I think that sometimes our greatest shame over coming to God with our sin stems not primarily from the sin itself, though that is part of it, but from the fact that this the hundred thousandth time that we've come to God with the same sin. It can feel like we're hamsters on a wheel that never stops spinning. That shame is very real. It can be discouraging and we almost want to give up coming, we're that embarrassed to ask God for forgiveness again for that old sin again. It starts to feel like God must think what we think, that this is the same old, weary story that God can't possibly want to hear again or forgive again or cleanse again. I had one of those moments this week, and my heart just sunk. I thought "Why do I keep on bringing the same old story again and again? Will things ever change?" And it struck me that I had forgotten that though we have an old story, there is an older story still.
Do you remember Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia? I found myself remembering him this week. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the evil witch demands a sacrifice be made for Edmund's treachery. She's saying that Edmund must die. And Aslan dies on the Stone Table in Edmund's place. Then a great thing happens: Aslan rises from the dead! This is what he says:
"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."
C.S. Lewis wrote a beautiful allegory describing the gospel here. Our old story is very much a reality. Since the beginning of creation, there has been sin in the world because of man's rebellion. Over and over again, God has seen us fall to the very same sins in a weary, destructive cycle. What an old, tired out story it is. We feel the reality of it in our very bones. Yet my heart sings it out: There is an older story! Before the foundations of the world, God knew that we would sin. Yet, He still made us and He also made a plan to save us. He knew He would send Jesus before the dawn of time. And that brings so much hope to my heart. I hope it brings hope to your heart, too. Let no sense of shame keep you from coming again, even if it is with the same sin. God's great kindness to us is meant to bring us to repentance. God does not grow weary with our coming. He sent His Son to die for us that we might come. Don't let shame get in the way of the gospel. We are covered with the blood of Jesus. So let us come and hold tightly to that older story.
