"I know worse things about myself..."

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23)
 
When I am accused of wrongdoing, my natural instinct is to verbally defend myself, to give all the reasons the accuser is wrong, and to point out all the way my accuser is even guiltier than I am. The longer I walk with Jesus, however, the more natural (supernatural?) it is becoming to share the mindset of the famous 18th century English evangelist George Whitefield, who, upon receiving a vicious letter accusing him of wrongdoing, wrote this:

I thank you heartily for your letter. As for what you and my other enemies are saying against me, I know worse things about myself than you will ever say about me.

With love in Christ,
George Whitefield

For most of us, our natural tendency when we are accused is to defend and justify ourselves. After all, we are not such bad people, and even if we are, well, so is everyone else! But the gospel of Jesus Christ frees us from the need to justify ourselves. The gospel declares that I am so wretched and sinful that the only way to be forgiven was for the very Son of God to die for me. But it also declares that while I was still a sinner and an enemy of God, Jesus Christ loved me so much that He willingly died for me (Romans 5:8-10). This means that my self-worth is not tied to my performance or to anyone else’s evaluation of me. My value as a person is not a matter of how “good” I am. I am lovable because Christ loved me. I am worth something because God has declared me worthy because of His Son’s life, death, and resurrection.

And so, as pride-swallowing as it is, I can admit my fears, my lusts, my greed, my self-centeredness, my lying, and my pride. I can own up to the reality that I am a deeply flawed person, desperately in need of the daily grace of God. I can lay down the need to justify myself.

Here’s the problem, though. Living with that kind of attitude puts us at the mercy of other people. And other people are not always full of grace, nor do they know how to handle such brutal honesty. And so, our honest confession can put ourselves at risk of judgment, condemnation, and rejection. Entrusting ourselves to God’s justification instead of seeking to justify ourselves may sound nice on paper, but can be painful in practice.

The solution, as I see it, is this: begin with the people of God. Humbly admit your sin and shortcomings to someone you trust, and extend grace towards others who fall short. Believe Paul’s words that “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10), and recognize that “no one” includes everyone in our church. Those of us who know the evil we’ve done, or the evil we are capable of doing, know that there is no sin committed by another person that we are not capable of committing ourselves, were it not for the grace of God. And so, let us trust the gospel of justification found in Jesus Christ by freely admitting our sin and freely showing grace to those who have sinned. In doing so, we will bring glory to Jesus, the only one who deserves to be defended and glorified.