I needed to remember what God had promised about my sins. I needed to remember that my holiness does not rest on my frail shoulders, but rather on God’s almighty resolve, from eternity past forever into the future, to make me blameless before him (Colossians 1:22).

I didn’t know holiness would be so hard-won.

As with many new believers, I enjoyed sudden victory over some of the sins that had marked my unbelieving life. I flew on eagles’ wings. I leapt from one degree of glory to another.

But then sanctification slowed. The eagles’ wings faltered, leaping turned into walking, and some sins became besetting. I prayed for more holiness, more faith, more love, but often, God seemed to answer by illuminating new corners of darkness in the cavern of my flesh. I began to resonate with John Newton in his hymn “I Asked the Lord”:

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace,
Might more of his salvation know,
And seek more earnestly his face. . . .

Instead of this, he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart,
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

In moments like those, I needed to remember what God had promised about my sins. I needed to remember that my holiness does not rest on my frail shoulders, but rather on God’s almighty resolve, from eternity past forever into the future, to make me blameless before him (Colossians 1:22).

If you have tasted God’s grace in Christ, and long to enjoy more of him, but carry the awful weight of sin, know this: God will conquer all your sins.

Book of the Slain Lamb

Before the foundation of the world, God planned to conquer all our sins.

God was under no illusions about our loveliness. He saw the worst about us — even those parts of us that we are yet to discover. He saw every wicked thought that would run through our minds, every distorted desire that would pulse in our hearts, and every twisted deed that would pass from our hands, and still he said, “You will be holy and blameless before me” (Ephesians 1:4).

God took up his pen and wrote our names in a book: “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). The persons of the Trinity agreed that the Son of God would become a slaughtered Lamb to save us.

The darkness you discover inside yourself cannot deter God’s love for you in Christ. His love is an everlasting love, a love that has been burning from the fires of eternity past — a love that has seen you, known you, and saved you still. We may be shocked, even dismayed, by the layers of sin we still find in our flesh, but God is not. Breathe in, and say with J.I. Packer,

There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself. (Knowing God, 42)

Our sins were God’s enemies before they were ours, and he will win the warfare he’s begun.

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