Repentance

We are sinners.

We are depraved.

We need the grace of Christ. As a Christian I understand this. I hope others in this world are able to understand this as well. However I feel like I along with many other Christians who live this country often miss the glaring implications of what this means. We are sinners. We sin. This means SIN exists in our lives. The good news is salvation covers these sins. But this, in my opinion, has lead to some dangerous thinking, the abuse of salvation.

Salvation, the redemption of God's people, is the greatest free gift this world will know. But American Christians are prone to twist this gift into something it isn't, something vile.

We are blessed with enormous amounts of material, financial, and emotional comfort. This comfort is prone to causing us to lose focus on our relationship, or to sin. Now the critical thing is how do we respond to this sin? The Word tells us to cut off our hand if it causes us to sin. However, America is to scared to cut off our hand. We cannot part with our comfort.

At the same time, we justify this action by saying that Christ died for these sins and its ok for us to slip up a little bit. After all why does grace exist then? This is completely unbiblical and is extremely dangerous thinking. Romans tells us this, [6:1] "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? [2] By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? [3] Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? [4] We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." We cannot continue to sin if we have been justified by Christ.

Furthermore, we hide this kind of sin and justify it by saying we are better than the world. We judge them for their actions while justifying our own. We have salvation so its ok. Well according to Romans, "[2:1] Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. [2] We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. [3] Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? [4] Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? [5] But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."

We judge the world while justifying our sin, using the excuse of salvation to prop the argument up. Its ironic that we justify sin with salvation when in reality salvation has justified us from sin. In fact salvation is supposed to lead to, according to verse 4, repentance. Repentance. I'll repeat that. Repentance. We lose sight of that in our comfort. We don't want to seek that out because we will often become uncomfortable.

We have it good in America. Often too good though. Our sin should lead us to repentance and closer to the Father. It shouldn't lead to excuses of blanket coverage from salvation when sin is repeated. Grace is precious. It offers repentance if we will accept it. It's time we opened our eyes, got a little uncomfortable, and became a depraved servant of the Lord.