JUSTIFYING GOD . . . .

"HOWEVER, THOU ART JUST IN ALL THAT HAS COME UPON US; FOR THOU HAST DEALT FAITHFULLY, BUT WE HAVE ACTED WICKED."

THIS PRAYER FROM NEHEMIAH is ever the nature of true confession of sin, true brokenness. It is the confession that my sin is not just a mistake, a slip, a something that is really foreign to my heart ("not really like me to have such thoughts or do such things!"). It is something which reveals the real "I"... something that shows me to be the proud, rotten, unclean thing God says I am... and that it really IS like me to have such thoughts and do such things.

DAVID CONFESSED HIS SIN, when he prayed, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done evil in Thy sight... THAT THOU MIGHTEST BE JUSTIFIED WHEN THOU SPEAKEST, AND BE CLEAR WHEN THOU JUDGEST." Psalms 51:).

Let us not fear, then to make such a confession where God convicts us that we must... thinking that it will, "Let JESUS down." Rather the reverse is true, for out of confessions God gets the glory... for we declare Him to be right. This brings us to a place where we give up trying to make our incorrigible selves holy... and where we take JESUS to be our holiness... and His life to be our life.

"FOR I KNOW THAT NOTHING GOOD DWELLS IN ME, THAT IS , IN MY FLESH... FOR THE WISHING IS PRESENT IN ME, BUT THE DOING OF THE GOOD IS NOT." (Romans 7:18).

PEACE AND CLEANSING . . . .

THE PUBLICAN DID SOMETHING MORE than justify God. He pointed to the sacrifice on the altar and found peace with God and cleansing from sin as he did so. That is said in the words, "GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER." In the Greek the words mean literally, "God be Propitiated to me, the sinner." The only way the Jews knew that God could be propitiated was by a sacrifice, and probably, at that very hour, the lamb for daily burny offering was being offered up on the altar in the temple.

WITH US IT IS THE SAME. A person never comes to this position of brokenness except when God shows him the Divine Lamb on Calvary's Cross putting away his sin by the shedding of His Blood. JESUS was the lamb slain for our sins from the foundation of the world. In Him, who bore them in meekness... my sins are finished. As I, in true brokenness, confess them, and put my faith in His Blood... they are cleansed and gone. Peace with God then comes into my heart... fellowship with God is immediately restored... and I walk with Him in white. YES!

THE BLOOD ALSO GIVES US, as never before, a close walk with JESUS... a constant dwelling with Him in the Holy of Holies. As we walk with Him in the light, He will be showing us all the time the beginnings of things which, if allowed to pass, will GRIEVE the Holy Spirit and check the flow of His life in us... things which are the expression of that old proud self... for which God has nothing but judgement. At no point must we protest our innocence of what He shows us. All along we must be willing to give our sin to Him... for cleasing. "You are right, Lord... that just shows what I am." This must be our heart... and our answer.

AS WE DO SO, WE WILL FIND HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD is continuously cleansing us from sin, right from its beginning, and JESUS is continuously filling us with His Spirit. This demands that we must be people of a "humble and contrite Spirit," willing to be shown the smallest thing.