The Spiritual Microscope.

The apostle Paul called himself the “worst of sinners.” I always wondered about that. I mean, this is the Apostle Paul! This is the guy that historically had the largest effect on Christianity, next to Jesus of course. If anyone has ever been CLOSE to God, its the Apostle Paul — yet he calls himself the WORST of sinners. Why?

I think back to 9th grade Biology class. One of my favorite things was working with a microscope in the labs. Maybe I’m a geek – but I still remember the time I looked at a celery cell. The microscope had three different lenses that increased in power. With the first lens, we could see a large group of the individual cells. When we turned up the power to the second lens, we could see three or four cells, and some of the stuff on the inside. When we turned up the power to the highest level, we could see the details of one individual cell. We could see the mitochondria, the lysosome, cell wall, everything (I didn’t even google that stuff, I still remember it!).

When we get close to God, its like we turn up the power on the spiritual microscope and we can see what we couldn’t see before. I think the closer we get to God, the more we see our own sin. This happens to me, but it also explains why the Apostle Paul called himself the WORST of sinners. It wasn’t that he sinned more than anyone else, it was that he could see better. It also indicates his humility.

Do you struggle with your sin? (That’s rhetorical!). My bet is that you say “yes, of course I struggle.” But please press further before simply passing this off as an irrelevant blog post:

Do you truly STRUGGLE with your sin or do you just feel bad about it?

That’s a really introspective question. Go ahead and think about it. No really – think about it. I’m going to wait.

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I think most of the Christians in America, especially the Midwest region, just feel bad about their sin – they aren’t struggling – they are not OVERCOMERS. I think most Christians couldn’t make a list of the sins they are struggling with because they’re not struggling at all – they think they have everything under control but they don’t realize they have nothing. It’s not until they are close to God when they will see clearly through a higher powered lens in the spiritual microscope.

That is the description of the Church in Laodecia that is talked about in Revelation 3. The very nature of this sin is that you don’t realize there is even a problem… it’s a “slow and subtle fade” away from your relationship with Christ. It’s self-deception. I encourage you to ask God to show you if you fit into this “lukewarm Christianity” described in Revelation 3. I wrote more about it here.