CliftonStrengths, or StrengthsFinder, is a personal assessment developed by Don Cliffton that’s all about finding out what kind of a person you are. There are four primary categories or domains, “strategic thinking,” “relationship building,” “influencing,” and “executing.” And then within those there are a total of 34 different strength areas. The idea is that you can take their test which will ask a whole bunch of questions about your personality, and then it will tell you what you are good at and how your thinking is oriented. Maybe for you it’s competition, or harmony, or discipline, or adaptability, or empathy.
Gallup, who owns the assessment program, boasts that nearly 35 million people have taken the test, which must have made them a lot of money. Maybe my strength is “Skeptical of strength assessments.” I haven’t taken it, but I can see why people do. Human beings are naturally introspective. We want to understand ourselves and each other. And I’m sure that there are times when this kind of an assessment can be helpful.
But on the other hand, you don’t need to pay anyone for a test to know that you aren’t perfect. Far from it. StrengthFinder tries to spin everything in a very positive light, but if we have strengths we must also have weaknesses. And the best way to understand our weaknesses is with the assessment of God’s Word.
Our sermon series for our Wednesdays in Lent this year is called “Reflections on Repentance.” The sermons are all based on verses from Psalm 51, one of the great penitential psalms. Today we’re considering how we all need repentance because our Lord God by his word reveals our sinful nature. No matter what your strengths are, one thing that describes us all is “We are sinful, sinful by nature.”
Psalm 51 was written by King David, and the inspired introduction to the Psalm says that David wrote it after the prophet Nathan came to him with God’s Word after David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba. David may have tried to hide it and put on a good face, but the guilt from this sin weighed heavily on his soul. With this psalm he really lets it out. He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t try to cover anything up. And as with all the psalms, these words aren’t just some poetry from some guy who lived a long time ago in a place far away from here. These are the words of the Holy Spirit through David, speaking universal truth, and so David speaks for every one of us when he says,
Certainly, I was guilty when I was born.
I was sinful when my mother conceived me.
David wrote this psalm after a specific sin, the sin of adultery. But this psalm teaches us about the nature of sin more broadly. David fell into some great and terrible sins. Maybe you haven’t sinned in quite the same way. But are you so different from David? Sin is not just the actions that we take. It also describes who we are by nature.
This goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Read Genesis 1. How did God create the first man and woman? He made them in his image. They were like God, perfect and holy. They lived in perfect harmony with God and with each other. At the end of Genesis 2 there’s a sentence that might seem a little strange where it says they were both naked and were not ashamed. But this is what that is describing. The outward effect of having a perfectly clean conscience is that there’s nothing to hide. Not from each other, and not from God. We can’t really even imagine that because we’ve never experienced it. Ever since we were old enough to understand sin and guilt we also knew shame.
That change started with Adam and Eve. They disobeyed God’s command and ate the fruit that he forbid them to eat. Their eyes were opened and they tried to hide themselves. They made clothes from fig leaves to hide their bodies. They hid from God in the garden. They tried to cover their guilt by pointing elsewhere. “It’s not my fault!”
Their sin brought corruption into the whole world. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation was subjected to corruption. And specifically, this sin didn’t just affect Adam and Eve, but all of mankind who would come from them. Paul says in Romans 5 “Just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned.”
And that’s exactly what we see in Genesis 5, where we read about the development of Adam’s family. Adam had a son, not in God’s likeness, the way that Adam was made. No, this son was born in Adam’s likeness. And that’s not just a theoretical thing. Any of you who are parents know exactly what this means. How often do you make those kinds of comments, “You’re just like your dad! You’re just like your mom!” Sometimes that is the most wonderful compliment. Other times, not so much.
Adam’s son Seth was just like Adam. And just as Adam died, so Seth died. “Just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people because all sinned.”
This is what we call original sin, and it’s the sad reality of our existence. My sins aren’t just the actions I commit. The actions are just the final, outward expressions of my wicked heart. Just because a man hasn’t fallen into adultery as David did, it does not mean he has never been overcome by lust.
