I described how the word "grace" in Strong's Greek Concordance defines the word as gift, favor, mercy, and especially the divine influence in the heart of man and it's reflection in the life as a result of his goodness toward us.
I mentioned that when we look at Romans 3:24 (being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ) and understand grace to be a "gift" from God or mercy or favor granted us, the inference is that we became justified (made righteous) by Jesus' sacrifice and this justification became a reality in our life around the event of us accepting Christ as our Savior; the event being that we became aware of Christ's sacrifice and "believed" on Him.
There is a truth in this belief however it leaves us with the understanding that upon our acceptance of Christ the slate of sin has been wiped clean and we are made new (2 Corinthians 5:17 "therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation"....) only to find ourselves gathering the stain of sin again with the passing of time. If we are going to be honest with ourselves we know we will sin again. And so when we do, we have been taught that there is something we must do again in order to be cleansed of our sin and become righteous again (1John 1:9)
The prevailing thought here is that "sin" has been defined over the centuries as a "wrong deed or thought; a wrong attitude; a wrong action or inaction. And as such we find ourselves on the merry-go-round of sin and repentance...sin and repentance.....over and over with the hope that some day we will be sinning less and bearing more fruit.
For years, we have understood the word sin to be defined as above. What has become muddy to us is the issue that Jesus paid the price for our sins once and for all, yet we still sin.....we still have wrong deeds or thoughts; wrong moral reasoning's; bad actions or lack of good actions....yet the bible says sin has been done away with. Because of this, many have said that we can walk free from sin when we understand God's Grace.....and that we won't want to sin once we yield to this love and grace while at the same time, those who disagree with the message of "grace" say that this sort of belief lends itself to the notion that we are granting a license to sin.
Let's be real about this.....as long as we live in these flesh and blood bodies, we will always have misdeeds, wrong attitudes bad actions and so on. We don't want to do these things but like the Apostle Paul said in Romans 7:15 "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate". ESV.
What we need to do is to reorient our understanding of the word "sin". For too long we have understood sin as the dictionary describes it. But keep in mind, the definitions in our dictionary change with time, keeping in line with the prevalent thinking of the day. For instance..... in the early 1900's if you looked up the word "gay" in the dictionary, you would find the definition "happy, excited, exuberant; having high spirits". Today, the first thing that comes to mind is "sexually attracted to someone of the same sex:. Another example is the word "wicked". Several years ago this word meant "morally bad; evil, disgustingly unpleasant". But today the word can mean "going beyond reasonable limits; of exceptional quality of degree (he throws a wicked fastball".
Now, imagine what can happen to the understanding of a word over several centuries. The word “sin” in most instances of the new testament all come from the Greek word “hamartano” which means to be separated, to miss the mark, or to be estranged or mistaken in such a way as to not have a share in the prize.
What mark are we missing? What prize are we not sharing in? What is it that causes us to be estranged from God? There is much to be said about this, but for the sake of ending this post for now, suffice it to say that because we are unable to walk free from mistakes; misdeeds; wrong attitudes; "less than stellar" acts of love and compassion toward others produce in us the concentration on our shortcomings, thus challenging our belief that we truly have been made righteous. It obstructs our capability of recognizing that what we "do" or "do not do" has no bearing on what Christ set out to do on the cross.....to defeat the penalty of sin and restore us to the original design God created in Adam and Eve before the fall.
Next post, I will go into this discussion of sin a little deeper. But for now, know this.....that the blood of Christ has covered all our shortcomings and we now are able partakers of the divine nature God breathed into man from the beginning of time. It is His desire that you tune out the misdeeds of your day and open your heart to God who loves you with a love that is always contending for the highest possible good in every situation and relentlessly contending for that good until it becomes a present tense reality in your life.
May you experience the enrichment of His divine influence in your heart today.
Jim
