When we are blind to sin

The fact that sinners are naturally lost in their sin and are in need of a new birth has always been one of the most precious heirlooms of the evangelical faith. Evangelicals have historically been those who will share Luther’s self-despair at his own moral inability and who will sing with Newton: “I once was lost, but now am found, / was blind, but now I see.” The same notes have consistently been heard down the centuries at times of reformation and revival, and for good reason.

But simply believing we have such a radical problem and radical need is like trying to hold water in our hands. For one, the very sinfulness of our hearts resists the diagnosis. Then there is the problem of just how scandalous this is to modern sensibilities about self-esteem, self-autonomy, and our ability to improve ourselves. Small wonder evangelicalism is too often known for its superficiality: the gravitational pull of our hearts and our culture strains hard against such an apparently bleak verdict. Who wants to hear that we are dead in sin?

Surely the worldwide majority of self-confessed evangelicals would baulk at the thought of overtly abandoning these truths. We do so in subtler ways. Keeping our statements of faith, we can maintain the look of evangelical integrity, and even convince ourselves. Yet none of us are immune to the ways in which our pride kicks against Jesus’s assessment of our condition. And after years of bathing in a culture of self-regard, it is far easier to see ourselves as mildly and occasionally immoral instead of naturally wretched and helpless.