And notice that David considers this original sin to be sin worth confessing to God. This inclination to sin that lives in our hearts is real sin. Jesus said, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” and “Whoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Even if you could keep your hands from ever sinning, you would still have plenty to confess before God. Even if you could prevent your lips from speaking violence, you would have no lack of silent sins for which to repent.
And we must repent, because just as we all have the weakness of sinfulness from our very origins, we also have the weakness of mortality. We all die. The wages of sin is death. You can list your strengths, “I’m strategic. I’m a communicator. I’m an achiever.” And you can list your weaknesses, and the top two should be “I am sinful from birth,” and “I’m going to die.”
That really is a hopeless situation. There’s nothing you can do about it. One of the dangers of something like the ClifftonStrengths test is that people sometimes use these things as an excuse. They’ll say something like, “Oh, I’m not a communicator, it’s just who I am.” or “I can’t help that I’m always trying to one-up other people. My personality is all about competition.” But people can change. You can develop new strengths over time. But with your sinful nature you can’t change. And excuses won’t work before God. Adam and Eve’s excuses did them no good. David couldn’t hide his sin. “Certainly, I was guilty when I was born.” he said, “I was sinful when my mother conceived me.”
Those are hopeless words, but in the context of the Psalm and in the context of David’s life, we see something quite strange and wonderful. David confessed his sins before the Lord, before Nathan, God’s prophet, and what did Nathan say? He said, “The Lord himself has put away your sin. You will not die.”
We like to talk about our strengths and the things we’re good at. We don’t always like to talk about our weaknesses. We don’t like to talk about sin. We’re all going to die, but who likes to talk about dying? But God talks about these things in his Word. He’s very blunt about the reality of death. He calls out our sin, without covering over any of it. But he does this because of his mercy. In his mercy he reveals our sinful nature.
This is why Psalm 51 is not just the sad words of David but the holy words of God. In this way God reveals to us who we are and how we ought to approach him. Don’t go hiding with your sin as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. Come to God in repentance. Bring your confessions to him. Confess to him the great sins that weigh heavily on your soul. Confess also your original sin, that you too are sinful, ever since you were conceived. And do this in view of the cross.
The reason we try to hide our sin from each other and from God, and even from ourselves, is that we know that sin is shameful. We know that it deserves punishment. Ultimately we know that sin deserves death. But right from the beginning God showed his great mercy with his promise. The woman’s offspring would crush the serpent’s head. A son of David and Bathsheba would reign on David’s throne forever. God, in his great mercy, says, “See who you are? You are sinful. You are dying. So bring to me your sin, and I will save you.”
And this God accomplished by the perfect man, his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was the man we all should be. He never sinned in thought or word or deed. He was also not sinful from birth. He had no original sin, no sinful nature. He couldn’t. He is God incarnate, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. But although he was perfect and holy he humbled himself and took on all of our sin. And so he who was without sin became sin for us. He too could cry out in the words of this Psalm “Certainly, I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me,” not because of his own sin, but because he carried all our sin on himself to the cross.
God in his mercy reveals your sinful nature so that you can see and know just how great is his mercy at the cross. Your sinful nature shut you off from God, with no solution, with only the burden of guilt and the darkness of death. But Jesus is your light and life, he is your forgiveness. In him you are the righteousness of God.
Lent is a time for repentance, and repentance means introspection. Who am I? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? I’m a sinner, and that’s what I’ve always been, as long as I’ve been in this world. And I’m going to die because of it. But God, in his mercy, has revealed to me my sin so that I may know my Savior, so that I might come to him in repentance and depart in peace, with sins forgiven. Who am I? I’m a baptized child of God. I’m a disciple of his word. I’m a member of the body of Christ. I’m being remade in his image, and I will live with him forever.
Reflect on yourself this Lent. Reflect on your nature in the light of God’s word. Repent, and glorify God for his salvation. Amen.