Tuesday, March 2, 2021
In the Darkness of Sin,
We May Not Know How to Live Well!
Sanctified, We Can Learn to Live
Wisely and Gently
As the Holy Spirit Guides Us.
Psalm 119:66
Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
James 3:13
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
Words of Grace For Today
After we recognize our own hopeless sinfulness, which God redeems at great cost, forgiving us and renewing life in us, and that we need God’s forgiveness constantly, for we simply cannot stop sinning, then the question is how are we going to live?
The measure we humans have held up returns us right back into works righteousness, as if God suddenly has made us able not to sin, so that we must preform or lose God’s favour and blessings. These two passages certainly could be interpreted that way … making it easy for us to dismiss them.
There is more to it than that.
Once sanctified (made saints by God), though we continue to sin, God pulls out of us great works that further God’s will and work on earth among humans and for creation. Most simply put, God’s willa and work is that God’s Grace is demonstrated to more and more people, and more and more people embrace the cross as God’s demonstration of God’s love for all people; forgiveness, redemption and new life is for everyone. We can live to cooperate with God’s will, or we can constantly choose to defy God’s will and live as if God does not exist, has not created us, does not forgive, redeem and renew us, and as if we can go it alone.
We can go it alone … right to our own damnation, choosing to separate ourselves from God. God still comes to us, forgives us, redeems us, renews us … except at some point God allows us to have our way … and the hell we have created for ourselves is the hell we live forever. At what point this happens is not anything we can know. But that it happens we can know: we can choose to deny God’s good work in us.
How else can we live? There are options that God makes possible for us. Wisdom is one of them.
We can pray: Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.
We can live each day so that our God-given wisdom and understanding is evident in our works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.
These passages then speak to how we can pursue wisdom in our daily lives, not to our own benefit, but to the benefit of everyone around us. They speak of our penultimate striving that God make possible for us.