THE REASON WE DON’T FEEL THE WEIGHT OF OUR SIN by Dane C. Ortlund for Core Christianity
What Our Sins Evoke
It is probably impossible to conceive of the horror of hell and of the ferocity of retributive justice and righteous wrath that will sweep over those found on the last day to be out of Christ. Perhaps a word like ferocity here makes it sound as if God’s wrath will be uncontrolled or blown out of proportion. But there is nothing uncontrolled or disproportionate in God.
The reason we feel as if divine wrath can easily be overstated is that we do not feel the true weight of sin. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, reflecting on this, said:
You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.1
In other words, we don’t feel the weight of our sin because of: our sin. If we saw with deeper clarity just how insidious and pervasive and revolting sin is—and, as Lloyd-Jones suggests above, we can see this only as we see the beauty and holiness of God— we would know that human evil calls for an intensity of judgment of divine proportion. Even someone with such a profound sense of the loving heart of Christ as Thomas Goodwin has no trouble likewise asserting that if “his wrath against sin was the fire,” then “all earthly bellows would . . . not have been able to make the furnace hot enough.”2
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And just as we can hardly fathom the divine ferocity awaiting those out of Christ, it is equally true that we can hardly fathom the divine tenderness already resting now on those in Christ. We might feel a little bashful or uncomfortable or even guilty in emphasizing God’s tenderness as intensively as his wrath. But the Bible feels no such discomfort. Consider Romans 5:20: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” The guilt and shame of those in Christ is ever outstripped by his abounding grace. When we feel as if our thoughts, words, and deeds are diminishing God’s grace toward us, those sins and failures are in fact causing it to surge forward all the more.
