Introduction
According to Genesis, also called “The Book of the Beginnings,” one of the first consequences of the Fall was the ontological, deep-embedded shame, translated into a feeling of pain, the intuition of something profoundly wrong, which motivated the fear of Adam and Eve, by birthing a pit between them (us) and the Creator:
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself (Gen 3:7-10).1
The very first reaction of our ancestors after they tasted the forbidden fruit was to stay away, hide, and cover themselves with fig leaves. Symbols of the unbiblical attempts to redeem the lost glory and reestablish relationship with God – but, of course, in human terms – the torn relationship with God, the fig leaves could be associated in the present time with our overarching tendency to dissimulate, wear masks, or perpetuate false beliefs about ourselves, to hide our true identity and run from him (just like Adam and Eve). Walls that obstruct our spiritual sight, these “strongholds,” as Paul calls them in 2 Corinthians 10:4, have to do with our defense mechanisms, with those “schemes” that we mentally conceive (oftentimes unknowingly), trying to deal with our ancestral shame, inherited from our fathers in the Garden of Eden.
The good news is that, even before the Fall of man, God already had the solution prepared. Millennia later, after careful preparation, the Lord of Grace came down from Heaven and offered himself as a Lamb of sacrifice so that, by his innocent blood, we may again have access to the Father. Thus, in the darkest hour of history, when Jesus Christ, the Savior, was hanging on a tree like an ordinary sinner (the key word here being “like,” not that he indeed was one; see Isa 53:4-5, 9 and Gal 3:13) the earth shook from the ground and the veil that was separating us from God was torn in two (see Matt 27:51), thereby reopening our path towards him (see Heb 10:19-20).
Besides the priceless gift of being able to have access to him again, our Lord Jesus offered us, through the sacrifice on the cross, a way to redeem our spirit, soul, and, subsequently, our body by healing us from sin and, to a certain extent, from its devastating consequences. Yet, forgiveness and restoration require from us a specific price: a willingness to see and admit our state, and, having this revelation, to run to God with it to be set free. Biblically speaking, we cannot be saved until we see our sinful condition, nor healed until we are conscious and humble enough to ask for his help! This implies that we are ready to accept the truth about ourselves and become vulnerable before him, so Jehovah-Rapha may do his work in us. But even though, as followers of Christ, we should be quite aware of this unique and priceless opportunity to be intimate with him, how many times do we choose instead to build up walls and barricades or run in the opposite direction by hiding the truth about ourselves in the attempt to appear better, more spiritual, or more powerful than we are?
1. Honesty with God – a Biblical Shield Against Deceit and Self-Deceit
To counter this human tendency of hiding behind all kinds of appearances, God ordered the idea of transparency (in other words, living “in the light,” see Jn 3:19-21) as a biblical solution, understood as complete honesty with him, which is expressed in the confession of our sin, deeply aware of who God is and how we are.
Transparency, which the German theologian Albert Schweitzer (2014, 230) describes as being “the very foundation of spiritual life” constitutes that fundamental relational attribute that determines the measure of trust between two people while, at the same time, being a sine qua non attribute of self-awareness, that allows us to understand our weak/strong points better, thus making us able to discern the seasons that we move through in our short walk on this earth. Yet, when we apply it to our relationship with the Lord, this virtue of voluntary transparency acquires a sacred, transcendental dimension, expressed in the conscious choice to affirmatively (and wholeheartedly) respond to his holy invitation.
This idea of living in the light (meaning with complete transparency and integrity) with ourselves, and, most importantly, with God, by practicing our daily spiritual cleanse (both in the Word and our conversations with the Father) is expressed by a few particular terms.
The first (which is found in the Old Testament) is the Hebrew adjective bar (Heb. בַּר, derived from the Hebrew verb bārar), meaning “pure,” “clean,” or even “empty, emptied” (but with the same meaning of “cleanliness”—see Job 11:4; Ps 19:8; 24:4; 73:1; Prov 14:4; Song 6:10) (Swanson 1997, 1338 II. בַּר (bǎr)).
The New Testament correspondent is the word katharos (gr. καθαρός), an adjective used 27 times in the Bible, with the sense of “clean,” “pure” (without any admixture), “sincere,” “innocent,” “authentic” or physically “without blemish” (Matt 23:26; 27:59; Heb 10:22 (23); Rev 15:6; 19:8, 14); “honest,” cleaned of every mixture of genuine with false (1 Tim 1:5; 2 Tim 2:22 and 1 Pet 1:22; 1 Tim 3:9; 2 Tim 1:3); “true,” “genuine” (Jas 1:27); “innocent,” “blameless” (Acts 18:6; 20:26); “ethical” – free of sin, fault or unclean desires (Tit 1:15; Jn 13:10-11); “suitable for serving” (Matt 5:8; Rom 14:20; Tit 1:15).
