In addition to the insurmountable task posed by Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount of reconciling with every person who may have ought with us, there is this question whether a human being can even perform the necessary fact-finding required by an inventory.
There are sins which we commit -- the standards for which the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous is conspicuously lacking -- in many cases are beyond even our conscious conception:
"Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults." (Psalm 19: 12)
Beloved King David did not even presume that who could identify, let only confess his faults.
The sins that a man commits go deeper than just his thinking:
"9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
What a despairing statement for the man who would attempt to clean his own heart -- who indeed can know the human heart, out of which comes all manner of evil! (Matthew 15: 19) What is to be done?
"I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." (Jeremiah 17: 10)
We cannot take our own inventory, and even if we did, it would not be enough to transform us. We need a heart change, which God has offered us through the death of His Son:
"And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:" (Ezekiel 11: 19)
and later
"But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31: 33-34)
The Lord supplies the rules that we need by the power of the Holy Spirit, who indwells every believer, directing a believer in the ways to think, speak, and do:
"And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
"Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." (John 14: 16-17)
and later
"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:" (John 15: 26)
In fact, by the power of the Holy Living and dwelling within us, we do not have to work the Tenth Step, always trying to look out and work out our future shortcomings!
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5: 16)
And if we do sin:
"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)
Why is this so? John explains in the previous chapter of his First Epistle:
"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1: 7)
Note in this verse that the blood of Jesus "cleanses" us, ongoing, constant, now and forever. Before God, every believer need never worry again about some unconfessed or undiscovered sin, and therefore never again will a believer have to worry about broken fellowship with God.
God has not called us to a life of chronic inventory-taking, which reeks of self-centered condemnation:
"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8: 1, NASB)
Instead of going over our sins, Christ has given us a different set of commands:
"Rejoice evermore.
"Pray without ceasing.
"In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." (1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18)
Why can we do this? Are we not responsible for doing other things? Paul responds to this concern thus:
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
"I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Galatians 2: 20-21)
Later, Paul writes:
"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;"
Which Paul later explains thus:
"Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
We have died, crucified with Christ, and we are now alive, because Christ is the believer, our confident expectation of good and glory (cf Colossians 1: 27), lives and directs us. We rest in Him, He works in us, and we release Him with fear and trembling [great joyful humility]!
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