Isaiah 59:1-2
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.
Your conscience is the atmosphere between you and your destination. If your conscience is clear, than like a clear day, you can see for miles ahead and possibly your destination. When your conscience is clouded, it is like navigating in a thick fog in which your spirit becomes disoriented, doubting the destination, the direction you are headed and self-doubt in your previous decisions.
Isaiah 59:3
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity.
The reality of our sin, the blood sacrifice of atonement for our sin—Christ, is hardly a reality in my own life. When I sin, I immediately plead the blood of Christ. Without Christ, with every sin, our hands are defiled with blood— in the Old Testament and costly animal would need to lose it’s life to pay for our sin. I think that we’ve underestimated sin now that we’re under the Law of Grace. I think we need to live with the reality and math of: sin=death and death must come to bring life. This was the OT understanding and one that Christ fulfilled. In our easy going American culture, we glaze over the notion of an animal being killed so that we can eat lunch. In the third world, this reality is still present, not hidden In the slaughterhouses and nicely presented without blood, wrapped in cellophane, and lit beautifully.
Will we recognize Jesus when we get to heaven? The resurrected Christ still bears the scars in His hands and feet—quite possibly for eternity. We will love the One- mutilated and scarred for all eternity. I think the Father desires for us to remember the reality of Christ’s sacrifice for us, while we were still sinners– blinded in the fog of our sin, He came and died for us.
