Nothing grieves me more than to discover every day that sin is still here. I don’t mean still here in this world; for I expect it to be here until Christ comes to eradicate it. This is, after all, a fallen world, a world under the curse of Adam’s rebellion against God. The Lord said “In the day you eat of it you shall surely die,” and the world of men has been under the curse of that death ever since. Nor do I mean still here in my family and friends; for I know full well that my wife and children, my dearest friends and loved ones, and every member of my church is a sinner living every day as pensioners of God’s grace and mercy. So what, then, do I mean?
I mean still here, deep in the center of my heart and twisted around every fiber of it. It’s this, more than anything else, that grieves me. With Peter I can say, “Lord, you know that I love you;” and yet with Paul I am compelled to say, “wretched man that I am! There is no good in me.”
I don’t really expect deliverance from sin’s presence here. I know His promise that such a deliverance must await either His coming (1Th 4.17) or my death (for the only hope for this “body of death” (Rom 7.24) is the death of this body, Phil 1.21-23). And I know His purpose for leaving sin in me is so that I might never forget what a sinner I am and might ever be amazed at what a Saviour He is (Eph 2.8-9). But neither His promise of future deliverance nor His purpose for sin’s presence annul the grief I feel at how wicked and sinful I am.
It grieves me when I’m tempted by the sins I so much hate. It grieves me when I don’t love Him more whom I swear I love with all my heart. It grieves me sorely when I turn out of the ways of real pleasantness and out of the paths of God’s peace into the ways of sin, shame, and death in search of a fool’s pleasure. It grieves me when I find so little joy in the ways of His Commandments, which is the path of eternal life and everlasting joy. It grieves me when I can focus my thoughts on something trivial for hours without the least sense of weariness and yet can’t bring my thoughts to prayer for two minutes without looking for the “Amen.” It grieves me that I can get so excited by temporal comforts and sometimes am unmoved by spiritual comforts. I can honestly say that nothing is so much a burden and plague to me as my own sin and sinfulness. Nothing grieves me more than to discover every day that sin is still here.
And yet, I’m not without comfort. If sin must be my constant companion in life and if it cannot be eradicated until my death, then my comfort and joy will be found here: that there is forgiveness with God for all my sins and that He’s at work sanctifying me every day. There is a fountain filled with blood from which I may daily draw forgiveness, comfort, peace, and joy; and there is a God who indwells me by His Spirit in order to enable me to die more and more to sin every day and live more and more to righteousness every day. God, my God, in saving me, has committed to bringing me all the way home. He has begun a work of salvation from which He will never cease until I appear before Him in glory, with my sin forever eradicated from my heart and body and with Christ’s righteousness deep in the center of my heart and twisted around every fiber of it forever.
I’m a new creature in Christ and He’s making me new every day. I’m not the sinner I was before He saved me, though I’m a sinner still. And when I get to heaven, I’ll never again be the sinner I was or the sinner I am, but will be perfect in Him, an eternal partaker of His holiness. This, then, is my joy. As long as I carry my self about with me I will sin. But when, on that Day, my self is brought into the full fruition and consummation of what it means to be united by faith to Jesus Christ the Saviour, sin will be no more and therefore my grief will be no more. And in that reality I can and will rejoice–today. I find my hope and joy, not simply in what I am today: a sinner saved by grace, but also–and most gladly–in what I shall be tomorrow: an heir of heaven forever out of the reach of sin. And that means I find my joy, not in what I am in myself, but in what I am in Christ and what He is making me to be in Him. Is this your joy too?
May it be, both today and forever.
Dr. J
