24 July 2018 - all we're meant to be

Today's Readings (Audio)

Sin is such a big problem. It is the source of so much pain and unhappiness. When we sin we thumb our nose at our creator. We choose ourselves before God and others. Relationships are broken. People are hurt and become bitter.

Sin is such a problem that we might think of God as fixated on it. So much in the Church is meant to deal with sin we might think of God as someone who, as it were, always has sin on his mind. But this is not the right way to see it. God wants to heal, move on, and forget. He delights in mercy. The Church only mentions sin so that people can get free and receive mercy. 

Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt
and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance;
Who does not persist in anger forever,
but delights rather in clemency,
And will again have compassion on us,
treading underfoot our guilt?

It does hurt God to see us remain in sin. It hurts him because he'd rather only see from us all that he knows we can be. He wants to see us living in the fullness of the victory Jesus died to give us. He wants to see us full of and overflowing with the gifts of the Spirit. We only see condemnations for where we have failed before and a watchful eye for where we might fail next. God, however, is not interested to see us keep walking on these eggshells. He is trying to find just the right way to nudge us closer to him.

"Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother."

We see that avoiding sin and doing the will of God is about more than avoiding the watchful eye of someone who wants to condemn us. It is the condition of our fulfillment in life. When we do the will of the Father we become the people God knows we can be. It is even beyond being our best self. We are new creations by grace, living the very life of the family of God. 

Will you not instead give us life;
and shall not your people rejoice in you?
Show us, O LORD, your kindness,
and grant us your salvation. 

God genuinely longs for the reality of grace, the resurrection, and the new creation to be the primary reality from which we live. He is willing to have mercy and forget our past.

put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (see Ephesians 4:22-24).

Let us live this as the deepest truth of who we are: the new self as part of the family of God. This is what faith attains. This is the victorious life!