From Woe to Go- Isaiah 6

One of my favorite scriptures for understanding what transformation looks like when the believer sees God is Isaiah 6:1-8. These versus give us a perfect picture of the believer’s response when God is seen.  God’s grace took Isaiah from “Woe is me!” to “Here I am!” Isaiah had a four-fold experience–conviction that led to a confession that led to his cleansing that led to his commission.  This is how transformation happens—conviction to confession to cleansing to commission.

The moment Isaiah saw God’s holiness (Isaiah 6:1-4), he was convicted.  He said “Woe is me!  For I am lost…”  As when Peter first met Jesus, and he knew it was the Lord, his first reaction was, “depart from me.  I am filthy.” (Luke 5:8) The glory of God reveals your filth, your uncleanness, while at the same time you see God’s love for you.  In addition, when you see God it puts Him as holy Creator and you as creation.  It puts God where He belongs as Creator and us where we belong as creation. The beautiful thing is that God meets you where you are but doesn’t leave you where you are. Isaiah gives us this picture of a man who was in sin, saw God, and was transformed by the glory of God.  We see in verses 1-4 that Isaiah, a sinner and unclean, was able to see God.  He didn’t have to clean himself up beforehand, he didn’t have to sing the right song, or dance the right dance.  He saw the Lord high and lifted up.

The conviction then led Isaiah to the confession, “I am a man of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5)  We see a right lamentation over sin, as David proclaimed in Psalm 51:16-17.  God doesn’t want a work.  He finds pleasure in a broken and contrite heart, a holy agony over sin.  If you mourn over sin your soul is alive.  Scriptures tell us there is a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:9-12).  Worldly sorrow is mournful over the result of sin.  Godly sorrow is mournful over sin and this is only achieved through the Holy Spirit.  In this godly sorrow you experience the cleansing power of God through the blood of Christ. 

Isaiah 6:7 demonstrates the cleansing in both expiation and propitiation, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”  “Guilt taken away” is expiation; “Your sin atoned for” is propitiation.  Once you embody the forgiveness and redemption of God through the blood of Jesus Christ, it empowers you to the commission, like Isaiah 6:8.  God asked, “Who are we going to send?”  Unlike Moses, who doubted his ability when God commissioned him to His work, Isaiah—without even asking what he was being called to—said, “Here I am!  Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8).

So the cry of “Woe is me” is not shame or condemnation, it is a reverent fear of God that helps you understand how much you need a Savior and how much you need God’s grace.  I also equate “Woe is me” from Isaiah with Romans 7:24-25, “Wretched man that I am.  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Seeing God reveals to you how bad you really are and at the same time it lets you see how good God really is.  It lets you see His grace as you transform into His image and likeness.