But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. Romans 5:20 (MSG)
Sin is No Match for Grace – Live In the Movement Series – Part 6
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
Let’s talk about sin, bay-bee. #raisedinthe90’s
The ’S’ word. Three letters that carry more weight than what they should be able to. Preached and spat from mouths behind pulpits (and phone screens) the world over and back, sin has been the dark, ominous, poison that we, Christian or otherwise, have learned to fear, manage, and hide.
But, dear friends, we have attributed too much power to this tiny little word. We have proverbially turned the ant hill into a mountain.
Sin is not some rank of behaviors and actions that hurt God, that are his kryptonite; or that God uses to test us with and reward us accordingly. Sinlessness is not even the goal of our spirituality. It was not the end game of the cross, either.
In his book “Engaging God’s World,” Cornelius Plantinga defined sin to be the “culpable disturbance of shalom.” (1.)
We have reduced “shalom” to meaning peace, which in its most basic unexplained form, it is. But in essence, it means so much more. It’s the harmony that God created the world to exist within: It’s peace with yourself, your neighbor, even your enemy, with the earth, and with God. There’s a flow to it; movement between them all.
Sin is anything that stops the movement of peace. It’s stagnation, violence, hatred, unforgiveness, abuse, and more. Sin always brings about death.
You can point fingers all you want, call it out on social media, try to “love the sinner hate the sin,” but you’ll be fighting the wrong battle. Sin affects us all, whether we’re the perpetrators or the victims, or both (yep). But fighting sin is not the point.
Because even in sin – even in stagnation, death, and darkness – there is an invitation to move.
Paul wrote:
“All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.” Romans 5:20-21 (MSG).
If sin is no match for grace, we need to stop treating it like it is.
“God’s mercy is so infinite and resourceful that God uses even our sin for our own redemption.” Richard Rohr (2).
How? Our sins have a way of punishing us without any Divine help or force. Suffering is often the gateway to transformation and growth.
Jesus' murder and resurrection is the ultimate picture of what happens when we follow the darkness all the way through to the light.
Sin is not the problem, our stubbornness is. Our inability to let “the aggressive forgiveness we call grace” do its work in us; our refusal to dance to the wild yet gentle, unforced rhythms of grace. At any given moment, we are on either end of it in the needing to receive or the needing to give. And it’s difficult on both ends.
But that’s where the work is done (and it is, indeed, work). Not in the constant soul flagellation in pursuit of a disciplined and contrived perfection. But in the wild freedom dance of forgiveness.
Sin halts the movement. That’s all. And that’s OK. “All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it.” Because at any moment, anytime, any place, we can choose to see that our dance partner has not abandoned us, but is holding out divine hands waiting for us to join back in.
“When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.”
The only thing stopping us is ourselves.
Go to Choose to See the Beauty – Live In the Movement Series – Part 7
Written by Liz Milani
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- Cornelius Plantinga. Engaging God's World.
- Rohr, Richard. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Kindle Locations 2997-2998). SPCK. Kindle Edition.
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