The Human Stain

As I go through life, doing my best to live as Christ wants me to live, it's my overthinking nature to subconsciously try to keep track of the ways in which I fail every day. The keyword is "try," because I quickly lose count. I've gotten better at not being too hard on myself for all of my wrongs and failures, but I often still think about them.

Apart from the quantity of my mistakes, I suppose I've gotten lost in it because I've lacked perspective on what constitutes sin. Growing up I'd assumed that it was limited to any time I did something bad. I get the feeling a lot of people have that misunderstanding. But Jesus made it clear that it's much more complicated than that. It's not limited to actions. Therefore, even a hypothetical person who never acts on sinful impulses is still a sinner.

It doesn't even stop even with thoughts and inclinations, though. I think that biblically, we exist in a state of total depravity. We are born into sin, and it dogs our every step in life. This is our sin nature, from which there is no escape in this world.

These thoughts remind me of a philosophy to which I was consciously exposed several years ago, but in fact has been ingrained subconsciously for the extent of my memory. That philosophy is that human beings are incapable of doing anything without selfish motives, and so everything we do is a means to some egocentric end. Ipso facto, we are sinful, regardless of all else.

This way of thinking aligns with the doctrine of total depravity. It's also why God sees even our good deeds as filthy rags; they aren't truly done for His glory, but for our selfish gain, no matter how badly we might wish it were otherwise. In that light, everything seems pretty hopeless, and it's been one of the hardest concepts for me personally to grasp.

But I think it's through the recognition of that hopelessness that our hearts seek a Savior. On our own, we can't live life for God's glory as we're meant to, because we are so selfish, and that's because we're sinful by nature. It's virtually impossible for us to glorify God. But through our Savior, Jesus Christ, the impossible is made possible, and so His blood sacrifice provides the means to live lives that can. In short, what sin complicated, He's made simple for us.

That's why followers of Christ aren't condemned for sin. Our efforts, even in failure, are lived out of the underlying desire of Christ within us, which is to do God's will. Even when there is an outright sin in action, we're still covered by His grace, because the misdeed is only a lost battle in a mortal war against the sinful nature. We are forgiven.

Just to be clear, I'm aware that that's by no means a justification to continue doing wrong. My point here is that we're shown not leniency, but grace.

All this confirms to me that without Christ, more encompassing than just any wrongdoing, our very existence itself is sinful. However, with Him, and through our faith in Him, our lives are purified to bring glory to God. Through this, our purpose in life is fulfilled.