin,” he will say to you, “Fear not, for I already bore your sin.” Don’t walk—flee—to the refuge of his mercy tree. The very reasons you think he should depart are the very reasons he tells you to come.

This article is adapted from Short of Glory: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of the Fall by Mitchell L. Chase.

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