e-vo for June 23

Dearest e-votees,

The epistle lesson for this Sunday is Romans 6:12-23.  It is worth a read.  I'd encourage you to pick up your Bible, give it a read, and then come back to this devotion.  We'll wait right here for you.

Peace,

Karl

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Paul asks the question:  since we are saved by grace (pure gift, can't be earned, can only be received) should we just go ahead and sin all the more?  In other words, since we can't earn our salvations and since God's grace is able to trump our sins how about we sin all we can knowing God will save us?

This is what Bonhoeffer called cheap grace.  Taking the cost of grace (not a cost that we paid, we can't but rather the cost that God paid through sending God's son to earth and the cost that Jesus paid on the cross) as if it were nothing cheapens and diminishes what God has so graciously done for us.

If we understand the magnitude of what has been done then we have a responsibility to live in response to that gift in ways that brings glory to God.  We are called to take up our own crosses and follow after Jesus.  We are called to regard the grace as a costly grace and treat it as the valuable gift that it is.

Deathbed conversions (hey, it seemed to work out for Dysmas, the thief on the cross next to Jesus), sly-winks to unrepentant sins, self-righteously declaring our sins to not be as bad as someone else's betrays our cheapening of God's grace.

Sometimes things come our way from benefactors that are so stunningly generous and costly that all we can do is in turn pay that gracious gift forward.  If we truly understand how God has forgiven us and set us free then we ought to be stirred offer that grace and freedom to others.  I think that was the point of Jesus' teaching about the unforgiving servant who moments after having a stifling debt forgiven turned around and choked out a fellow servant for couch cushion fodder.

The call on us is to live with an awareness of what has been bestowed on us by God's grace.  The call on us is to share that goodness with others who are not yet aware (or who were and forgot).

God, continue to pour your grace upon us.  Help us to find ways to live in response in ways that delight you and bless our neighbors.  Amen.