Is Joy in Christ Possible When All I See Is My Sin?
What God Does with Sin
A lot of Christians struggle with the difficulty of feeling “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). They look at their lives and all they see is their sin. All they can see is maybe a lifelong history of moral failure or of unbelief. Maybe they’re struggling in their marriage or maybe their kids have rebelled and they’re blaming themselves for having failed as a parent. All of this can just cloud the human soul. It darkens our capacity. It paralyzes us spiritually and emotionally to the point that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that God actually loves us. We think that somehow we have exceeded his capacity to forgive. We deceive ourselves to think that our sin is greater than his grace.
I just want people to come to an understanding about what the Scripture says about this. I fear that all that people can see right in front of their face is their sin. That’s what they think about rather than meditating on the glorious truth of Scripture about what God has done with our sin. He has laid it on his Son. He has blotted it out. He has turned his face away from it. He says I will not remember it any longer.
A Dozen Things God Did with Your Sin (And Three Things He'll Never Do)
Sam Storms
Walking through the Bible’s teaching, Sam Storms helps believers find freedom, joy, and peace in knowing what God has done (and will never do) with their sin through the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus.
Until the truth of that is indelibly imprinted on our hearts through the power of the Spirit, people are going to struggle. They’re going to have a hard time believing that they can actually live in peace, that their conscience can feel clean before a holy God.
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that God actually loves us. We think that somehow we have exceeded his capacity to forgive.
That is what my desire is for people to experience. I think the only way that’s going to happen is when we direct our attention to what the word of God says—repeatedly in a variety of ways—about what God has done with our sin. He’s not throwing it back in our face. He’s not hanging it over our heads. He’s not reminding us of it and continually berating us with it. He’s reminding us I’ve dealt with this fully and finally in and through Jesus Christ. Receive that in faith and live in the freeness and fullness of what that means.
Sam Storms is the author of A Dozen Things God Did with Your Sin (And Three Things He’ll Never Do).
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