Way Worse Than I Thought

When I was living in Cedar Rapids in 2008, we experienced a catastrophic flood—even worse than the flood Waverly experienced at that time. Months later, when I would try to give a non-Cedar-Rapidian a perspective of just how bad the flood was, I would put my hands in a loose, open circle and say, “According to the flood maps, this was a 100-year flood.” Then I would increase the distance between my hands about six inches and say, “Here is a 500-year flood.” Then I would spread my hands another two or three inches and say, “And this was the flood of 2008.”

As the citizens of Waverly know from first-hand experience, the 2008 flood was bad. But when you dive into the numbers and hear the stories from Cedar Rapids… it was way worse than most people realize. For instance, the Cedar River crested at 31 feet, nearly 11 feet higher than any previous flood. Over 10 square miles of the city was covered in water. Ten thousand citizens were displaced, and thousands lost their homes entirely. An estimated $2.4 billion worth of damage occurred. This is why many officials, experts, and historians described it as the worst flood in Iowa’s recorded history.

The Flood of Sin

In today’s American culture, nearly all of us know we have messed up, having committed what Christians call sin. But we often minimize our sin with statements like…

• “Well, I haven’t murdered anyone!”
• “He cheated on me first!”
• “It wasn’t that much money.”
• “Oh come on, everyone else is doing it.”
• “It was just a small lie.”
• “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

But in Titus 3:3, the Apostle Paul reminds us that our sin is far worse than we realize or want to admit:

“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3, ESV)

Here in Iowa, we have all sorts of great people. So this list of sins in Titus 3:3 just doesn’t seem accurate. Most people we know from work, school, or the neighborhood don’t seem foolish or disobedient, nor do they seem to live with malice or hatred.

And yet, deep down, apart from the transforming work of Jesus, verse 3 describes our condition far more accurately than we want to admit. Our sin is far worse than we realize. It doesn’t matter if someone else has done worse. Sin is not a competition between humans – it is an affront to a holy God. What makes our sin so detestable, worse than we realize, is His grandness, perfection, and glory.

But there is a silver lining in this bad news: When you finally recognize that your sin is way worse than you or others originally thought, you’re ready to hear the good news of the gospel… which is what we’ll see in next week’s One Thought from Titus 3.