“When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8).

This Lenten season we have been focusing on the heart, which we define biblically as “the ‘basket’ term for our mind, our will, our emotions, and our conscience.” Week One we talked about God’s heart. Last week we talked about our hearts, and how they cannot initiate any good thing but only respond to God’s love. During the remainder of these Lenten devotionals, we are going to identify the pathway by which our hearts respond and therefore change from rebellious to renewed.

The first step on the pathway is recognition.

Recognition means that we see our sin the way God sees our sin. No other viewpoint matters—not our own, not the other party’s viewpoint, not any onlooker’s viewpoint. All those are subjective viewpoints, and often uninformed. Only God’s viewpoint is totally objective and totally informed, as He is the only standard of true righteousness.

We often want to make excuses or rationalize our sin. We jokingly say, “The devil made me do it.” But seriously, when we sin, our sinful nature tries to make excuses for our actions without recognizing that it is really our sinful nature that is the culprit. When Peter got to know Jesus as the righteous God, he then recognized the extent of his own unrighteousness and proclaimed, “I am a sinful man.” The tax collector said “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Notice he did not say, I am sorry for the sinful things I have done; instead, he recognized that he himself was sinful and asked the only one who could offer the only thing that would deliver him: Mercy.

When David committed adultery with Bathsheba, he could have blamed her for taking a bath on the roof where he could see her. He could have rationalized that as the king, he could/should have anything he wanted. When he had Uriah killed, he could have said he was going to die anyway since they were at war. In fact, it was not until David was confronted by the Nathan who used a story to help David to understand the extent of his sin that David said, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 12:11).

Then, David wrote in Psalm 51:3-4, “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight….”

Don’t we have similar tendencies? When we are angry, we blame the person who provoked us. When we exhibit greed and gluttony, we blame our circumstances. On a good day, we will tell the person to whom we were rude how sorry we are, but we might just go as far as to say, “I’m sorry you were offended.” How is that an admission of guilt? So, it is their fault we responded unkindly? Perhaps we blame our inappropriate conduct on the fact that we were under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but whose fault was that? It all comes back to the fact that “I am a sinful man.”

This goes against so much popular psychology where the goal is to protect our self-esteem. Popular psychology would have us to affirm ourselves, even our sinful selves, rather than recognizing the real root of the problem. How can this bring healing? When we do not confront the real problem, how can we ever progress along the path to healing and renewing our hearts?

Our sin separates us from God, but the good news is that the Gospel brings us back into relationship. The good news is that our sinful nature can be covered by the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we believe. Although Peter did not feel worthy to be in God’s presence, notice in our key scripture where he positioned himself—at Jesus’ knees. That is where we also belong.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)

In Christ,

Judy