Grace, Love, Courage & Sin: Part 1

It is difficult to bring together in a few paragraphs these ideas: grace, love, and courage.  Character traits and emotions are complicated and multifaceted, making them almost impossible to concretely define.  Through life they appear and reappear, often with different faces. Not bad faces, just different.  Sometimes grace is accepting; sometimes it is enabling.  Sometimes love is gentle; sometimes it is harsh. Sometimes courage is quiet strength; sometimes it is boldly stepping out.  There is a time and season for everything.  Often, in my short 22 years, I have found all three walk hand-in-hand.  They are connected and intertwined, often influencing each other.  The blurred boundaries make separation impossible.

Grace.  I have often heard of it, experienced it, and given it.  It is the frequent cry of the guilty. It is what a sinner clings to.  It is accepting. Grace is the saving favor in which we have no merit. But it is also sufficient in the sinner's life to produce obedience.  It is enabling.

Love.  A most frequently used term. It is a Mother's affectionate touch. It is a soft and patient voice. It is gentle.  Love is the unconditional, immutable power by which God made a way for forgiveness.  But it is also the same Father's firm rebuke.  It is harsh.

Courage.  I will always think of it in To Kill a Mockingbird.  It is doing the right thing, all odds against, with no promise of success. Courage is day by day committing to truth. It is quiet strength. But it is also facing the giants of evil.  It is a man submitting to His Father's will, in full knowledge of what He would bear.  It is boldly stepping out.   

For the Christian, all three are vital in  battling sin.  I thank God daily that His grace in my life has saved me from what I was, but also that it is making me what I ought to be.  It has accepted me, and now it is enabling me.  His love comforts me and has forgiven my sins, but it also is the continual correction for the sin that remains.  It is gentle in its forgiveness, but harsh in its rebuke.  Lastly, courage.  Atticus Finch said, "courage is... when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."  We may fight daily battles; we may lose.  But we fight anyway.  The difference between Atticus and the Christian however, is that though we may tally small loses, we know the greatest victory has already been won.  We stand firm everyday, even when feeling we have already lost, and take heart in Christ's infinite victory.  The Christian holds with quiet strength, when tempted to despair at sin, to the bold stepping out of our Savior.       

Sin will not go softly.  It will fight and cling to its host like cancer in a struggling body.  But it will fight in vain.  Grace, love and courage did not end with the crucifixion but were resurrected with Christ.  Victory has been attained.  Do not grow weary in battling sin,  for we have been promised that it was "licked" before it began.  God has and will continue to save me from myself, He will redeem what is His. 

"Through all I've experienced these last two years, I have become persuaded of and am confident in this: GOD WINS!... He wins because He heals a sinner from her sin-sickness and removes every last vestige of selfishness and ugliness from her soul.  God wins not because He takes away what is hard in our life --Oh, He will one day cure us of these sufferings and restore our losses, but I tell you that God wins, because in Christ, He is saving you from yourself. " -Jennifer Uwarow