“Hell is being looked at,” said the famous existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte. I went to Gettysburg College, and you guessed it, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for two reasons: to play football and to wrestle. A severe neck injury my first year ended both. The next year I transferred to the University of Massachusetts. Why? I did not want to be looked at, looked at as the kid who got injured, looked at as the ex-athlete. The experience of being looked at can be traumatic….
Whatever being a saint, holy, and light in the darkness means the greatest embodiment of these wonderful attributes, the Apostle Paul said, “Yes. I am these things. But I am filled with sin.” In his own words: “It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me…nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh (or “in my sinful nature”)…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7.17, 18, 24)…
Romans 7.13-25 is not telling us everything about the Christian life, but it is zeroing in on something central: the normal Christian life is a heroic struggle with sin. This being the case, how do we now struggle with sin heroically?…
Romans 7.13-25 is a controversial passage, namely because many thoughtful people disagree over what it means. Even though those I disagree with are wrong (ha!), they are still nice people…in a Romans 7 kind of way…
Sue grew up in church. She never knew a day she did not know and trust Jesus. Her testimony has always seemed, well, boring. Throughout her Christian life Sue has wondered, “Am I missing something?” She will tell you she does not struggle with “bad sins,” and what she does struggle with, a little extra self-discipline, will power, Bible study, and prayer can handle…
Paul calls us to enter the arena of real life where the law reveals reality to us – that we are not good people. Why would we ever want to do that? Paul’s answer is the story of his own personal breakdown before the law (v.9), and how breakdown is ultimately healing…
Everyone wants wholeheartedness. Popular and award-winning author and speaker, Brene Brown, has spent her life studying the difficult emotions of shame, fear, and vulnerability. She says these difficult emotions are so painful because we are hardwired for their opposite – “wholeheartedness.” What is wholeheartedness?…
Rocky doesn’t shame his son, but points him to who he already is. Rocky reminds his son of his true identity. And Paul does the same thing in Romans 6:11 when he says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Paul has already laid the ground work and made very plain that their bodies are no longer to live in sin, but now he hammers the point: Consider it….
In other words, the cosmic acceptance and affection we crave and strive for is not found in people or in our performance but rather is found in Jesus and His performance.
Justification is a big deal. Every human heart craves it, inescapably needs it, and yet struggles to obtain it. Why the struggle to obtain a solid and true sense of acceptability, approval, security, meaning, or justification? The answer is in the way we try to obtain it…the default way of human effort or performance…