The third word used is the adjective eilikrinēs (gr. εἰλικρινής), synonym with katharos, which only appears twice in the New Testament, in Philippians 1:10 and 2 Peter 3:1, meaning “pure,” “sincere,” “transparent,” whose root means “to be found pure (or clean) when unfolded and examined in the sunlight” (BDAG 2001, 250). Related to it is the noun eilikrineia (gr. εἰλικρίνεια), which appears three times in The New Testament (in 1 Cor 1:12, 5:7-8 and 2 Cor 2:17), being defined by Theophylact of Orchid (ca. 1050/60-1108) as “purity of thought that has nothing to hide and nothing to stay hidden in the shadow, waiting.” According to William Barclay (1992, 157):
The discussed term (eilikrineia) can be derived from a combination of two Greek words: heile, meaning “sunlight,” and krinein, meaning “to judge.” In this case, they could describe something that stands the evaluation made in the sunlight, something that, even though it is held up high in the bright sunlight, uncovers no defect or crack. In this case, we have a very telling picture. In the eastern bazaars, the shops were small, dark, and shadowy. An article, say a piece of pottery, or a piece of glass, or a piece of fabric, might look perfect in the dark closet of the shopkeeper’s shop, but the wiser buyer would take it out into the street, subject it to the judgment of sunlight, and often the bright rays of the sun were revealing flaws and cracks that would never have been noticed in the darkness of the shop.
Thus having the meaning of “sincerity,” “honesty,” “purity of reasons,” and/or a “clean heart,” these notions describe the positive moral quality of having pure motives by combining, in an unitary understanding, the candor and innocence of children (see Matt 18:3-5) with the ability to see things in a clear and nuanced way, sincere and capable of introspection (or self-examination) based upon the Word (specific, of course, to mature people).
First Application: Honest Repentance and Confession of our Sins
As previously shown, sincerity means seeing ourselves the way we are (as shown in the Word of God); it means being completely aware of our faults and weaknesses, and particularly our need for Jesus; it also means being capable of self-examination in the light of the “sun” (or, better said, “the Son”), allowing us to see even the most minor imperfections that used to pass unnoticed before that. More than any other domain of Christian life, the idea of honesty with God and with ourselves is reflected in the simple yet necessary act of repentance from our sinful ways. This act (along with faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior) constitutes one of the two main pillars of salvation: initiating a relationship with the Father and continuing our daily walk with him.
Without genuine repentance, we cannot experience the new birth (see Jn 3:3-7) nor advance in the process of sanctification and spiritual maturity, which unfolds throughout our lifespan. Derived from the Greek word metanoia (which means “changing your mind, changing your line of thought”), this inner dynamic begins with that profound awareness regarding our sinful nature – brought by the Holy Spirit in the life of a (potential) believer (see 1 Jn 1:8-9), accompanied by sincere regret, and reparatory actions motivated by our strong desire (decision, inner commitment) to change ourselves, by correcting our behavior.
Of course, sincere repentance must be reflected in confessing our sins – understood as an honest declaration made before God and/or a trusted person – in which we openly admit our sin without justifying it, looking for excuses, or casting the blame on someone/something other than ourselves (with the mention that, in the absence of a genuine change of heart, mere confession is yet another one of the numerous expressions of religious hypocrisy, focused on exterior forms, but without inner transformation). According to Scripture, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, “slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (see Ex 34:6). In other words, he is always ready to forgive those who erred, provided that they “own” their transgression and genuinely want to change. Paradoxical, although it should be a real encouragement for Christians, this mercy and graciousness that characterizes the Creator can be a real challenge for believers who, instead of running to him the second they realize they have mistaken, they do everything they can to “fix” the problem of sin by themselves, by trying to cover up, hide, forget or dissociate from all that is bad in their life (as if this would somehow solve the real issue, which is the condition of their heart):
Christians face a problem. We, as disciples of Jesus, are meant to reflect his character. Jesus was and is perfect, and we wish to show more of his goodness and less of our old sinfulness. There are two methods by which we seek to achieve this, yet only one of those is correct. God’s method is to allow the Holy Spirit to take over and he will convict us of the sin in our lives. As a result, we confess our sin, repent, and let him bring about the change of heart. The other method is to take control and do everything we can to hide as best we can those areas that we consider weak, damaged, or inappropriate. It is the method that will never produce the desired results, because we are doing nothing else but placing a certain area of our life in a dark corner, under the authority of the evil one. As much as we would like it to be effective, dissociation from our sinful nature does not lead to holiness. We must recognize and confess our sinful human nature and then let it die by walking in daily submission to the Spirit of God (Cross 2016, 80).
