Justin Lakemacher, Program Director
Part of the sanctification process is learning how to respond well to conviction. When a person sins and they are made aware of it by the Holy Spirit, this is called conviction. Conviction comes from the Spirit through the conscience informed by God’s Word. The Spirit also uses other people to bring conviction. For the non-Christian, conviction serves to bring awareness of sinfulness, God’s holiness, and his righteous judgment of sin. For the Christian, conviction is designed to bring about confession, repentance, and renewal in their relationship with God. The Holy Spirit is good to make people aware of sin because conviction is intended to drive sinners to the rich mercy of Christ found in the gospel.
One of the realities of sin, however, is Christians mistaking the voice of conviction for condemnation. As believers grow in Christ, they become increasingly aware of their sinfulness. As Dane Ortlund points out, “Our sins feel far more sinful after we have become believers than before.” This, of course, shouldn’t be a problem since the apostle Paul said “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).
But therein lies the problem: it is a struggle to believe that God’s grace really does abound all the more which in turn distorts what God intends to accomplish through conviction. Rather than seeing conviction as a means of God’s kindness leading to repentance (Romans 2:4), it can lead believers to feel condemned.
Consider the following illustration:
When the Spirit convicts us of sin, there are two primary responses. We either move toward God or we move away from Him. Consider your first instinct when you are made aware of your sin:
Do you beat yourself up and tell yourself to do better?
Do you try to hide your sin?
Do you wonder if God still loves you?
Do you immediately confess to God and others?
In your response, are you moving toward God or away from him? How you respond to conviction reveals what you believe about the gospel. If your first instinct is to run away from God, you are failing to believe the gospel. Perhaps you are believing the lie that you have exhausted God’s grace and that he is tired of forgiving you. Or maybe you assume God is angry and needs time to “cool off” before you approach him.
Moving Away from God
When we move away from God after we sin, we are attempting to deal with sin in our own way. Adam and Eve did this in Genesis 3. Rather than run to God after they sinned, they ran away and tried to hide from him.
Responding in this way causes shame to grow, driving us to feel further distanced from God. All our attempts at this point to rectify the situation won’t work because there is only One who can deal with sin and all of its effects.
What is striking about the first rebellion in the Bible is that it is God who moves toward Adam and Eve, not in wrath, but in grace. He pursues them and covers their nakedness, a foreshadow of what he would do for sinners on the cross. “But God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Pause and think about that for a moment. God, in love, pursues rebels and cleanses them from their sin. If He loved us when we were his enemies, then how much more will he love us now as his adopted children, even in our struggle with remaining sin?
Moving Toward God
The appropriate response to conviction is to move toward God in confession and repentance so that we can experience cleansing and a renewal of joy.
At this point, you may be thinking, how can I turn back to God after I sinned again?
We know we can turn to God when we’re made aware of our sin because of what Christ has done in the gospel. The Gospel is the good news of Jesus who came to earth on a rescue mission to free us from sin and bring us to God. He lived in perfect obedience and died a substitutionary death on our behalf. Three days later he was raised to life and he is currently alive and reigning as King over all.
Sometimes believers talk about the gospel so often that we don’t take time to think about what it really means for us. When we trust in Jesus we receive a new identity (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are now adopted (1 John 3:1), justified (Romans 5:1), and forgiven (Ephesians 1:7) sons and daughters. As this old hymn reminds us, “Our sin, not in part, but the whole is nailed to the cross and we bear it no more.”
The verdict about our sin has been delivered to us: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). God has already given us the verdict about our sin now. Imagine you are on a criminal trial waiting anxiously for the forthcoming verdict. Before the judge returns, your attorney whispers into your ear that he knows the outcome and you will be declared not guilty. That’s what God has done for us. We’re still awaiting Christ’s return, but God has already dealt with sin on the cross and the verdict is in.
Faith in God’s verdict leads us to confidently approach God’s throne even after we have just sinned, precisely because we now know it is not a throne of wrath but a throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16).
Conviction, therefore, is an important moment where we need to remember and believe the gospel and God’s promise to us. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Believing this will begin to help us see conviction differently and respond accordingly. Rather than see God pointing his finger at us, God is opening his arms to embrace us—because conviction is an avenue by which God pursues us! We can joyfully respond to this amazing truth by confessing to God in repentance when we are convicted, asking him for forgiveness and help to change.
A biblical example of this is King David. In his famous prayer of confession after being convicted of adultery and murder, he turned to God, trusting in his steadfast love and mercy (Ps. 51:1). David asked God to give him a new heart (51:10) signifying his desire to change and for God to restore him to the joy of his salvation (Ps. 51:12).
True repentance is joyful because it is primarily marked not by what we turn from but by who we turn to. When the Holy Spirit convicts us, he is inviting us into a deeper experience of God’s love, a sweeter taste of His mercy, and a fresh empowerment of His Spirit to help us change.
So the next time the Spirit brings conviction, take God up on His invitation and come to Him. “Do not minimize your sin or excuse it away. Raise no defense. Simply take it to the one who is already at the right hand of the Father, advocating for you on the basis of his own wounds. Let your own unrighteousness, in all your darkness and despair, drive you to Jesus Christ, the righteous, in all his brightness and sufficiency.” (Dane Ortlund, Gentle & Lowly)