Thankful for My Sin? No, But...

I am beginning to see the full extent of my depravity.

I suck. I am not just being self-deprecating. Depravity is the spiritual way of saying that everything about me is utterly and disgustingly affected by my sin. Thankfully, God in His mercy doesn't actually allow me to "see the full extent", but He is answering my prayer.

What am I talking about?

Samuel Rutherford said, "You will not get to steal quietly into heaven, into Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses to be Christ's carved work that he marks out for us and that with crosses he portraits us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut - Lord carve - Lord wound - Lord do anything that may perfect thy Father's image in us and make us ready for glory.

It is the Lord's kindness that he will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knows how needful winnowing is to us and what dross we have before we enter the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven that our knots, lumps of pride, self-love, idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may stoop low and creep through into that narrow entry.

O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman (farmer) - he purposes a crop."


I have been praying this same prayer.

I really want to please Christ and love my wife...love others. God has been exposing my sin. In addition, I've asked Him to continually keep Ebe and I in a place of utter dependence on Him. Being at Christ's side is where I want us to be, but I must be insane!! He is showing me my "flesh" and it is making me see how much I need Him. It forces me to Him. It forces me to seek whether it is really true that He forgives me, unconditionally loves me, and has clothed me with His righteousness. I must know whether His righteousness really is the only garment the Father sees me wearing (Genesis 3:21 & 15, Romans 5:1 & 15-17) and so always accepts me as His child.

The Lord's carving and cutting and wounding to remove the knots, lumps of pride, self-love, idol-love, and world-love, is what I am experiencing.

I see it most in how miserable a husband I am. Ebe will tell you that she's not a good wife either, but that is my point. I see over and over and over and over again how real and ever-present my sin is by how it affects my sweet wife. Yesterday and this morning alone I have lost count of the tally marks I have acquired. Not that she is keeping count, but it's like as soon as I am forgiven of the last 20 sins I committed against her, I commit the next before the "I forgive you" has left her mouth. Maybe you don't get what I mean. Maybe you don't sin the way I do, but each tally is like another kick while I'm down...a kick I gave myself.

Then you know what I do??...I start feeling sorry for myself or angry because I can't hide how horrible I am. The best is when some sort of inbred mixture of both rises up within me and comes barreling out in my word and deed, making it all the worse.

So what in the hell am thankful for?!

I am truly beginning to see the extent of my depravity and it is making me hate it!

I need to start hating my sin more than I love myself. I need to start loving God more than what being selfish (the root of all sin) seems to get me.

So I'm gonna start buckling down and take care of this!!...You with me??!!

Yeah right.

The Indicative (what is objectively true right now):

Romans 6:1-5
6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

The Imperative (what is absolutely necessary or required):

Romans 6:12-14
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

The Good News:

Romans 7:21-25
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

To Summarize:

Most of all the sad ruin into which man's first rebellion plunged us compels us to turn our eyes upwards, not only that in our desperate need we may ask for what we want, but also that in fear we may learn humility. Because man is so full of misery and ever since the fall has exhibited such a catalogue of blatant sin, everyone who is stung by the awareness of his own unhappiness gains at least some knowledge of God. So our feelings of ignorance, vanity, need, weakness and general depravity remind us that in the Lord, and no one else, can be found the true light of wisdom, solid virtue and over-flowing goodness. Our evil ways make us think of all the good things of God. We can never really seek him in earnest until we begin to despair of ourselves. Don't we all rely on our own strength when we are not aware of our real nature and are quite content with our own gifts, ignoring our misery? When we do come to ourselves, we are spurred on to seek God and are led by his hand to find him.

-John Calvin, Chapter 1 of his work, The Institutes of Christian Religion

"Needs are my best riches for I have these supplied by Christ. I find that needs qualify me for Christ." -Samuel Rutherford


Here's to the Lord cutting, carving, wounding and doing anything that may perfect His Father's image in us to make us ready for glory and the coming to ourselves that we may be spurred on to seek God...BEING LED BY HIS HAND TO FIND HIM!!...

So this is what I am thankful for.