Contrite Heart

"You do not want a sacrifice,

or I would give it;

you are not pleased

with a burnt offering.

The sacrifice pleasing to God is 

a broken spirit.

You will not despise a broken

and contrite heart, God." - Psalm 51: 16-17

     My wife and I are going through a Lent devotional put forth by a leader at our church. An introductory quote read, 

"Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet."

    If we think highly of ourselves, that we are our own saviors, then there is no reason for Christ. One must merely open their eyes to see that we live in a fallen world, and that a savior is needed. Often we fall into the line of thinking that our good outweighs our bad, and therefore we are on the right trajectory. If receiving a report card we would be getting A's and B's and the parents would be jolly. The fact of the matter is that it is impossible for us to progress from F's across the board because the standard is perfection and we are totally depraved. This knowledge should create in us a contrite heart concerning our brokenness, and only then do we understand the magnitutde of God's grace. 

    So where does this originate, this inability to grasp the bitterness of our sin? Pride

The acknowledgement of sin would threaten our pride and therefore it must be rejected. 

Douglas Wilson in his book, "Future Men" sums this up precisely under his heading "Counterfeit Masculinity",  

"Because the 'Masculinity' is a matter of pride, not humble acceptance of responsibility, then anything which threatens that pride must be rejected. One of the things which always threatens pride is any kind of failure, and the way that insecure males deal with this is through making excuses. True masculinity accepts responsibility, period... Fending off a threat of wounded pride through excuse-making is typical of males in sin, and yet is thoroughly unmasculine. A refusal to make excuses is right at the heart of scriptural masculinity."

True Masculinty would seek to acknowledge sin and failure, to be humbled by the brokenness, and to accept full responsibility.