Our Sin and Misery
God wants you to know the depth of your sin and misery. I recognize this may sound rather strange. Possibly even controversial. But this is one of the key reasons that God revealed the Old Testament law to his people (Romans 3:20; 7:7). The Scriptures help us to recognize the extent of our badness, and the urgency of our bondage (cf. Galatians 3:22). God is serious about exposing sin. As the Heidelberg Catechism, a historical standard of teaching in the Church, asks, “Q: How do you come to know your misery? A: The law of God tells me.”
But why? Supposing this is true, why would a God who is good and loving insist on telling people how sinful they are? As it turns out, God does this because he is good and loving.
Exposing Sin Is Good and Loving
Because God is good, he cares about justice. And he cares about it perfectly. He doesn’t look at crooked lines and claim that they’re straight. He doesn’t use different standards for different people. He’s serious about making sure that criminal activity gets punished, according to the ultimate moral laws that he’s woven into the fabric of the universe. And because God is concerned about restraining evil and promoting good, it makes sense that he’d be exposing sin.
But God’s activity in exposing sin is also an act of personal love. Every human being is carrying around a load of sin, whether they realize it or not. In fact, sin has the effect of blinding people to their own faults, such that they’re unable to perceive the depths of their lostness.
So when God enables you and I to see our sins, we should understand that it’s evidence of God’s loving kindness to us. He’s healing us of our blindness. He’s bringing us to see how helpless we are under our guilt and shame. He’s showing us our desperate need for a Savior. When God’s exposing sin, he isn’t placing a new burden on us, but he’s helping us to feel and understand the real burden that we already have.
Sensing Our Burden
This is reflected masterfully in John Bunyan’s Classic Work, The Pilgrim’s Progress. As Christian is seeking to be free from the burden of his sin, along the way he meets a man, named Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Worldly Wiseman, of course, speaks from the perspective of “worldly wisdom.” And he looks down on Christian with contempt, because Christian feels burdened under his load.
Worldly Wiseman: How camest thou by thy burden at first?
Christian: By reading this book in my hand. [The Word of God, the Bible].
Worldly Wiseman: I thought so; and it is happened unto thee as to other weak men, who meddling with things too high for them, do suddenly fall into thy distractions; which distractions do not only unman men (as thine I perceive has done thee) but they run them upon desperate ventures to obtain they know not what.1
The world believes that Christians are delusional for feeling guilt. They want to label this guilt as a psychological disorder, and to condemn religion as something hurtful and oppressive. They assume that the surest way to happiness is to do everything in their power to suffocate the moral impulse planted by God in our souls. But it isn’t reading the Bible that unmans us, but it is instead this attempt to murder our consciences, and to silence the moaning of our souls. That is what truly dehumanizes us.
God is intent on exposing our sin, not in order to hurt us, but to heal us. He allows us to sense the titanic burden of our wrongness, in order to teach us that it can only ever be alleviated by God Himself. God brings us to the cross, to help us understand how he can maintain both justice and forgiveness. God gave us his Son, who took on human flesh and suffered the penalty for our sin, in our place, to satisfy God’s justice. And through faith in Christ, we are granted forgiveness from our sins, for Christ’s sake, and we receive peace – peace from our guilty consciences, and peace before God.
Why You Should Care About Exposing Sin
We should understand, then, that it is not particularly good or loving for Christians to ignore the seriousness of sin. We need to be honest, that we are personally and morally responsible for it. Though temptations to sin can come from annoying family members, crazy drivers, or from the devil and his minions, we are still personally responsible for all of our sin.
Sin isn’t just a sickness that needs healing. It isn’t just an evil spirit that needs exorcism. It isn’t just brokenness that needs a little repair. Instead, there is a moral and legal aspect to our sin. We are guilty, and the burden can only be lifted by the Lord of heaven and earth. We cannot expect people to grieve over their wrongs, and to rejoice in Christ as their Rescuer, unless they first are given awareness of their burden before God.
So in our evangelism, in discipling youth and children, in the preaching at our Bible-believing churches, and in our own personal devotions, we should be serious about identifying and exposing sin. But we need to do this, not with the carelessness of a kindergartner with scissors, but with the medical precision of a surgeon. Our aim should be to heal rather than harm. Our demeanor should be humble rather than haughty. And our words should bring hope rather than humiliation. Exposing sin is not an end in itself. But the church needs to re-learn to value it as a necessary part of a sinner’s journey to the cross, and then onward to the crown.
1 Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. London: Penguin Books, 2008, pg. 22.
