Sin

Herbert McCabe on Sin, Forgiveness, and God’s Love

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

“The initiative is always literally with God. When God forgives our sin, he is not changing his mind about us; he is changing our mind about him. He does not change; his mind is never anything but loving; he is love. The forgiveness of sin is God’s creative and re-creative love making the desert bloom again, bringing us back from dry sterility to the rich luxuriant life bursting out all over the place. When God changes your mind in this way, when he pours out on you his Spirit of new life, it is exhilarating, but it is also fairly painful. There is a trauma of rebirth as perhaps there is a trauma of birth. The exhilaration and the pain that belong to being reborn is what we call contrition, and this is the forgiveness of sin. Contrition is not anxious guilt about sin; it is the continual recognition in hope that the Spirit has come to me as healing my sin.

So it is not literally true that because we are sorry God decides to forgive us. That is a perfectly good story, but it is only a story. The literal truth is that we are sorry because God forgives us. Our sorrow for sin just is the forgiveness of God working within us. Contrition and forgiveness are just two names for the same thing, they are a gift of the Holy Spirit; the re-creative transforming act of God in us. God does not forgive us because of anything he finds in us; he forgives us out of his sheer delight, his exuberant joy in making the desert bloom again.”

– Hebert McCabe, “Hope” in God, Christ and Us, p. 16-17.

I think this is the kind of ground-level theology that would make Stanley Hauerwas and Douglas Campbell happy.
What are your thoughts on the above quote from McCabe?

Paul: In Fresh Perspective

~ Jessica Parks ~ 6 Comments

I’m reading through N.T. Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective for my class on, you guessed it, Paul.  This is my first time reading it… I know, I’m a little late to the game.  Thus far I’ve read chapter 1 (Paul’s Word, Paul’s Legacy) and chapter 2 (Creation and Covenant) and have really enjoyed it.  I’ve been rather perplexed by Paul since our Greek reading class through Romans last semester–the more we waded through Paul’s argument the more we all came out with different opinions!  Wright has helped to clarify some ideas for me, in particular with these themes of creation and covenant, and I’m looking forward to the rest of this book as well as his new book on Paul (Paul and the Faithfulness of God) coming this November.

I could quote this book all day long, but for now a rather long sentence on the problem of sin and death:

“When we begin with creation, and with God as creator, we can see clearly that the frequently repeated warnings about sin and death, referred to as axiomatic by Paul, are not arbitrary, as though God were simply a tyrant inventing odd laws and losing his temper with those who flouted them, but structural: humans were made to function in particular ways, with worship of the creator as the central feature, and those who turn away from that worship — that is, the whole human race, with a single exception — are thereby opting to seek life where it is not to be found, which is another way of saying that they are courting their own decay and death.” (p35)

Our Past, Our Conscience, and the Blood

~ Chad Chambers ~ Leave a comment

For many Christians, the reason we never more from “dead works to serve the living God”  (Heb 9:14) is our past. We believe the blood of the Lamb is powerful enough to cleanse us from our sins, but our conscience is left unchecked, untouched by the blood. Our conscience and its view of our past reigns over our life.

Our conscience defines us by our past. Gregg Matte, pastor at Houston’s First Baptist Church, asked this past Sunday,

“How do you fill in this blank? I am a __________.”

He was trying to get us to move from first recognizing ourselves by our roles (mom, dad, teacher, student, accountant) and to begin with our identity in Christ (I am a Christian). But for many the voice in our head fills in this blank all to easily. Our first answer is not our role or identity in Christ, but that moment, that action, that person from last week, last month, last year, last decade, last century that never allows us to move on. Through this one thing our conscience defines who we are.

Once our conscience can define us, it begins to control us. To be blunt, because that is how we deal with ourselves. We might sugarcoat what we say about others, but with ourself we never hold back. “I am a – whore, idiot, liar, thief, cheater, addict, etc.”. We still believe this is truly who we are and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We cannot seem to escape our past because we keep repeating the past.

Finally, when our conscience is allowed to control our actions, we ultimately accept it will never change. We give up. Our conscience wins. We are paralyzed unable to move. If our conscience isn’t touched by the blood of the Lamb our life will never change!

Into this, Hebrews speaks a word of truth…”How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from the dead works to serve the living God.” The blood of Christ purifies you completely! You are set free of sin (9:15), cleansed from all unrighteousness (9:22), and the power of sin is destroyed (9:26). Your actions and your conscience are purified!

Let today be the day your past loses control and you are set free to serve the living God!