We Need a Self-Confrontation.


We need help beyond ourselves. Like David, we need a Nathan. We need someone who can gently revoke our self-righteousness and apply truth to usurp our sinfulness.

Here’s how we see that grace is a surgical, sculpting chisel that renews us by confronting the worst in us with pinpoint precision and acknowledging our desperate need as sinners. Grace, after all, is a love that presses through sin. The God of the Bible doesn’t merely drop a truth-bomb and beat you into submission, but gently removes your self-deception and empowers you to return home. It hurts like crazy. His grace does not merely comfort, but grabs your sin by the fistfuls and kills it with the relentless violence of love. It neither condemns nor condones, but convicts and re-creates. It’s a scalpel that will work with you to the messy end.

It demands getting honest. It demands getting with those who will graciously rebuke you because they love you and know you can do better. It takes knowing that you might be wrong, that you might be blinded, that you don’t have it right this time. It takes confession.

— J.S. Park | The Life of King David


Published by JS Park

J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, published author, and online educator. He is a sixth degree black belt, ex-atheist, and featured on CNN and TODAY Show.

15 thoughts on “We Need a Self-Confrontation.”

    1. This is one of the central tenets of Christian faith: both the absolute awareness of our sin and an awareness of our savior, at the same time. It’s not a perfect process and we’ll be lopsided some days. We’re very tied to our own performance, wildly swinging between “I’m awesome” to “I’m terrible,” depending on the last thing we did. I haven’t found a simple formula or anything, and it’s probably because there is none. Some days we need grace, other days rebuke; there is a kind of confident humility when we’re open to both. Such is the nuance of a growing Christian.

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  3. Good stuff J.S. and scary as always. Having the light shon into my darkness the thought of being totally unmasked never gets easier. The proclivity to self-protect, to hide is one of the greatest struggles in my Christian life. That right there is proof that the fall is incarnate in all men.

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    1. Definitely. Believe me that I’m preaching it to myself first. I was just thinking this morning (while walking my dog) how quickly I grab onto any excuse when I’m called out, and how much I need to fight the urge and simply listen to a loving rebuke.

      (By the way, I wanted to send you a digital copy of “King David.” If you’d like one, my email is pastorjspark@gmail.com. Sorry it sounds like I’m plugging it, you’re such an encouragement here all the time that I wanted to gift you any way I could.)

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  4. Ah, Nathan, whose name means “gift”! David had power of life and death over Nathan. The difference between King David and so many people of faith is that every time he was reprimanded, he fell before God; many today kill the messenger. I still find that story one of the most stirring, because when I am Nathan I get it, but when I am David (Well, I am David, but not King) I don’t always get it.
    Peace

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    1. Yes, I’ve “killed the messenger” plenty, and I’ve also been the messenger and gotten killed. I’m reminded of Proverbs, when it says a friend’s wounds can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses. Flattery and yes-men is the path to complacency and status quo. The truth in love will always be harder, but will ultimately make us free.

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  8. Thanks JS for another thought provoking way to look at Scripture. Now, if I could simply balance the lets call it what it is and then lets have a time of conviction leading to transformation all the while not having the self condemnation would be a great thing. I know that I am going to blow it in this life but why are we so trained to condemn ourselves so harshly for?

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    1. I’m sure some of the condemnation points to something real inside us, just as much as our own “self-exaltation” also points to the image-of-God within us. I think the main point is: both our self-condemnation and self-exaltation do not go far enough. We are so much more condemnable than we want to admit, but so much exalted in Christ than we are able to believe. Both are true, simultaneously, and the Christian lives in that humbling & confident tension.

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