Sessions Include:

1. Do You Thirst for God?
2. Are You Increasingly Governed by God’s Word?
3. Are You Becoming More Loving?
4. Are You More Sensitive to God’s Presence?
5. Do You Have a Growing Concern for Others
6. Do You Delight in the Bride of Christ?
7. Are Spiritual Disciplines Increasingly Important?
8. Do You Still Grieve Over Sin?
9. Are You Quicker to Forgive?
10. Do You Yearn for Heaven?

I am convinced that the first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin. — J. C. RYLE

IN 1725, the year before he settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, to help his grandfather pastor the church there, a young Jonathan Edwards wrote:

I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness, and the badness of my heart, since my conversion, than ever I had before. It has often appeared to me, that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind; of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time: and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell. …

My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or infinite mountains over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. I go about very often, for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and in my mouth, “Infinite upon infinite. Infinite upon infinite!” When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

Is this normal, healthy Christianity? Or is this overly introspective, unnecessary groveling? I believe that Edwards’ words of grief over his sin not only indicate that he was growing in grace but also that all growing Christians think and feel much as Edwards did. Here’s what I mean.

When to Grieve Is to Grow

The closer you get to Jesus, the more you will hate sin, for nothing is more unlike Christ than sin. Because Jesus hates sin, the more like Him you grow the more you will grow to hate sin. And the more you hate sin, the more you will grieve whenever you realize that you have embraced that which killed your Savior.

Perhaps the world has never seen a man closer to Christ than the apostle Paul in the final years of his life. And yet, having grown into such a universally recognized example of Christlikeness, having been granted visions of the Lord Himself on several occasions (Acts 9:1–6; 18:8–10; 22:17–18), having been given the incomparable privilege of glimpsing the glories of heaven itself (2 Corinthians 12:2–4), Paul wrote in one of his final letters, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). If, as I am sure he did, Paul believed this sincerely, then he could not say it coldly. He meant every word of it with a breast-beating grief over his sin.

I once heard seminary professor John Hannah say, “The closer one comes to Christ, in one sense, the more miserable he becomes,” for that’s when we are most aware of how unlike Christ we are. Those who have Holy Spirit–implanted loves for holy truth, holy things, and the Holy One can’t help but feel miserable when they are reminded of that which is unholy within them. Sometimes the growing Christian sinks under a sense of sin so sorrowfully that he wishes he could tear open his chest, rip out his sin-blackened heart, and fling it as far from himself as possible.

But the fact that there is a struggle with sin, and a sense of grief for sin, is good. Unbelievers have no such struggles or griefs. They may disappoint themselves for not living up to their own standards or the standard of someone they respect, but they do not agonize over being unholy before God, a God who is holy and who calls them to holiness (1 Peter 1:15). As A. W. Pink explained, “It is not the absence of sin but the grieving over it which distinguishes the child of God from empty professors [of faith].”

Are you aware today of sins in your life that you weren’t cognizant of, say, three years ago, even though you were committing those sins back then, as well? As discouraging as the fresh exposure is, and as grievous as it may be to have ever-deeper layers of sin laid bare, there is something positive here: This increased sensitivity to your sin is a mark of growth.

Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (NavPress; Tyndale House Publishers, 2021), vi–3.

Check out our Bible Study on Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health . A bible study on the book of Lamentations as well as some Psalms of Lament.

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