There are mornings I wake up beleaguered by my past sins. It is almost as though my conscience waits until I am too tired to fight it, and then it wages its war against me.
There are mornings I wake up beleaguered by my past sins. It is almost as though my conscience waits until I am too tired to fight it, and then it wages its war against me. Concerning the battle of the ever-accusing conscience, Horatius Bonar says,
“For that which satisfies the holiness of God cannot but satisfy the conscience of the sinner. God, pointing to the altar says, ‘That is enough for me;’ the sinner responds and says, ‘It is enough for me.’”
I am refreshed and awakened by the thought that God looks at Christ’s sacrifice as enough to cover every sin I can remember, and every sin my broken memory has forgotten. I do not have to look at or rehearse my past to prove my sorrow. I only need to take in my view of the blessedness of Jesus’ final words on the altar, “It is finished.” (John 19:30)
The fear of my sins being exposed or my desire to hide the deepest darknesses of my heart can only be assuaged by the great Advocate who pleads my case before the throne of grace. He does not stand before His Father weighing my goodness against my badness. Through Him the scales have been banished forever. He stands before the throne presenting His complete goodness on my behalf. The Father looks at him and his perfect, holy sacrifice and says, “That is enough for me.” This ruins and remakes me all at once. It ruins my inflated view of my ability to keep the law, my ability to be the good friend, wife, daughter, mother, employee. It shows me that death was necessary to make me acceptable. It also remakes me—it releases me. It reminds me that the One who created the Heavens and the Earth procured my acceptance forever. Before God I am and will always be His beloved child. “Christ,” as Martin Luther exclaimed, “is enough for me."
The vastness of this “enough” is astounding. Christ's sacrifice is enough to cover all the sins of all his children for all eternity. Every evil imaginable that His own have committed has been covered by the grace of our Father given in Christ. But this “enough” is also astonishingly personal. To quote Luther again, “Christ is enough for me.” Sometimes it is easier to think of others’ sins as being forgiven instead of looking at all of my wickedness as being “cast into the depths of the sea.” (Micah 7:19)
My prayer is that I would come to know, more and more, the truth of His completed work each day. When I attempt to do the mental gymnastics necessary to present a cleaner version of me to God and others, let me hear, once again, the words of God as He looked on the sacrifice of His Son and say with Him, “It is enough for me.”
