January 10 – LD 2, Day 3: How We Know Our Sins
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Romans 7.
In the last meditation I
said that it is very difficult to know our sins and confess them. We are always
trying to defend our own sinful life and justify ourselves. And if we are sorry
for our sins, it is only because we are caught and suffer sin’s consequences.
We must remember once
again that the Catechism is talking to and instructing believers, people of
God, those who are saved. “Whence knowest thou
thy misery?” the implication is, therefore, that only a child of God
can really know his sins.
In other words, we need
the grace of God in our hearts and the work of the Holy Spirit even in order to
be truly sorry for our sins. We have to learn to pray, even before we confess
our sins, “Lord, give us grace to be sorry for our sins.”
Yes, there is a certain
regret for sin in the world, but the worldly people (and we too, often) take
sins lightly, dismiss them as unimportant, and wave our hands with a gesture of
indifference, “Oh, it was only a little lie.”
The problem is that among
our sins is the sin of pride, and pride keeps us from admitting how wicked we
really are. Pride is such a huge devil in the lives of men that pride even gets
in the way of Biblical theology. Pride is why all forms of Arminianism
are so popular. Arminianism tells man that he can do
something for his salvation. He can choose for Christ. He can let Christ into
his heart. He can pray for Christ to help him.
But these are all efforts
on the part of wicked men to salvage some tattered remains of their pride.
Scripture and the HC won’t let us do that. It insists that if we really want to
know our deliverance in Christ, we must learn that we can do nothing good at
all. True humility is required of us, and true humility comes only through
grace.
But even then, we still
need help. And the help we need to know our sins and misery comes, says our
teacher, through the law of God. James calls the law of God a mirror in which
we see ourselves reflected.
Once again, I must
emphasize that the law is a mirror only for the believer. A wicked man may look
in the mirror of the law and see only a reflection of himself
that looks pretty good to him. He preens in front of the mirror and is rather
proud of himself. Or perhaps he doesn’t want to look in the mirror at all. In
our country, the supreme court has forbidden the ten
commandments to be found in schools, in public buildings or anywhere where
people come. They are afraid that people will find it offensive.
How sad.