mulling over grace...

I’m not your average college student. While many of my friends view summer break as a time to kick back and relax and do absolutely nothing, I see it as a great opportunity to further my learning. I’ve contemplated what I would like to focus my attention on this summer, and I’ve decided that I would like most of my attention to be on the letters of the New Testament. I have done so much research in the Old Testament that my New Testament studies are virtually non-existent. I started with one of my favorite Pauline letters, 1 Timothy, last night. I love this letter, because I can read it and experience it as if it were written directly to me. It is encouraging, convicting, uplifting, and, overall, beautiful.

“What is it that makes a sin a sin?” I think this is a very valid question, and one I’ve thought about a lot. There are many answers to this question, and many are right. See, I don’t think there’s “one” correct answer, leaving all other answers out of the pale of orthodoxy. I believe there are various “right” answers, and these answers are all “right” because they illuminate different aspects of sin. I’ve always equated sin as a selfish, greedy, indifferent heart and that which flows from this heart. Yet there is also a simpler way of looking at it that I have contemplated. Sin is that which goes against the nature of God, plain and simple. A heart that goes against the nature of God’s heart is sinful. Actions that go against the nature of God’s character are sinful. Hmmm…

I’ve been reading “The Ragamuffin Gospel” and here is a quote that I really like from chapter one:

Jaroslav Pelikan notes: “Luther suddenly broke through to the insight that the ‘righteousness of God’ that Paul spoke of in [Romans 1.17] was not the righteousness by which God was righteous in himself (that would be passive righteousness) but the righteousness by which, for the sake of Jesus Christ, God made sinners righteous (that is, active righteousness) through the forgiveness of sins in justification. When he discovered that, Luther said it was as though the very gates of Paradise had been opened to him.” (20)

God has made me righteous. He has given righteousness and holiness to me. I am 100% righteous. 100% holy. 100% innocent. This status has been given to me not because I did enough works or succeeded at not doing something extremely wicked, but because He loves me and I have come to Him in faith. My actions—good or bad—do not determine my holiness. If I live a life overflowing with good deeds and hardly any sinful deeds, I am no holier or more righteous than the Christian next to me who is a struggling porn-addict and alcoholic. I have been placed in right standing with God not by anything I’ve done, but by what Christ has done on the cross. He sacrificed himself as a blood offering so that I could come into the presence of God by means of forgiveness of sins and experience a renewed friendship with Him. I am in the league of divinity not by my own merit but through the great and abounding love and grace of God.