one’s feelings or emotions. “I know the abysses,” and ‘discerner of hearts and searcher of the reins’ were old Egyptian titles for divine beings” (The Expositor’s Greek New Testament, Vol., 5, pp. 361, 362). The true process of disclosing this reality must become complete in the time of the “final atonement.”
Only Christ has fully known what lies within those depths, for He alone was “made . . . to be sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). What He knew slew Him on His cross!
But the reality of self-knowledge was veiled from His apostles. He has to tell them, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of” (Luke 9:55). “Hearing” and “seeing,” the people of His day did “not perceive” (oida, be conscious; Mt. 13:14). Mark adds, “lest. . . . their sins be forgiven them” (4:12). In other words, their sins could not be forgiven unless they became conscious of them.
When David prays, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults” (Psalm 19:12), he is obviously speaking of faults or sins that he cannot be conscious of apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit. He is not speaking of secret sins consciously cherished; if he were, he would say, “We understand our errors.”
Moses prays, “You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance” (Psalm 90:8). He cannot be praying about secret sins already known and confessed, for they are not displayed “in the light” of His “countenance.” They are cast in the depths of the sea. Moses’ prayer vividly depicts mankind’s lifelong conflict with unrealized, unknown sin. The work accomplished in the cleansing of the sanctuary must resolve this problem by the Holy Spirit bringing this sin to full knowledge.
Solomon understood how prone we are to self-deception: “All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the spirits” (Proverbs 16:2). King Hezekiah in his illness sincerely thought he had “walked before [God] in truth and with a loyal heart, and [did] what was good in [His] sight” (2 Kings 20:3). Yet we read that “God withdrew from him, in order to test him, that he might know all that was in his heart” (2 Chronicles 32:31). Hezekiah’s foolish sin of pride disclosed what was there all the time “in his heart,” a classic example of buried, unknown sin in a wonderful man of God highly honored of Heaven. Where he failed, the saints of God must eventually succeed! (See GC 425, 623). They dare not repeat his folly, for if they “should prove themselves unworthy, and lose their lives because of their own defects of character, then God’s holy name would be reproached” (p. 619).
All the while that good King Hezekiah walked in his apparently (to himself) “loyal heart” (“with a perfect heart,” KJV), the books of heaven recorded the sins that he would commit when the “opportunity” presented itself. That “opportunity” came in the visit of the ambassadors from Babylon (see. 5BC 1085). Then his unknown sin of pride was revealed.
The wise in heart of ancient Israel cherished an intelligent grasp of the gospel as did their father Abraham. Therefore they had to discern that the antitypical Day of Atonement comprised the final blotting out of sin through the ministry of the High Priest. He alone could bring unknown sin to consciousness.
Unconscious Sin in Unconverted People
The Jews who rejected Christ never dreamed where their sinful unbelief would lead when at last their “opportunity” came at Calvary.
When the two-horned beast of