I was strangely intrigued today by a long passage of a 150-page book I’ve been trying to read for a little over two years now (my interest level has been decidedly low up to this point…this is found on page 121-122), Don Everts’ God in the Flesh. The point is to examine the black letters of the Gospels, and see what we can learn from the way people acted around Jesus.
It appears that I’ve finally reached a concluding section, and while discussing an appropriate response to Jesus’ sacrifice, Everts shares this about his life:
In my own life two separate seasons have pegged my soul, more deeply than ever, to the solid work of Jesus on the cross.
The first season was a time of clarity about my own sin. How bad is my sin? I wondered. I began to ask deep, honest questions about what I really believed about sin (sin is being naughty, doing little things that are fun but are for some reason outlawed by God) and began to study what Jesus said about sin (it’s a dark land of deception, dizziness, slavery, spiritual suicide).
The more biblically I understood my own sin, the more brave my thanksgiving started to become. A clear theology of sin has been like water poured on the weak, dying plant of my thankfulness.
