The idea of mourning and weeping for sin as we saw Ezra do on Sunday morning from Ezra ch 10 may sound strange to us. Yet Ezra understood that peoples’ behaviour had created an offence against God for which the consequences would prove catastrophic.
We see something similar elsewhere in scripture:
David’s great psalm of repentance in Psalm 51 after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba is a deeply humbling confession that summarises what he had done with the words in vs 4 “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight…”.
As we thought on Sunday morning: maybe most of the time we don’t mourn over our sin because we don’t understand how badly we have treated God and what the implications are.
Yet the good news, as Ezra understood only in part, is that we can cast ourselves on His grace! Though we deserve nothing but His wrath the LORD gives us hope in the Saviour He has sent. His coming underlines how important all of this is!
The result is that when we read of sin in the New Testament, we might see the problem, but we are also clearly presented with the solution.
So the apostle Paul writing to Timothy over his pre-conversion persecution of the Lord’s people could write:
1 Tim 1:15 “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”
And the great news continues in vs 16:
“But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.”
Spencer Shaw