Thinking About Romans 6
If God gets angry with you when you sin then he's been about ready to kill you for the last 20-some years. We can only live under the I-sin-&-God-rages paradigm if we think a) God hates me all the time, or b) I don't sin but once every six months or so, and God cools off after awhile.
What's the reality? The form of our relationship with God is paternal once we believe in Christ and start following him--not judiciary. This is not to say that justice stops mattering to God, or that before we believe in Jesus, God's interest in us is strictly forensic. But Christ steps in, and God's eternal hatred for evil is redirected from us to him.
Thanks to Jesus, our connection to the Father is a relationship, not legalism. God loves you even when you sin in the same way that your parents love you even when they catch you robbing the convenience store. Implications?
Bank on love and sin like mad? This makes sense, in a morbidly logical way. But if it even seems like a reasonable reaction to the love of God, your status as his child is called into question. What kind of child are you? The kind that recognizes the unconditional love of a parent and comes out of the secrecy of the bedroom to shoot up coke in the living room?
The love of God is so beautiful it draws the prodigal home. It is not so beautiful that it creates new rebels.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Your Sin & God's Anger
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4 comments:
The transcendent nature of the gospel message brought into real life once again...Amazing.
Because the accomplishment of Christ on the Cross, the reconcilliation of us back to God, we will live differently in this new life. We were all enemies, and now we live as adopted sons and daughters, children of the king. Now of course the challenge is to begin living like part of the family and not a dead beat
We've been having an ongoing discussion on this issue at an online community that I frequent. Everybody acknowledges that works do not equal salvation, and that our sins after accepting Christ into our hearts is definitely forgiven. But given the two central commandments - loving God as well as others - if we say we accept Him into our hearts and our actions overwhelmingly do not reflect that love to Him or to our neighbours, what does that say about the validity of our claim to faith?
Just a side note - the best way to shoot up Coke in the living room is to throw a pack of mentos into the bottle.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Beautiful post, man.
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