No Big Sin; No Big God Psalm 38:18 (day 9)

 For this lent season, I am doing a forty-day study in the Psalms looking for aspects of the atonement that will end around Easter. My hope is to generate a newfound awe of what Christ did on the cross.

Psalm 38:18

[18] I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.

Although this is a small verse it packs a big understanding, as far as, what does it mean to be mournful over sin. I think a lot of times we don't know the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.  Paul puts like this in 2 Corinthians 7:

2 Corinthians 7:9-10

[9] As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. [10] For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret,

whereas worldly grief produces death.

What’s the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow? Godly sorrow is mournful over this sin against God and worldly sorrow is mournful over the result of sin, or mournful over the consequence of sin. For example, if you sin against your spouse and they get angry and make you sleep on the couch; you may have sorrow because it caused you time on the couch. Being mournful over the sin against God should produce a Godly repentance. Godly repentance is turning to Christ and him crucified and sees that that very sin was placed on Christ in which that produces a holy agony in which leads to a holy repentance.

I think most often we don't understand godly sorrow; we mistake godly sorrow with making ourselves pay for our sin or making ourselves feel bad for the sin committed…this is called self atonement. We cannot pay for our own sin by making ourselves feel bad for the sin, Jesus paid for the sin. Now, we do have to understand how big our sin is, but not to make ourselves feel bad but to produce a holy agony and at the same time we have this holy agony over sin we see how big God is, not how bad we are.  You see, we have to understand how much bigger sin is so we can see how big God's love is, but we can't turn inward when we see the vastness of our sin; we need to go upward to see vastness of what Christ has done on the cross. Don't minimize your sin or you then minimize God.  No big sin; no big God!