In my last post I shared some of the ways in which my Father is being gracious to me by exposing my self-righteousness through my speech. I wanted to give another quote from the Sonship lesson I referred to. I realize that most will read this and at first pass brush it off. Let me assure you, when the holiness of God becomes real to you there is very little chance you’ll escape a more robust and profound understanding of your sin and desperate need of a savior. The reason the sins of our tongue don’t shock us into heart-felt repentance is because we have yet to really comprehend the perfect, majestic, and weighty reality of God’s glory. Not only this, His love and grace, though precious and not separate from His other attributes, are grossly misunderstood and therefore diminished significantly.

Even more important is coming to grips with the truth that just as His holiness shows us our sin, our sin is not primarily a breaking of detached and abstract laws, but a violation of a relationship between us and our Father. More can and certainly should be said about how to describe sin without slipping into simplistic one-liner proof texts, but at the end of all arguments, God established His law to reveal to us His nature and character and to show us the kind of relationship He calls us to when He binds Himself to us in covenant. Therefore, the law is never to be observed as frustrating rules that keep us from being happy, but a stipulation of how this marriage is to be lived out between us. On the one hand the law yells out “Obey me in every part,” and at the same time the Spirit of the law whispers to us “You will never perfectly keep me to the degree and quality I deserve.” Why? Because the degree and quality of the law flows from the person of God- His character, His nature, His attributes, and not just from some inanimate tablet on stone. His perfect nature and His holy attributes are the standard and connection to the law. The law reveals Him, teaches us about Him, and calls us to relate to Him with consistency to His character, not ours.

Ok, why the diatribe on the law? Because without understanding that I’m not simply breaking rules, but loving something more than Him, I’ll never have a heart that can take what the law teaches me. Here is the quote:

Jeremiah 2:13 says, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” This is an excellent description of our lives when we misuse our tongues. When we gossip, complain, defend ourselves, boast, and criticize others, we forsake Christ who is the spring of living water and we start to dig our own wells. What drives all these sins is a heart that rejects Christ’s righteousness and seeks to build its own. What drives my tongue is my desire to be right. What drives my boasting and critical spirit is a heart that has turned from God. Jesus’ righteousness is not enough, and so I will use my tongue to get my worth, value, life, and righteousness.

This leads us to ask:

What is your heart looking for when you misuse your tongue? Try to discern what is happening when you sin so that you know more accurately why you’re doing what you’re doing. Don’t brush it off by saying things like “Well, I sin because I’m a sinner…enough said.” That is a cheap way out of the responsibility we have to take every thought captive and it never leads to true change.

In what way are you trying to make yourself right through your speech?

What do you feel when you’re actually sinning with your tongue? Out of control? Proud? Shame? Guilt? Pleasure? Or, like me, do you simply feel that what you say is right and proves your rightness?

What is it about the human heart that desperately needs to be made right? What does this teach us about God and human nature?