SIN. What a mess. Maybe we get far enough down the road to realize our sinful actions. Maybe. And then, on those amazing days of clarity, those days where our hearts are soft and sensitive to the Holy Spirt, we get insight into our sinful hearts. But the insight of the sinful heart is the thing we buck up against the most, isn't it?
Imagine the last fight you got into with someone. Fights about what we have done are common, but what escalates those fights is when our motives (our hearts) are called into question. When we are accused of being selfish, or insensitive, or something worse, we get angry. The fight gets taken up a notch. Why? Because the sin of our heart is being exposed. The true us is being revealed.
God is pleased with us stopping sinful actions, but He desires my heart also. With that knowledge, we have to wrestle with the fact that every sin has at least a twofold nature - the sinful action or inaction plus the sinful heart attitude. That means for real growth in terms of dealing with our sin and obedience, we need to be double confessors, confessing both the outward and the inward.
When scripture says that man judges the outward but God judges the inward, we have a tendency to think, "Oh, God sees the good in me that others don't." That is 100% true, but that also means that God sees the sin that the rest of the world doesn't see. That is why we so need a Savior. We can pull it together well enough to look decent to the world. We can not kill our spouse or not steal from our bosses. But, only God knows that we really want to kill our spouse, and we really want the car that our boss drives. And only a Savior can do something about it.
We would be helpless folks if all Jesus did was live perfectly so that we had an example of what to do and not do. I'm thankful for His example, it inspires me AND shames me. But knowing that my sin is paid for in His death and my good works are secured for me in His resurrection is true hope. It works in me apart from me. It moves my sin from being the cause of my desperation to the avenue in which I find hope.
You have spoken well. May each of us grasp the reality that without Jesus and the change made in us that we will continue to gloss over all our sin. May he keep us humble enough to have a desire to deal with all sin
Lowell
Posted by LOWELL SHERMAN | Posted at 01/09/2007 10:12 PM
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Lowell