In Nehemiah 9 we see a straightforward, call-it-like-it-is prayer.  They don’t sugar coat their confession.  They call their sin what it is.  Throughout the prayer they call sin presumptuous, stiff-necked, forgetful, ungrateful, idolatrous, blasphemous, fat, disobedient, rebellious, law-breaking, prophet-murdering, evil, stubborn, and wicked.

Clearly, they understand the magnitude of their rebellion against God.

Unfortunately the same is not always true of us or our culture.  In our culture and in our lives, we want to minimize the way we talk about sin, don’t we?  Here are some of our tactics:

• Blaming: Instead of owning up and confessing we want to blame others or our immediate circumstances or our upbringing.
• Defending: When confronted, my tendency is to explain things away, talk about my successes, or to justify my decisions.
• Hiding: We conceal as much as we can about our life, especially the “bad stuff”. We strive to keep up appearances, maintain a respectable image.  We do not like to think reflectively about our lives
• Comparing: We tend to look at others to see how we measure up and justify ourselves because “they” are worse than we are

When we rightly see who God is, we will not shrink from calling sin, sin.  We will not needlessly blame, defend, hide, or compare.  Like the Israelites here, direct ownership of personal sin only happens when we remember who God is and what God has done.

When we understand that it was our sin that held Jesus on the cross we will be simultaneously broken & joyful: broken over the magnitude of our sin, yet immeasurably grateful that we are forgiven by Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice.