I confess, I'm self-righteous. The amazing prophecy in Isaiah 53 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—everyone—to his own way” (v. 6). That’s me, justifying my ways, but not just me. And it’s not just those people “out there,” outside the Church, outside Jesus, the self-willed individualists promoting themselves and their agendas who often are the targets of righteous condemnation from church people. “All we like sheep have gone astray” includes me sitting in the pew, you in the pew, me active in church, you too.
Forgiveness hasn’t removed our sinfulness. “I’m not the chief of sinners” is the essence of sin against the First Commandment, pride in myself, pride in my churchiness, instead of joining the tax collector in the back of the temple (Luke 18:9-14). Totally forgiven, yes, but still, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; / Prone to leave the God I love” (Lutheran Service Book 686:3).
“All we like sheep have gone astray,” but verse 6 ends, “and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Focus not on your sins but on the Suffering Servant. Wherever individual Israelites were when the venomous snakes bit them, looking to the bronze serpent saved them (Numbers 21:6-9). The centurion overseeing the crucifixion, “stood facing him (Jesus),” and reflection led him to confess, “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mark 15:39). “Ye who think of sin but lightly / Nor suppose the evil great / Here may view its nature rightly, / Here its guilt may estimate” (LSB, 451:3).
Philip Yancey: “Having spent time around ‘sinners’ and also around purported saints, I have a hunch why Jesus spent so much time with the former group: I think he preferred their company. Because the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense, Jesus could deal with them. In contrast, the saints put on airs, judged him, and sought to catch him in a moral trap. In the end it was the saints, not the sinners, who arrested Jesus” (What’s So Amazing about Grace? In unChristian, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, 60).
“Oh, that day when freed from sinning, / I shall see Thy lovely face; / Clothed then in the blood washed linen, / How I’ll sing Thy wondrous grace!” (LSB, 686:4).