Help comes in the gift of God's Word

t’s only in the mirror of God’s Word that you see yourself accurately, and only in his grace that you find help for what you see.

I saw it again and again in counseling. Maybe it was a husband and wife, an angry teenager, a single person who had lost her way, or a pastor who had gotten himself into trouble. For all of the vast differences in the situations and struggles, they shared a common theme. All of these people thought they knew themselves, but they didn’t. They all thought that they saw themselves with accuracy, but they didn’t. They all wanted me to agree with the assessments they had made of themselves, but I couldn’t. They all suffered from the same disease, but they denied it. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was experiencing firsthand a universal human condition that the Bible talks about. It’s called spiritual blindness.

Sin blinds, and because it does, the sin inside me keeps me from seeing me with clarity. Sin is self-excusing and self-aggrandizing. Sin is self-righteous and other-blaming. Sin is self-atoning; it easily rationalizes away my wrongs. Sin allows me to feel all right about what God says is very wrong. The personal sight system that God wired into every human being has been terribly broken by sin. We just do not know ourselves well, and we just don’t see ourselves with the clarity necessary to assess who we are and how well we are doing. We all suffer from spiritual blindness. But that is not all. We all also suffer from the fact that we live most of the time blind to our blindness. We don’t see ourselves with clarity, but we think we do, and we don’t know ourselves with accuracy, but we are convinced we do. This is why we all tend to be offended when someone points out a sin, weakness, or failure. At the moment when we hear such an assessment, we struggle with the fact that what that person has said about us is so fundamentally different from the view of ourselves that we have been carrying around.

So we all need help. It comes to us in the gift of God’s Word. Empowered by the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit, it is the universe’s most accurate mirror. Stand in front of it and you will see yourself as you really are. The diagnostic accuracy of the Bible is perfect. And because its diagnosis of your true condition, your true need, is always accurate, the Word of God is able to offer the only reliable cure for your condition. An effective cure is always attached to an accurate diagnosis. And here’s the good news. You don’t need to be afraid of all the dark things you don’t see in yourself but which Scripture reveals about you, because all of those dark things have been covered by and defeated by the powerful grace that is yours in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
 

For further study and encouragement: Hebrews 3:12-13

This week's free devotional is  from New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp, available at OMF Lit Bookshops and shop.omflit.com for P550. 

Mornings can be tough. Sometimes, a hearty breakfast and a strong cup of coffee just aren’t enough. Offering more than a rush of caffeine, best-selling author Paul David Tripp wants to energize you with the most potent encouragement imaginable: the Gospel.

Forget “behavior modification” or feel-good aphorisms. Tripp knows that what we really need is an encounter with the living God. Then we’ll be prepared to trust in God’s goodness, rely on his grace, and live for his glory each and every day.

New Morning Mercies is a devotional book with 365 meditations on gospel truths originally expressed in Paul David Tripp’s Twitter posts. Each day’s reading opens with Tripp’s gospel tweets and then a meditation that expands on it.