(This one's long, so the Prayer is first!)
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”" (Gal. 5:13-14 NLT)
Perfect, Holy, and Awesome God in Three Persons,
Thank you for revealing yourself to us through Creation. Thank you for the beauty of your earth, its animals and plants, and we who are created in your Image. Thank you for not giving up on us in the Garden of Eden, at the Tower of Babel, during the Exodus, or a host of times since. Thank you for sending Jesus to show us the Way to the Father. Thank you for convicting us of our sin and drawing us into your arms of forgiveness and grace. Thank you for offering us the Abundant Life lived in relationship to You and for calling us to tell others about your Love.
Help your Church throughout the world to speak Truth into confusion and darkness, but to LOVE instead of singling out groups of people to condemn. Convict your children where we have been unloving, and give us great depth of mercy for the Lost. Help us to have mercy on those who are still trapped in their own choices to sin. Give us courage to LOVE people and show them Your More Excellent Way. In the redeeming name of Christ we pray...Amen.
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After about 15 months of journalling through the Psalms, I finally ran out. One to 150 - all done. Now what? I want to better understand theology of salvation ("soteriology"), so I decided to start Paul's epic letter on that topic, Romans. At my current rate it will be another 15-18 months before I finish, but that's ok. I'm not trying to hurry through my reading, but instead I'm going verse by verse and just listening....listening to what the Word has to say...and writing down things that strike me.
Last night I was reading the end of Romans 1. Paul begins by expressing his initial greetings and desire to visit the people at Rome and share the Good News with them. Then he begins his explanation of sin with the idea that God has revealed himself - and, therefore, what is not of God - to people through Creation since the beginning of time. "So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused." (v. 20c, 21 NLT)
Whether you are a Christian or not, I would expect you can see a world that has become dark and confused. And to the Christian, it's obvious that sin has a great foothold in our world. Paul then spends a whole paragraph (in the NLT) to talk about the sin of homosexuality. For many ministries, pastors and churches, this is where their focus on this chapter lies. They spend lots of time and energy berating the practice of homosexuality. But Paul's chapter goes on beyond that...and I think there's a real message to that.
28 "Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. 29 Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. 31 They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. 32 They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too." (NLT)
While you could say the previous paragraph was directed at one group of people - those who choose to act on homosexual impulses - this paragraph paints a fuller picture of Paul's definition of sin. Here's the list:
wickedness
sin
greed
hate
envy
murder
quarreling
deception
malicious behavior
gossip
backstabbers
haters of God
insolent
proud
boastful
invent new ways of sinning
they disobey their parents
refuse to understand
break their promises
are heartless
have no mercy
know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway
encourage others to do them
While most of the world can avoid seeing itself in the "homosexual paragraph," I doubt any of us could avoid everything in this second paragraph's list. There's just too much juicy sin -- too much easy sin -- too much we might find hard to define ("What is deception in my specific situation, anyway?") -- too much that if done in secret we can kind of push under the rug ("That wasn't gossip, that was a prayer request!"). I may not be a hater of God, but I do struggle with envy. I may not have murdered, but I have quarrelled. You may also find yourself somewhere in the list.
Later on in Romans Paul says something very famous in Christian circles:
"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Rom. 3:23-24 NIV)
If Paul had stopped at the first part of that verse, we might as well just give up on this 'be-friends-with God' thing; there's no way sinful creatures like us could come anywhere close to a holy and perfect God. But just like Paul's definition of sin didn't end with homosexuality, his treatise on sin has a different ending -- GRACE. We can be justified by God's freely given grace when we believe in and accept the redemption that came from Christ Jesus. Whew!
So, that leads me to another question: why does today's Church spend so much time talking about and condemning homosexual choices, and not so much for this much wider net of potential sin? Is it because we find it easier to point fingers at a fairly small proportion of the population (less than 5% in U.S.) than recognizing our own sins? Is it easier to make a category ("sexual sins") worse than "regular sins", instead of realizing the ways we do not follow our Lord's command to "Love"? Isn't a sin a sin a sin a sin a sin? I think God sees sin in that manner - anything that is against God's will, anything that draws us away from God, anything that keeps us from loving God and each other - is sinful.
Some would say that there are varying degrees and depths of sin, and maybe there are: some sins certainly seem to harm many more people than do other sins. But, is that how God sees us? Does he see the sin of homosexuality as worse than murder or gossip or disobeying your parents? Or are we asking the wrong question. I think God sees all our sin - ALL of us - as needing to be saved from ourselves, our sinfulness, and brought to the Abundant Life in Christ. When we accept the gift of Grace and salvation through faith, God no longer sees us as sinful, but as Beloved Children of the King of Kings.
A few final words...
"We know, dear brothers and sisters, that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own people." (I Thes. 1:4 NLT)
"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness." (Rom 6:12-13 NIV)
“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye." (Matthew 7:3-5 NLT)
"For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”" (Gal. 5:13-14 NLT)
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