What is Grace Pt. 1

Lately I've been rereading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.  This book is beautiful because it's all about God's grace for us.  I think before we look at grace, we need to understand who God is, what sin is, and why they are both such a big deal.  In part two, I'll spend time actually talking more about God's grace.

Who is God?  This question is too big to answer in any concise way, but I'll do my best.  God is first and foremost, holy.  What does that look like?  It means that God is set apart from us.  God is by nature perfect on top of being holy.  This means that God can't be in contact with anything that is unholy or having sin.

What is sin?  I think it's pretty hard to summarize as well because it's such a large thing to understand.  When translators tried to translate the words for sin in Greek and Hebrew into English, they had a hard time finding a way to encapsulate what sin is.  They picked the word "sin" because in archery anything less than a perfect bulls eye is considered as such.  Sin can literally be translated into anything that is short of the mark.

If you've ever read Leviticus, the third book in the Bible, you've gotten a pretty good idea of what sin is.  Granted, these laws were written for a specific people in a specific time.  God had rules for everything from how to eat to how to handle dead animals.  There were ways to make yourself ritually clean after coming into contact with sin and death.  These laws were created to not only keep God's children safe, but also create an understanding that we can't make it to God apart from God Himself.  As a result, the Israelite people had to sacrifice animals.  The blood of the animals covered the debt in blood that God's people owed.

Jesus Christ was sent to atone for our sins, or the ways that we miss the mark of what God calls us to.  This is really powerful because the Bible states "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 6:23. We all sin because humanity is inherently sinful.  You can argue that this is not the case, but who teaches toddlers to lie?  No one, but they still do it.

Sin equals death and God equals life.  This is really important to remember because apart from God we are dead both on the inside and will be eternally separated from God in death.  We need Christ in our lives to become alive and be united with God in Heaven.