Grace

Everybody in the world wants a second chance . . .

. . . until it’s someone else who desperately needs a second chance. Then, too often, it’s, “They don’t deserve another chance, after what they did.”

Y’know what? None of us do.

"What you have received freely, freely give."

I contend that the largest obstacle to the manifestation of this command by Christians in the world today is that too many of us fall into at least one of two categories:

• we have not fully received the gift of forgiveness which we have been offered
• we don’t truly believe ourselves undeserving of the grace we have received

That is, we insist on evaluating ourselves in terms of others, as respectively worse or better. We would never think to judge others, of course, because we’ve been so clearly warned against it. Yet in evaluating ourselves in such terms we unconsciously judge, in spite of the warnings.

Christianity is about a different thing entirely. By the action of the Holy Spirit:

• I see that I desperately need what Christ has done for me, could never deserve it and, in fact, have no hope without it (end of evaluation of self/others)
• I embrace the gift of Christ, both of his sacrifice on my behalf in atonement for my sins and of his presence in my life (beginning of my transformation in Christ)
• I recognize that every neighbor desperately needs what Christ has done and the new life I am experiencing in him, realizing that no one else deserves it any less than I do (beginning of personal evangelization mission, sharing mercy and love with others)

But without the first step, often referred to as the first spiritual truth, no matter how much we may think we've taken the second one, we can never overcome our tendency to judge others, whether we're conscious of it or not.