Apart from the priceless gift of salvation and reconciliation with God, another vital purpose of repentance is to transform our inner man, thus becoming able to fulfill his purposes in and through us. Yet, just like the aforementioned Christian author explained in his book, this transformation, characterized by holiness and spiritual maturity, is not attainable by hiding the sin under a mat and pretending that it does not exist, nor when we attempt to redefine it, by diminishing its seriousness and covering it with so-called “good” deeds (on the contrary, such attitudes block the Holy Spirit manifesting in our lives and the freedom that he brings, creating, in change, a fertile ground for legalism – in all its ugly manifestations). The only truly biblical and legitimate way to address the problem of sin in a believer’s heart and life is to expose it to the light by being completely honest and transparent with God.
Second Application: True Faith/Trust in Jesus Christ
To “entrust” yourself to Another for your delivery is barely acceptable for a man. Even when we, as Christians, know from the Bible and personal experience that the Lord is a God of agape love and his mercies never come to an end (see Lam 3:22-23), and even though it only takes one good look at the cross to understand how precious we are in his eyes, oftentimes we find it much more difficult (at least in the beginning!) to “abandon” ourselves to his will (admittedly, quite unpredictable at times…) than to put our trust in other things which only offer us a mere appearance of safety (like, for instance, our relationships, possessions, or what we can do in our strength).
One of the classic exercises that future actors must do at the faculty of theater is to form unconditional “trust falls,” where they allow themselves to fall on their backs, trusting that their colleagues will catch them and will not let them hit the ground. Practically speaking, God requires of us the same thing: to allow ourselves to trust in his character, in what he declared about himself, thus putting down the reins and abandoning us fully into the “hands” of the One who is not only willing but also perfectly capable of fulfilling everything that he said in his Word: “God can be trusted and he will never prove unfaithful to those who put their trust in what he said. The essence of true faith is taking God at his word and trusting him to do what he has promised” (Grudem 2004, 211).
Transparency with God, which can be seen as an act of profound humility, is an expression of true belief in him (as opposed to ourselves), a dive into the unknown, being exclusively guided by the voice of the One who called us to follow him. However, this “leap” of faith involves an apparent risk. For it seems risky to open ourselves up by confessing all sinful thoughts and desires that we cannot even admit to ourselves while, at the same time, completely and wholeheartedly believing that he is good enough to forgive us, that he wasn’t “joking” when he invited us to cast all our cares unto him; that he isn’t surprised, nor afraid of all the bitterness, pain, and selfishness in us; that he will not reject us if when we come before him just as we are, and, finally, that he will not throw back at us a well-deserved “I told you so…” like our parents did when we were children (in fact, the parable of the prodigal son proves just the opposite).
This unspoken fear that our God will cease loving us if he saw our true colors (as if he wouldn’t already know beforehand!) might be precisely why oftentimes we hesitate to get fully close to him; the fear that, if we are not like the other “perfect” Christians (as other people in the church seem to be), we will end up being somehow second rank in his eyes. Consequently, we take the “easy way” by hiding from ourselves and from him. Alternatively, even if we admit our sin, we might try to minimize it, searching for ways to punish ourselves, to atone for our guilt. In reality, none of the approaches mentioned above is biblical or effective, as they fail to address the real problem within us (which is a sin of the heart just as much as behavioral sin is) or to help us get closer to God (see Heb 11:6).
Third Application: Forgiving Others Who Have Wronged Us
Sincerity in admitting the truth in all its ways, shapes, and forms has practical applications (and implications) not just regarding our sin and the willingness to confess it but also in regards to the ability to recognize an evil that was done to us, admitting that we have indeed been offended, and thus opening the way unto forgiveness (and, implicitly, towards inner healing and the restoration of our soul, without necessarily involving reconciliation, especially if we do not see any sign of repentance from the part of the person that has wronged us).
