Aggressive Forgiveness

By Matt

I read: Romans 4-5 (These chapters are really long!)

Well, Ben's off on his honeymoon and Joel is . . . well, let's not talk about that. Anyways, I'm all alone. However, what better way to deal with dLog isolation than to write!!!!!!!!!!!

I thought I was going to write about the paragraph about how tough times test us and build us up, because I like that sort of thing, but I decided what really jumped out at me was Paul's commentary on the usefulness of The Law: "All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But the sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down."

At first I thought that this paragraph was saying that God kind of messed up because the Law didn't work out right. But when you look at it again, you can see that Paul's intention here was to point out, not that the plan didn't work, but to show that the law emphasized our true nature. I guess you can think of it that when you shine a Law light on someone, you're going to see that person in terms of how they do with the law. If you shine a grace light on someone, you're going to see them in terms of grace. And that's a flattering light right there. Better yet, it's a much stronger light than the Law light! So, in other words, thank God that grace is on our side :)