Sin concealed and revealed

It seems a shame that the lectionary divides 2 Chronicles 34 in half; had the whole chapter been read this morning a powerful theme would have shown through all the readings, namely, the way in which the Law of God unveils sin.

Psalm 32 sets the overall context: it is a superlatively good thing, a blessed state, to be one who acknowledges and confess sin, and is consequently in God's grace cleansed of sin. To hide sin, from the world and from oneself, is deathly. There is a psychological aspect to this, of course, but the imagery of the Psalm goes further, into the physical and I think the existential. Not to acknowledge sin is to be in a fundamentally false position, towards God and towards ourselves. This is anguish.

Psalm 36, on the other hand, notes that the wicked simply have no dread of God. In apparent tension with Psalm 32, the sin-denying life of the wicked seems to be one of psychological and existential peace - until, that is, God himself brings them into judgement.

There is a sense in which 2 Chronicles 34 explains this tension. Under Josiah, the people of Judah were, for once, behaving reasonably well. The idols were destroyed, the temple was repaired. There was reason to feel good. But when God's Law is discovered, all of that is shown up to be desperately inadequate. In a sense the reading of the Law represents already God prosecuting sin. The righteous requirements of the Law reveal the people of Judah, even in the midst of their great reformation, to be guilty sinners. The only response is anguish and penitence.

Romans 7 really pushes this deeper. The person who genuinely loves God and his Law finds nevertheless that sin continually corrupts even their best endeavours. They are a person divided against themselves - in a deeper sense even than is envisaged in Psalm 32. The believer - and I take that is who we're seeing in this chapter - has accepted the judgement of the Law on their sin, specifically as it has been carried out in Christ, at the cross. Sin has been unmasked by the Law and the Gospel. The believer is made wholly new in Christ and his resurrection. And yet... In experience, they find themselves still entirely old. Day by day they know again just what it is to be sinful, in a way that nobody else can. Because they are really renewed, really made clean, the stain of sin shows out so clearly. The division against themselves which is revealed in the gospel goes deeper even than that revealed in the Law.

But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Because the movement of faith is to continually respond to each new unmasking of sin in my old self by looking to Jesus, in whom that old self really is already dead, and in whom I am already really given new life. Because he has, once for all, rescued us from this body of death, so day by day he can deliver us.

My prayer this morning has been that God will not let me be ignorant of my sin, even if having it unmasked is desperately painful. But my prayer is also that it will be in Jesus, gentle Jesus, and his gospel that the Law will be applied to me, revealed sin put to death and the deep blessing of the forgiven - new life! - breathed into me by his Spirit of Life.