In a performance-based Christianity it usually goes something like this: the better I do, the better I am. The more I do things that are pleasing to God, the more He loves me and is pleased with me. The more I read Scripture and the more I experience my own pains and mistakes in life the more I understand the transcendence of God. Thankfully He loves me entirely every day of my life.
So how does this fact inform my decisions? With the full love of God at my disposal, doesn’t that give me a license to sin? I love the way Paul phrases it in his letter to the Romans.
Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
Then of what value are our mistakes… our bad judgments… wrong choices… our sins? Freud said, it is “from error to error one discovers the entire truth.” I believe it is as one friend recently told our group as we were studying the Bible: perhaps the reason God gives us second chances is that we might learn from our mistakes.
The more I know of myself and the more I know of God the more I see the gap between us. It is His transcendence that draws me to Him. The fact that He is other causes me to revere Him and also to strive to be like Him. That is the entire truth.
re:THINK 