glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul Tripp's Wednesday Word Okayness and Holiness “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). First, sin blinds us to our own sin. Often, we will have no idea that what we are doing or have done is sinful. We don’t have much difficulty identifying sin in the lives of others, but we tend to be surprised and offended when someone points out our sin, weakness, or failure. Or, maybe we’re on the fence about if something is actually sinful. The seductive power of temptation is that it distracts us with pleasure so we fail to see its moral danger. Genesis 3 is a case study of this. The fruit of the tree “was a delight to the eyes.” And the crafty serpent put moral skepticism in the mind of Adam and Eve with his lie, “Did God actually say…” Lastly, sin doesn’t always seem so sinful to us after the fact. Even when our consciences are bothered by transgressing God’s moral boundaries, we quiet them with self-atoning arguments. We participate in our own deceit by working to convince ourselves that the wrong we did wasn’t so bad or it could have been a lot worse. Or, we rewrite the narrative of the moment to make ourselves look more righteous than we were, or the victim of someone else’s sin more than our own (see Genesis 3 again). Where does all of this lead? To a very dangerous spiritual posture of “okayness.” Most people have turned their backs on the ultimate moral fact of the universe—the holiness of God—and are content to live with a personal assessment of “okayness.” They carry with them no sense of personal moral brokenness, no fear of God, and no sense of need for the rescue of his grace. They eat the forbidden fruit again and again, and they possess little shame and fear. They believe they can be what they’re supposed to be and do what they’re supposed to do in life without divine rescue, forgiveness, or assistance. Although they are spiritual beings, they have no intentional spirituality in how they live. God is not in their thoughts, and his holiness not only has no shaping influence in their lives, but it doesn’t receive the slightest recognition. I wish I could say this was only true of unsaved people who were not walking in a personal relationship with the Lord. But I must be honest: Paul Tripp thinks he is “okay” more than he should be. And I know I’m not alone. We are in spiritual danger when we can minimize or deny the inexcusable sinfulness of sin. We repudiate the holiness of God when we walk away feeling okay about what God says is unholy. Only when we stand with Isaiah before the Holy One on the throne and are in awe of his holiness will we see our sin for what it is. So, what should you do with this? I suggest you find a place where you can be alone, turn off your screens, cut out all noise and distractions, get down on your knees, and open your heart to the sinfulness of your sin. Do it right now if you’re able. Confess that you minimize sin, learn to live with it, and even make friends with it. Confess that you hide it, deny it, and explain it away. Let the sinfulness of sin grip you—then weep. Weep for your casual response to it, weep because of its blinding power, weep for the hold it has on those around you, but most of all, weep because every time you sin, you betray your holy Lord. In light of the holiness of God, “okay” is not a category of human evaluation that we should be comfortable with. We need seasons where we unplug, shut down, turn off, and sit in the presence of our holy God with eyes open and hearts ready to bow before him and mourn. When you weep your way into the presence of a holy God, you’ve gotten it right. Only then, in the face of the vertical heinousness of your sin, will you cry out for the grace that is your only hope in this life and the one to come. God bless, Paul David Tripp 9:38 a.m. - 2023-06-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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