It is a solemn and dreadful thing when the Law of God first shows a sinner his own heart as God sees it. Some of you have never yet seen your Sins, but they are there nonetheless. You may live comfortably and think well of yourself, yet remain entirely ignorant of what lies hidden within.
Imagine an old house with a cellar beneath it. No one ever goes down there. No light enters it. Year after year it remains shut up in darkness. You live comfortably upstairs, scarcely thinking about what lies below. Then one day you take a candle and descend the stairs. You open the long-forgotten door, and immediately a foul, damp odor rises to meet you. The air is stale and corrupt. The floor is covered with filth. Strange creatures scatter from the light. Black mold climbs and decay cling to the walls. Tangled roots creep through the corners like the fingers of death. Spiders lurk in every dark recess, and things that have thrived in darkness for years suddenly appear before your eyes.
You recoil in horror. Yet the candle did not create the corruption. The light of the candle did not make the cellar filthy. The candle merely revealed what had been dwelling there all along.
Then suppose a shutter in the cellar that has been sealed for years is finally thrown open and the full light of day floods every part and crevice of the cellar. What seemed dreadful by candlelight now appears even worse beneath the brightness of the sun. Every stain, every cobweb, every creeping thing is exposed. You marvel that you could have lived above such corruption for so long without knowing it was there. And having seen it, you can no longer be content until the cellar has been thoroughly cleansed.
So it is with the human heart.
By nature, our hearts are full of sin, yet we do not know our Sin until the Law convinces us. We imagine ourselves respectable, decent, and perhaps even righteous. We compare ourselves with others and conclude that we are not so bad after all. But when the Holy Spirit shines the light of God's holy Law into the soul, the hidden things of darkness are exposed. Pride, unbelief, selfishness, lust, envy, deceit, anger, and rebellion against God rise into view. The sinner begins to see what was always there but never recognized.
The Law does not create sin any more than the candlelight created the filth in the cellar. The Law simply reveals the true condition of the heart. God's light uncovers what was concealed, and His Truth exposes what was hidden.
I had often walked through the cellar of my own heart in the dark, and it seemed fair enough to me. I imagined myself moral, respectable, and perhaps as good as most others. But when the Holy Spirit opened the shutters and let in the light, what loathsome things I discovered there! My supposed goodness appeared as corruption. My imagined righteousness was exposed as filthy rags. The very heart I had trusted proved to be deceitful and desperately wicked.
This is the experience of all whom God awakens. Men think well of themselves until the Lord pulls back the curtain and lets in a ray of heavenly light. Then they discover a septic tank of depravity where they expected goodness, an abyss of deceit where they expected sincerity, and a rebellion against God where they imagined obedience. The Scriptures begin to reveal what they truly are by nature.
The soul stands astonished. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" For when a man sees his sin as God sees it, all confidence in himself dies. His pride is wounded. His self-righteousness is slain. His imagined merit vanishes like smoke before the wind.
Yet this painful discovery is an act of mercy.
God wounds in order to heal. He kills in order to make alive. He reveals the disease so that the sinner may seek the cure. The same light that exposes the corruption also points to the remedy.
Indeed, I do not think any man truly understands the preciousness of the blood of Christ until he has first understood the vileness of his own sin. Who values cleansing until he sees his uncleanness? Who treasures a Savior until he knows he is lost? Who rejoices in forgiveness until he feels the burden of guilt?
Let but a little of God's light shine into that dark cellar of the soul, and a man soon discovers that there is no hope in himself. No amount of morality can cleanse him. No religious duties can wash away his guilt. No reforming of his life can remove the stain of sin from his conscience. He begins to see that only a sacrifice infinitely greater than anything he could ever offer can save him.
Then the Cross of Christ becomes very precious. Then the Atonement shines with a glory never seen before. Then the sinner trusts in that boundless love which led the Son of God to give Himself for the ungodly. He sees that Christ died for sinners, that the Just suffered for the unjust, and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.
The Spirit of God first opens and illuminates the cellar of the heart, and then He opens the Door of Salvation in the Gospel. The Holy Spirit reveals the disease, and then He reveals the Great Physician. The Holy Spirit shows us our ruin, that He might show us the Savior.
Blessed is the man who has seen enough of his own sins to flee to Christ for Salvation, for those who come to JESUS shall never be cast out.
