Sin and Grief

And I will send you another Advocate, the Comforter.  When He comes, He will convict the world of sin, because they do not believe in Me (Jn. 16, compiled).

One of the first (obvious) movements of grace in our lives is the conviction of sin.  At first, we do not think we are "that bad" as to call ourselves sinners--not that we are perfect, of course, but "sinners," well, we are "trying" to do the right things. 

Hmmm...as C.S. Lewis points out, the good man knows well of both good and evil; the bad man recognizes not much of either.  Scripture points out "The good man falls seven times a day, but the Lord lifts him up."

Peter's first utterance upon recognizing the Presence of the Holy One in his life was the cry, "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!"  and Paul called himself the worst of sinners, for he persecuted the church of Jesus Christ. 

The closer we come to God, the more we see sin in our lives.  With the entrance of the Holy Spirit, our eyes are opened for the first time to the secrets of our own hearts.  Before then, we tend to see the sin of others, but not our own.  But the first office of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of sin.

Conviction is not condemnation; it is just a more truthful way of seeing.  We have no control over the sins of other people---and we truly have no control over our own sins until we begin to see our own hearts.  It is not the outward behavior that needs changing; it is the corruption of a wayward heart.  Jesus said that we cannot pour new wine into old wineskins, for the skins will burst and spill the new wine.  We need new hearts to deal with old behaviors.

I thought I was "pretty good," or at least not as bad as "some people" until I had a vision of a huge 12-foot wall of cracked boulders with a sign on it saying in huge letters:  Your sins are  forgiven you.  Then I knew that "my sins were piled higher than my head," in the words of David, the Psalmist.  And I knew they were beginning to crumble under the annointing of the Holy Spirit, but that tearing down that enormous wall would take a lifetime.

The saint is the one who recognizes the grace of God given to him and mourns/grieves the harm he has done; the sinner is the one who has not yet seen the grief he has caused and is still causing, the one who thinks he is all right.