We continue with selections from The Justification Reader by Thomas C. Oden.
The accounting metaphor accords believers the standing of uprightness which they do not reach by their own willing or acting. The believer is dealt with in debt-accounting as if s/he actually had a clear account, due to God's gracious intervention. One cannot on one's own achieve an adequate righteousness. God has mercifully provided it.
This is why one's own moral actions and self-justifications are not the basis for gaining any standing whatever in God's presence. Only in the cross is it possible to see that sin is forgiven without offending God's own righteousness.
I do not think can ever over hear the message about our inability to gain a "standing" before God by our moral actions and self justifications. The work has been done. We are a people given a gift...a status...a place in which we can stand and it is offered to us by the Creator of all that is and ever will be. Sometimes I wonder if I am a bit dense because this makes so much sense...and yet, we can act so contrary to this gracious action by God. This is especially the case within the church...the place and community in which this gracious vision is to be our way, our truth and our life.
Connection: Okay, what would it mean to see ourselves as God sees us!?! This is like beating a drum...but I know that I need to have the drummer never stop the rhythm of life that comes as our God opens the doors of our future for us as we begin to walk within God's gracious domain. What will come of us today when we walk to such a drum beat? How will the cadence of our life today be altered? Go for it!
Merciful Lord, you replenish our hearts with the sweet words of your love for us. It is through your reaching into our hearts that we are truly grasped and then shaped for the living of this day. Thanks be to you for always reaching in even as we attempt to run from you. Amen
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