More Than: Our Sins

by Daniel Burton

One of my favorite questions to ask people is “What does God see when He looks at you?” I love this question for a couple of reasons. First, it is very revealing as to what a person thinks of God. Do they say the collection of their sins or something deeper, something more. Many times I have asked this and people have listed off the list of their struggles and sins but with the caveat that they are trying their best. This is the other revealing part. The question shows what we think of ourselves. To be fair, I struggle with the same thing. The question “What does God see when He looks at me?” is a difficult question. My brain knows the correct answer, but I struggle with moving that information to my heart. With all of this struggle and information bouncing around the mind, the original question gets lost. What does God actually think of me when He sees me?

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

– Romans 5:6-8

Our fear rests in knowing full well what we have done. We can try and justify our lives as good enough to have earned the blessing of God by getting defensive and zeroing in on our successes that we completely ignore our flaws, which have grown at a tremendous rate. Or we do the opposite and focus solely on our sins and paint the picture that God is merely trying to rid the world of sin and that God only sees our sin. Both of these are far from the truth.

More Than Hidden Sins

Romans makes it completely clear that we are the ungodly. We are the sinners, the unrighteous, and the undeserving. Those things that we see in ourselves that we wish were not there, God sees them. He sees every single desire, every single temptation, and every single dark corner of our heart that we have sought to keep hidden because God is omniscient. The omniscience of God can be terrifying, though. If God knows everything, then there is simply no place where we can hide. There is no remote location physically, emotionally or spiritually that God cannot reach us. This, while initially terrifying, is nothing short of a blessing.

The deepest darkness of our heart is not hidden from God. It is why he came to save us. Click To Tweet

We fear not being able to hide because we don’t want God to see what we have done. But this misses the point of how God sees us. We are not merely a collection of sins and a stream of disappointment. We are more than our sins. The deepest darkness of our heart is not hidden from God. It is why he came to save us. God was not content to dish out the punishment for our sins but, instead chose redeem us as his dearly beloved creation. We are not disappointments for our sins but worthy of being redeemed and saved for no other reason than the love of God. Furthermore, we do not need to fear that God might find our sins out, because he already knows them and loves us all the same.

The Response To God’s Grace

God sees us as much more than a collection of sins and struggles. We are more than a bundle of insecurities and flaws, but the creation of God who God wants to save. When confronted with the reality of God’s grace, our sins are brought into clear view. Yet, our sins are weights that hold us back in our pursuit of God and hinder our relationship with Him. We can only go so far in our pursuit of God while clinging to our sins. By the grace of God, we have been offered an opportunity to shuck the sin from our lives and run towards God. It is not a sinless life that leads to the grace of God, but the grace of God leads us to a sinless life.

We respond to the problem of sin by pursuing God even more wherever he leads us. Click To Tweet

We respond to the problem of sin by pursuing God even more wherever he leads us. Trying to not sin misses the point of grace and our relationship with God. In the pursuit of our relationship with God, we are never intended to go alone. Even while pursuing grace and purging the sin from our lives in the process, we do not have to go alone. “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16, NIV) By the grace of God, we go together. We stand together. We borrow strength and uphold one another in our relationship with God.