He Has Decided the Silence Is His Own Fault

He ran the audit properly, which is the trouble with it.

He did not do it in one bad evening. He did it over about a year, in pieces, honestly, and he was not looking for a comfortable answer and did not find one.

And there is plenty. There always is when a man goes looking, because nobody's account is clean, and once you have a list in front of you and a quiet on the other side of the table, the two of them start to look connected whether or not they are.

So that is where he has been. Not angry, not confused, and not blaming anybody. Just a man with an explanation, sitting quietly with it, being reasonable about it in a way that would worry anybody who could see it from outside.

And the thing he cannot get past is that the explanation works. It accounts for everything. That is what makes it so hard to argue with, and it is also, if he is honest, exactly what a bad explanation does.

The verse people use for this says something else first

There is a verse in Isaiah that gets quoted at people in exactly this position, and almost always from the second half.

Behold, the LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. (Isaiah 59:1, King James Version)

Read what the first thing said is.

Before anything about anybody's conduct, the prophet establishes the capacity. The hand is not shortened. The ear is not heavy.

He rules out the two explanations that would put it on God, and he does it first, on purpose, because the people he is writing to had been assuming one of them.

And the verse after it does talk about sin separating. That is real and it is in the chapter. But it is said to a nation about specific public injustice, at length, with the details named, and it is not a diagnostic tool for a man to run on himself in the dark.

You are not the person that chapter is running an audit on. Isaiah 59 establishes the capacity first and then addresses a nation about named public wrongs, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a reading order matter.

The record of how He has dealt with people

There is a sentence in Psalm 103 that is a report rather than a promise.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. (Psalm 103:10)

He hath not dealt with us after our sins.

Past tense. It is a description of what has already been happening across a long stretch, and it is exactly the arrangement a man's audit assumes has been running.

If the psalm is accurate, then the explanation that accounts for everything is accounting for it using a mechanism the record says has not been in operation.

You have not been dealt with on the basis your audit assumed. Psalm 103 puts it in the past tense as a completed report, and it is His Spirit who makes an old record do something to a year of careful work.

The verdict is placed after the losing

There is a sentence at the start of Romans 8, and where it sits is as important as what it says.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

Now. No condemnation.

And the chapter immediately before it is a man describing losing the same fight repeatedly, in the present tense, about himself.

So that sentence is not placed after a success. It is placed directly after an honest account of failure, with nothing in between, which means it is not a reward for a clean audit.

You are under a verdict that was placed after the losing. Romans 8 follows Romans 7 with nothing between them, and it is the Spirit of life, named in the very next verse, who is credited with the freeing.

John says which verdict outranks which

There is a sentence in John's letter written for a man whose own heart has reached a conclusion.

For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. (1 John 3:20)

God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.

He does not say the heart is lying, and he does not tell anybody to talk themselves round.

He gives a ranking. When the inside verdict and God's disagree, John says outright which one outranks the other, and he adds that God knows more, which means the audit was working with less information than it thought.

You are outranked in the right direction. 1 John 3 puts God above the heart and adds that He knows all things, and it is His Spirit who makes an old ranking hold when a year of work says otherwise.

And the instruction is to come, and to come a particular way

There is a sentence in Hebrews about approaching, and everything is in one adverb.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

Boldly.

Not carefully. Not once something has been cleared. Not after an audit comes back acceptable.

And the sentence before it is the one about all things being naked and opened to His eyes, which means the boldness is not built on anybody hiding anything. It is built on who is on the throne.

You are told to come boldly rather than to come cleared. Hebrews 4 puts the exposure and the boldness in consecutive sentences, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps those two from canceling each other out.