Using his testimony, Christian author John Bevere, in his well-known book The Bait of Satan, explains the traps that this way of thinking (denying the seriousness of someone else’s offense) exposes us to, and what is the result of our attempt to avoid dealing with sin (this time, the sin of others):
One way the enemy keeps a person in an offended state is to keep the offense hidden, cloaked with pride. Pride will keep you from admitting your true condition. Once, I was severely hurt by a couple of ministers. People would say, I can’t believe they did this to you. Aren’t you hurt? I would quickly respond, No, I am fine. I’m not hurt.” I knew it was wrong to be offended, so I denied and repressed it. I convinced myself I was not, but in reality, I was. Pride masked the true condition of my heart. (…) Pride keeps you from dealing with the truth. It distorts your vision. You never change when you think everything is fine. Pride causes you to view yourself as a victim. Your attitude becomes, “I was mistreated and misjudged; therefore, I am justified in my behavior.” Because you believe you are innocent and falsely accused, you hold back forgiveness. Though your true heart condition is hidden from you, it is not hidden from God (Bevere 2011, 20-21).
Essentially, when discussing sin, the Bible condemns any conscious or unconscious attempt to redefine it or portray it in a “positive” light (Isa 5:20). However, in God’s economy, denying or ignoring it also doesn’t constitute an acceptable solution.
According to our Lord’s words in Matthew 6 (vv. 12, 14, and 15), forgiveness is not optional – if we want to be forgiven by our Heavenly Father. Yet how can we forgive something we aren’t even willing to admit? In his book Forgive: Why Should I and Can I?, Tim Keller (2022, 9) defines the idea of forgiving as “first to name the trespass truthfully as wrong and punishable, rather than merely excusing it.” The entire process of forgiveness and healing from the trauma that we experienced always begins with recognizing our pain and understanding what happened. In this sense, sin must be dealt with (processed internally), and the person who sinned is forgiven, fulfilling thus the command of Jesus Christ. Instead of healing, any effort to deny, diminish, or cover up a real evil that has happened to us only deepens our wound by keeping us prisoners of a victim mentality or in a state of self-righteousness that prohibits us from offering the needed clemency to be healed.
Fourth Application: Recognizing and Venting our Emotions in a Godly Way
Daniel Goleman (2008, 73) asserts that our “incapacity to take notice of our true emotions leaves us prey to them.” In other words, without a minimal understanding of what we feel and the cause thereof, it is almost impossible not to give in to these destructive emotions. In this sense, honesty towards God (and, of course, towards self) appears as being a first necessary step (although not sufficient!) to make light in our own sin-darkened heart so that, by identifying with precision the emotional root that triggers us on a subconscious level (check out the list in Mk 7:21-23), we will be able to make an informed decision to not give in to our emotions or act based (solely) on them, but, in change, obey God’s commandments and show forth the fruits of the Spirit (see Gal 5:22-23), regardless of how and what we feel.
If the absence of self-control can have disastrous relational and spiritual consequences, hiding, denying, or completely ignoring our true feelings will, in time, leave us with profound wounds in our souls by creating confusion, bitterness, a hardened heart, inability to express ourselves or communicate our affections, or even (in extreme cases) physical incapacities. In fact, according to the Bible and medical science, there is a direct causal correlation between our emotional and spiritual state and the health of our bodies (e.g. Prov 17:22). Besides recognizing how we feel, Scripture also speaks of a second essential step in the process of emotional healing: expressing our feelings in such a way that we don’t cause harm to the others around us (Eph 4:26, “In your anger, do not sin”) – to be freed from those feelings that “bubble up” inside us, causing disturbance and a plethora of other issues: “When we were little, many of us were urged by our parents to be good children, without learning how to do it in a spiritual way. The only possible option seemed to be hiding the bad boy or girl, and probably our unconscious plan to be more like Jesus is the same” (Cross 2016, 80).
Whether we’re talking about worry, anxiety, anger, hate, fear, or any other feeling, momentary state, or buried emotion that the Holy Spirit wants to bring to light, our response should reflect total transparency in our relationship with the Lord, the only One who can truly heal our soul when—by renouncing all formalism and religious prejudice—we dare to make ourselves vulnerable and pour out our hearts in an act of radical honesty. This is what we biblically call pouring out our hearts before Jesus who, in Matthew 11:28-29, calls us to lay our burden on him, in complete and unconcealed trust directed towards the One who not only bore those pains on the cross, but who is also able to give us his rest – understood as a state of mental balance and emotional stability that stems from the healing of our souls, by the work of God’s divine grace.
Having the connotation of abundance, this concept of pouring out our hearts before God is typologically associated with the shedding of blood or water within the context of ritual sacrifices that took place in the Tabernacle of Moses (see Lev 4:7, 18, 25), also referring to the desperate prayer of the person who, having reached the “end of his/her rope” and in a state of profound desperation, pours out his/her heart before the Lord without constraints, like an overflowing river (see Lam 2:19), trusting fully in the ability of God to understand our pain (that he experienced on the cross), cleanse our emotions and replacing all our “venom” with his peace.
