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.

Thus we find ourselves surprised by our sin. When a moment of anger or stress unleashes unkind words and vicious thoughts, we are startled that such vileness could apparently pop out from nowhere. The same is true of our astonishment at the fall of our evangelical leaders. Surely, we feel, they must only be a few bad apples in an otherwise good barrel. So we isolate and minimise our sinfulness, offering only shallow repentance for those times we have not been quite as good as we think we are.

The clearest indicator of a pharisaical blindness to the depth of sin, though, is the sense that sin is but a behavioural imperfection we can sort with a little more willpower. Sinners, in other words, can solve their own problem. Scripture can be treated as a guidebook for what Paul calls “the flesh” to improve itself, scoured not primarily for a Saviour, but for life lessons. Preaching may speak of Jesus, but its main purpose will be to drill people in behaviour. In practice, these are often subtle misemphases to detect, but they convey a distinct atmosphere of pride.

The other main barometer of a pharisaical view of the heart is a prioritising of outward performance over inward reality, and camouflage over repentance. What that performance or camouflage looks like will vary: for some, it is morality; for others, Biblical knowledge; for still others, having the right emotions or experience. The new birth can then be treated as nothing more than a moral step up, a mental realisation, or a sentimental moment. The emphasis is on the externals, and that is where the effort goes.

Preachers such as John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards saw that the moral reform championed by others as an ultimate solution to our woes is insufficient, and they saw it because of their radical view of the human problem. For them, belief in our natural helplessness was not the gloomy killer of Christian joy, but the gateway to it. They knew from their own experience that it is only when we realise that we cannot rescue ourselves that we will look outside ourselves for hope. Only then will we rest on Christ alone instead of self and find there a security that no works can bring. This, after all, is the testimony of the redeemed in Scripture: those who are forgiven little, love little; those who are forgiven much, love much (Luke 7v47).