As the light of God’s word reveals our transgressions and we sense greater depths of our shame, we may feel overwhelmed. But your sin does not overwhelm Christ. If you say to him, “I am afraid, for I cannot bear my sin,” he will say to you, “Fear not, for I already bore your sin.” Don’t walk—flee—to the refuge of his mercy tree. The very reasons you think he should depart are the very reasons he tells you to come.

Our Spiritual Condition

We cannot fully comprehend the horror of our spiritual condition, and our spiritual condition is the reason why. Our sin prevents us from seeing the scope and depth of our sin. But as the nature of our condition becomes clearer, we might recoil at what we do see. Think of the prophet Isaiah when he had a vision of the Lord. He saw the glorious presence of God, which was hailed by angelic voices. The seraphim cried out,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!
(Isaiah 6:3)

In the presence of glory and holiness, Isaiah had a keen sense of his own sin. “Woe is me!” he declared. “For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa. 6:5). The prophet’s recognition and confession are refreshing. He doesn’t sound like Adam. Isaiah knew God’s holiness, so he had a better understanding of his guilt and desperate condition. The response of the Lord is seen in the action of a seraph, who touched Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isa. 6:7).

Loincloths and tree coverings cannot atone for sin. We need confession and forgiveness. We offer the former, and God provides the latter. A true sense of sin confronts us with our unworthiness to receive mercy, yet the beauty of mercy is that it is undeserved. To mix metaphors, our loincloths are just filthy rags (Gen. 3:7; Isa. 64:6). We need our guilt removed. We need our sins covered, and only God can cover the deeds we have done against him. Sin, says Mark Jones, is “the soul’s disease, blinding the mind, hardening the heart, disordering the will, stealing strength, and dampening the affections.”¹ We are helpless before God, and our only hope is God.

Our admission could sound like the words of Peter. In Luke 5, Jesus performs a miracle from a boat, and the fishermen witness an extraordinary catch of fish (Luke 5:6–7). In the presence of such power and wonder, Peter immediately senses his own unworthiness. They have never met anyone like Jesus. The holy, holy, holy God is walking among sinners. Peter says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).

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