HOW SERIOUS IS SIN
Every week for the past several years, I have met with one or two close Christian guy friends to confess sin and to pray. We have a list of about fifteen sin categories that we grill one another in: lust, anxiety, and deceitfulness, just to name a few. It is an excellent and important spiritual discipline that I am happy I got into the habit of, and I have seen God use those times in dramatic ways, whether it be prayers answered, habitual sins battled against, or just the rarity of people truly being honest about themselves before others.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if my approach to the whole thing is off. There are days I feel so dirty at the end of reciting a whole week’s worth of sins in ten minutes, when I wonder what God could possibly do with me. And there are days I tick off sins as though I were sharing a grocery list or a top ten favorite songs countdown, recounting them in an efficient, organized, and dispassionate manner.
How serious is sin? Should we not confess it with the gravity it deserves, each act a defiant betrayal of the lordship of God over our lives? And should we not emerge from such confessions, and the ensuing prayers for mercy and forgiveness and strength, with a sense of a heavy burden removed, a deep stain cleansed, a cherished bond once broken and now restored?
I must say I do not often approach our accountability times with this kind of emotion and life. I usually do not take my sin as seriously as it ought to be taken, nor God’s grace. And even as I seek to take this all more seriously, may I do it not out of a spirit of perfectionism, out of a need to “do it right,” but for what it is: grieving where I’ve displeased my Master, delighting that in Jesus there is forgiveness of sin. May I learn to take sin seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate grace); to take grace seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate sin).
Every week for the past several years, I have met with one or two close Christian guy friends to confess sin and to pray. We have a list of about fifteen sin categories that we grill one another in: lust, anxiety, and deceitfulness, just to name a few. It is an excellent and important spiritual discipline that I am happy I got into the habit of, and I have seen God use those times in dramatic ways, whether it be prayers answered, habitual sins battled against, or just the rarity of people truly being honest about themselves before others.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if my approach to the whole thing is off. There are days I feel so dirty at the end of reciting a whole week’s worth of sins in ten minutes, when I wonder what God could possibly do with me. And there are days I tick off sins as though I were sharing a grocery list or a top ten favorite songs countdown, recounting them in an efficient, organized, and dispassionate manner.
How serious is sin? Should we not confess it with the gravity it deserves, each act a defiant betrayal of the lordship of God over our lives? And should we not emerge from such confessions, and the ensuing prayers for mercy and forgiveness and strength, with a sense of a heavy burden removed, a deep stain cleansed, a cherished bond once broken and now restored?
I must say I do not often approach our accountability times with this kind of emotion and life. I usually do not take my sin as seriously as it ought to be taken, nor God’s grace. And even as I seek to take this all more seriously, may I do it not out of a spirit of perfectionism, out of a need to “do it right,” but for what it is: grieving where I’ve displeased my Master, delighting that in Jesus there is forgiveness of sin. May I learn to take sin seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate grace); to take grace seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate sin).
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