A defendant came forward in the middle of his trial to plead guilty. “Why didn’t you plead guilty at first and save us all a lot of time?” asked the judge. “I thought I was innocent,” replied the defendant, “but that was before I heard the evidence against me.”
If any one of us could hear all of God’s evidence against us, we would be compelled to plead guilty before his court. The Bible says, “If thou, Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3) The word mark is a bookkeeping term. It means to write down in a ledger as a bookkeeper writes down his record. If God should mark all of our sins in the ledger book of eternity and hold them against us, none of us could ever stand before him.
British Major-General CHarles “Chinese” Gordon (1833-1885) once said that if a man kept a journal for one week in which he entered all of his thoughts, desires, words, and actions, the record would impel him to cry out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”
But that cry would be enough. God is waiting for us to realize that we are sinners and to turn to him in repentance and faith, and he is willing to cleanse us. The blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse you if you will trust in him and confess your sin (1 John 1:9).