The Bible contains several accounts about people of faith who, confronted with the hardest of trials and sufferings that seemed never to end, chose to share their pain with the Lord. A prime example of this is Hannah, the faithful mother of the prophet Samuel, who trusted so much in the character of God that she was able to overlook the accusatory remark of the High Priest by admitting that she was “a woman of a sorrowful spirit,” who out of “the abundance of her complaint and grief” had come to the Temple to “pour out her soul before the Lord” (see 1 Sam 1:15-16).
Using a similar language, King David described in Psalm 142 how he “poured out his complaint before the Lord and he showed before him all his trouble,” for when “his spirit was overwhelmed within him, then God knew his path” (see Ps 142:2-3). Last but not least, Jeremiah, also known as the “weeping prophet,” paints in his writings a very graphic image of the feelings that brought him to the edge of despair, feelings that he communicated directly to the Lord through expressions like: “I weep, and my eyes overflow with tears. See, Lord, how distressed I am! I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed, my eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; my heart is poured out on the ground” (see Lam 1:16, 20; 2:11).
Fifth Application: Transparency with our True Thoughts and Intentions
As the apostle Paul points out in his epistle to the Romans, the renewing of our minds is closely linked to our spiritual awareness, expressed by the ability to identify and, subsequently, fulfill God’s perfect will (see Rom 12:2). This “renewal” (or recalibration) of the mind through the daily immersion in the Word is more than an intellectual absorption of the precepts of the Bible. It aims to bring clarity and peace by gradually replacing the false and unbiblical beliefs that we oftentimes hold with the eternal, immutable, and life-giving Truth that was embodied in the person of Jesus (see Jn 1:14; 14:6).
In regard to our thoughts (the way we perceive reality and understand life at a cognitive level), a true “renewal” can only take place on the grounds of genuine humility, manifested in the courage to admit our need for God, starting from where we are, to get where he wants us to be. Real transformation (which stems from the inside, yet overflows in the exterior) cannot bypass this important step of transparency, of allowing us to become vulnerable before our Creator, who invites us to voice not just what we feel but also what we think; in essence, to express all those thoughts that consume us, by submitting them before Christ: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have the divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:3-5).
In this short passage, we can identify no less than four denotative and connotative terms that describe various processes of mind: strongholds (gr. ὀχυρωμάτων, “fortresses” in a figurative sense), arguments (gr. λογισμοὺς, meaning “reasoning,” “argument” or simply “thought”), pretensions (gr. ὕψωμα, meaning “heights,” but figuratively alluding to the idea of prideful imaginations) and, of course, thoughts (gr. νόημα, meaning “mind,” “intellect,” “thought”) referring to the conscious or unconscious beliefs/attitudes of mind which, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we must learn to “take captive.” The question here is: how do we do this? How can we take ownership of our thoughts instead of allowing them to control us? The answer is found in verse 5 of the same passage, where Paul, inspired by the Spirit, speaks of subjecting our thoughts to Christ: in other words, identifying and confessing them to our Savior, who will be neither taken by surprise nor appalled by our selfish intentions and desires, as long as we are willing to be changed and persuaded by his Spirit to let go of our old ways and submit to his will.
Conclusion
Nothing prevents advancement in the Christian life more than the well-meant attempt to deny or dissimulate about who we are or how we feel before the Lord. On the other hand, sincerity with him opens the gate wide for healing, giving us the strength to forgive and process all those feelings and thoughts that have kept us trapped in the prison of our sin-affected mind.
Without replacing true, genuine repentance or the necessity to subject ourselves to God’s perfectly good will, transparency with the Creator manifests in the conscious choice talk honestly with him and to pour out our hearts before him, while receiving what the Holy Spirit reveals to us, as we actively oppose the temptation to reject the truth, or water it down or conveniently select only those parts of it that we want to honestly admit.
When we examine our inner motives in the light of Scripture, false humility and pride vanish, leaving us with a correct perception of ourselves (in relation to him). Only when we dare to be completely honest with the One who made us can we become a “vessel unto honor” so that, freed from perfectionism and unfruitful attempts to please him in our strength, we may enter his much-desired rest (see Heb 4:10). From this perspective, we can conclude that it takes an act of genuine, radical faith in Christ to widely open the gates of our soul and throw ourselves to the mercy of the One who not only agape-loved us to the Cross (Jn 15:13) but indeed loved us foreknowing who we are (Rom 5:8).