When You Realize You’re the Sinner
By Jessica Brodie
We’re all sinners—and we know this. But sometimes, some of us think maybe we’re pretty good people, that we’ve always been pretty good people and always done right by God. We’ve always stayed on his good path .. and maybe deep down a kernel of pride starts to grow. Maybe deep down we think we’re “safe” and that we always have been safe.
That was me. My identity growing up was “good girl.” I didn’t cuss, and I followed the rules. I did well in school, and I focused on the future and not the pleasures of today. Teachers liked me, and more than once I was accused by other kids, with scathing side-eye wrath, of being “a goody two-shoes.”
Conveniently, as I looked back at my youth from today’s vantage point, I forgot about the other ways I went astray … the ways I experimented with boundaries or crossed the line in my teenage and young adult years. The ways my selfishness and arrogance and pride and vanity became far more important than loving others. The doubts and questions I had about the Lord, doubts that led to lukewarm love and a so-called openminded pursuit of other paths to God and God’s Kingdom.
I got back on track so many years ago that it’s been easy to forget about those years—so easy that when I would read certain parables, I’d miss the point entirely.
I was blind to the truth.
The lost sheep from Luke 15. The one the shepherd left the ninety-nine others to chase after, doing whatever it took to bring him back to the fold.
My friends, I confess I would read that scripture and never, ever, ever see what God had been wanting me to see—a truth I’ve just now, in this very season, realized.
I was that lost sheep. Me! On the surface I looked upstanding and good, but I wasn’t. Jesus, my Great Shepherd, pursued me. He chased after me. He waited patiently, sometimes insistently, closing some doors and opening others, doing what he could to bring people or jobs or circumstances alongside me, all of these things—just to lead me back.
Back to him.
Back to the Kingdom.
And I never saw it … until now.
Now I cannot unsee it.
I thought I was “good.” Respectable. Honest. Decent.
But now, with open eyes, with my Jesus glasses on, I see the truth: I wasn’t good at all. I see all the sin so clearly, and it breaks my heart to realize all the pride that built a wall between me and my precious Lord. All the evil that threatened to consume me. Evil in disguise.
I’m that sinner, that tax collector, who Jesus invited to the table. I’m the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son.
I’m the one the heavenly choirs rejoice over because I was lost, and now I’m found.
Without him, I’m still lost.
But oh, thank God Almighty, I do have him. And because of that truth, I have salvation, a home in God’s kingdom forever and ever, a place in God’s family.
All because of God’s grace.
God sees our true hearts. We humans, we look around at other people, and we often judge and categorize without thinking. We assume someone is on the “wrong track” or “evil” because of what we see of their behavior, what they profess as their beliefs, maybe their theology. We look at those who seem “good” and “righteous,” maybe even ourselves, and think everything is just fine.
It’s hard to tell who’s lost. Even ourselves.
But without him, we’re all lost. Every single one of us.
Jesus said in Matthew 7:3-5, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (NIV).
I was lost.
I was that wandering sheep.
And now I’m found. Thanks be to God!
Will you pray with me? Father God, thank you for pursuing me. Thank you for chasing me down, doing whatever it took to find me and bring me back into your fold. Thank you for loving me so much you willingly died on a cross to pay my sin debt—and then you kept going! You opened my eyes and fought for me. You never gave up, and now I need to do the same. Help me pursue others and love them in your name even as I remember what you did for me. I love you, Lord, with all I am. Amen.
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