Lord, you turned my attention back to myself. You took me up form behind my own back where I had placed myself becuase I did not wish to observe myself, and you set me before my face so that I should see how vile I was, how twisted and filthy, covered in sores and ulcers. And I looked and was appalled, but there was no way of escaping from myself. You thrust me before my own eyes so that I should discover my iniquity and hat it. I had known it, but deceived myself, refused to admit it, and pushed it out of my mind.

I was an unhappy young man, wretched as at the beginning of my adolescence when I prayed you for chastity and said: ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ I was afraid you might hear my prayer quickly, and that you might too rapidly heal me of the disease of lust which I preferred to satisfy rather than suppress [emphasis mine].

—Confessions 8.7.16-17

In vivid language that is hard for our modern ears to hear, Augustine cuts to the chase regarding the deadly consequences of human sin. He is describing the process of his conversion experience and here he points us to a painful but necessary prerequisite. Until we open our eyes and fully confront the deadliness of our sin and how grievous it is to God, we will never really be open to entering into a saving faith in Christ. Why? Because as long as we are convinced that we are not all that bad, then we must perforce believe that we really do not need a Savior. We can do it ourselves. Consequently we spend much of our time trying to gain merit in God’s sight by doing “good deeds,” which we hope will outweigh our bad deeds, or we simply do not make developing our relationship with Christ our top priority. We just don’t see the need to do so.

But Augustine reminds us otherwise. Sin deceives and sin kills. God finds it abhorrent and until it is dealt with adequately, it will keep us separated from God, both in this world and the next. We really do need a Savior because we are incapable on our own of ridding ourselves completely of our sin.

Augustine is not talking here about self-loathing. God does not hate us as persons nor does he tell us to hate ourselves. Rather, Augustine is talking about the sin that has thoroughly infected us and threatens to kill us by keeping us separated from the Source and Author of all life if it is not dealt with adequately.

BTW, did you catch Augustine’s prayer above? While ostensibly humorous, it reminds us of how sin works. Augustine was more content to wallow in his sin than to have God heal him of it. He preferred death to life because death seemed so much more fun. Augustine’s honesty here and elsewhere is one of the reasons why I love reading his confessions and other works.

This is hard stuff to read from Augustine, but it is the necessary first step in helping us see the problem for what it is and falling to our knees and asking God in his mercy to help us (see also my reflection today from the morning Scriptures).

The Good News, of course, is that God has done something about our sin and the separation it causes in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. He invites each one of us into a life-giving and life-saving relationship so that we do not have to worry about living life apart from God anymore.

Have you been given grace to see your sin for what it is? A quick way to tell is to ask yourself how “good” is the Good News of Jesus Christ. When you see sin for what it is, the Good News suddenly becomes more than just something you say in an almost perfunctory manner. Instead, it is analogous to hearing the news that you do not have a terminal disease after your doctor suspected that you might, and that you are going to be just fine after all. It becomes life itself and evokes a sense of immense gratitude, praise, and thanksgiving. Do you have that in you?