Martin Lloyd-Jones notes that "There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God." What this points us to is that we don't feel the weight of our sin because of our sin. Our sin deceives us. It blinds us. It is insidious. And the most insidious thing about sin is self-deception. But when we see who God really is, when the Spirit works to remove our blindness to God, we begin to see the depth of our own sin.

And when we sin the depth of our own sin, we realize two things: 1) the deadly danger of God's wrath we will face if we are outside of Christ and 2) the joyous tenderness we have now if we are in Christ. As Rom 5:20 tells us, God's grace abounds more than our sin for all of us who are in Christ. And grace is not some substance God gives to us. Grace is literally God working on our (undserved) behalf for our good. What this means is that "[God] sides with you against your sin, not against you because of your sin."

Amazingly...perplexingly...stunningly, for all those who are in Christ, who are His, God's holiness does not compell Him to come in wrath. Rather, because He is the Holy One, the different One, the one who is God and not a man, He will not come in wrath against His own people (Hos 11:7-9). That is what Christ has done for us: He bore the wrath of the Father that we rightly deserved so that His people would experience the compassionate heart of the Father instead.