As we live with God in communion, his holy nature begins to identify ways that we displease him. We act in certain ways, think certain thoughts, or desire certain things that are offensive to our heavenly Indweller. In response, he does the work of conviction. God identifies something he wants us to confess to him so that we can keep enjoying the joy of communion. Sometimes this occurs through his Spirit’s whispered displeasure, and calls to confess. Sometimes this occurs through the sheer contrast between God and ourselves, when we encounter him. Either way, this is conviction.
One of the strange experiences that Christians have to understand and get used to is that the more you commune with God, the more painfully aware you become of your sin. It is as if the clearer the light becomes, the more we notice even the smaller specks of dirt. The closer you draw to God, the more his holiness highlights the contrast between you and him. A paradoxical phenomenon occurs in the Bible, and in Christian experience: the more sinful you are, the less sinful you think you are; the less sinful you are, the more sinful you think you are. Consider Paul calling himself the chief of sinners. Consider Peter, who falls down in the boat and says to Jesus, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Consider Isaiah, who saw the thrice-holy God and called himself ruined and a man of unclean lips. And consider the hardened sinner, who justifies himself.
When God convicts us, he does not convict us of all sin in our lives. To do so would utterly crush and discourage us. We are only faintly aware of how many ways we offend God, and it is through the complete work of Christ that he dwells with us and we remain acceptable to him. But since he is committed to deepening the communion we have with him, he puts his finger on a particular area of sin that needs to be dealt with. Also, our incremental growth exposes us to more of his glory and more of our shortcomings. This conviction does not identify the only sin in our lives, but the sin or sins God wants us to become aware of and confess at that time. Given our growth and relative level of maturity, God chooses to convict us of certain sins.
After all, we put up with crying for food in our one-year-old children, but we would not accept it in our eleven-year-olds. We put up with some immature desires in our four-year-olds, that we do not tolerate in our seventeeen-year-olds. As our children grow, we expect them to put away certain ways, and grow up. So it is with living with God. As we commune with him, he makes us aware of something which is no longer tolerable in our progressive sanctification.
When God’s Word properly informs our conscience, the Holy Spirit will use this to bring upon us a sense of disturbed communion, failure, omission, or other shortcoming. What we do next will determine of communion grows or slows.
Here the postures come into play again. We either embrace the cross-like posture of humble repentance, or we resist God’s loves and substitute our own. At the point of conviction, we either allow God to show us our inordinate loves, so as to deny them, flee from them, abstain from them, and see them as he does, or we assert our independence again, claim that we have the knowledge of good and evil, and declare our self-worship to be good and justified.
If we wish the cycle of communion to continue, we must embrace confession and consecration.
About David de Bruyn
David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.
