When you’ve done something wrong, and you know you’ll be in trouble, the natural instinct is often to run and hide.

That’s what the first sinners did after they committed the first sin and knew they’d be in trouble (i.e., that they would die!). So they tried to hide from God:

And they heard the sound 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 among the trees of the garden (Gen 3:8).

While observing the kids in the neighborhood, I’ve also noticed the same phenomenon. One second, you’ll hear the sound of kids laughing and playing. The next second, you hear a thud followed by cries of pain, and suddenly the rest of the kids scatter like rats!

But it’s not only kids. How many adults try to run from their sins, too? They switch jobs, move to a different city, change schools, go church shopping, get divorced and remarried, and do everything they can to start over elsewhere.

How many think they can even run and hide from God?

That may be a natural instinct, but it is a fallen one. It’s one born out of a certain vision of God as a divine lawmaker who can do nothing else but judge and condemn. And there is some truth to that picture of God—He is our Judge. He does express wrath on sin.

But it’s not the whole picture—especially after Jesus came, became the propitiation for the sins of the world, and ascended to heaven.

You see, things are different now.

Jesus made things different.

After all, He is your mediator with God:

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5).

Or, to use a different illustration, Jesus is your defense attorney, making a case for you when you sin:

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1).

Zane Hodges thought that Jesus’ advocacy for you involved praying that your faith would not fail and that you could continue to be useful to God in Christian service (The Epistles of John, p. 70).

The bottom line is that Jesus is on your side.

Given that, here’s a new instinct for you to cultivate: when you sin, instead of running from God, run to Jesus.