Reforming (phase 1), Existential Experience of the History of Salvation (step 4), session 1

First of all, this step is a mouthful.

Secondly, it and the next step are a review of areas which I have given much attention. But I trust in God to use them to bring me the growth that he desires for me.

Sin is not just a dialectical opposite of grace; it is not a trick of God’s love that He uses to show us our poverty and creaturehood so He can then show us how merciful He is. Sin in itself does not demand grace! And therefore, Christian existence is not a dialectical unity of sin and grace; rather, it is a road of decision from darkness to light, according to which the situation of each of us must be judged - Karl Rahner, Spiritual Exercises, as quoted by Step-by-Step Retreats in Step 4:  Existential Experience of the History of Salvation 

I suppose there has been a bit of a movement to view sin itself as either a means or an inseparable obverse of grace. In this view, ultimately my individual sin and our collective sinfulness are both God's fault. St. Ignatius clearly does not hold to this view any more than I do. This step will focus on the general fallen state of humankind; the next will hone in on my individual sin.

It seems to me that both of these steps will have to constantly present salvific grace as the answer to sin.

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven other persons, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomor'rah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example to those who were to be ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked (for by what that righteous man saw and heard as he lived among them, he was vexed in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.  - 2 Pet 2, 4-10

We can choose sin or we can choose grace. We cannot choose both. God's great desire is for our good, but he will not force that choice on us. But just because, by grace, I have repented of one sin or a series of them more destructive than those which I may still indulge, I must not conclude that the sin that remains is of no concern.