God is merciful and kind; God loves us and does not want to put undue burdens and expectations on us. This is not to say sin is nothing to be concerned about, that we will not suffer some consequences for our sins. Obviously, we will. This is because sin creates its own suffering; it is the source and foundation for the pain and sorrow which follows, as it corrupts, harms, or destroys some of the good which comes in its path. What is important for us to remember is that the effects of sin, the damage which sin can and will cause, can be and is transcended by the work of Christ. Grace provides restorative justice; it clears away the decay of sin and restores what sin had destroyed, so that those who cooperate with it can find their way to their heavenly home.
God, through the work of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, works on our behalf, bearing the burden of sin for us. God has made it sure that we do not have to bear all the consequences of sin for ourselves. Without such help, the corruption and infection of sin would eat at us, eat at our very being, so that in the end, it would break us down and destroy us if God did not do this, offering us the grace which we need to contain the contamination and heal the damage it has done to us. The situation we find ourselves in is very much like quicksand; the more we struggle to get out, without any external help, the more we will find ourselves pulled in; however, if someone should come to help us, outside of the quicksand, they can help pull us out, though we still need to do our part and reach out to them, otherwise, they will not be able to do so.
God is not looking for excuses to ignore us, to turn away from us, to become distant from us; God wants to draw us closer, to unite with us in love, the love which is shown to us in the incarnation. For through the incarnation, God’s love draws creation in and unites with it. This is what we find happening in the hypostatic union, where human nature is assumed by the divine person of the Logos, making the two, one.
Sadly, many. way too many, Christians do not understand this; they believe that God is always looking for excuses to push them further away, to send them off to hell. Because of this, their message tends to be such that they say we must do all we can to appease God, doing whatever we can to circumvent God’s inclination to keep us apart. Acts of piety, acts of worship, must be done just right; even a slight mistake, even a slight deviation within one’s intentions, is enough to give what God needs to justly casting us aside. Such an understanding undermines God’s love; the message of Christ, which is the message of God’s love for the world, is lost and what often is established in its place is the ideology presented by Job’s friends in the book of Job, an ideology which understands all the suffering in the world as proof of God’s unfavorable attitude toward us for all that we have done. God certainly cares about what we do, but this is because God is concerned for us and our well-being. We are the ones who go astray, and when we do so, God’s concern for us has God work to help us and lead us back to where we belong, that is, united with God in love. While we should strive for purity in love, and find such purity in love influencing all that we do, including and especially our spiritual devotions, we should not be led to believe that if our devotions, if our acts of piety, are imperfect, God will no longer love us, and without that love, God will cast us away. If it were that easy to lose God’s love, then, as Abba Theodore explained, salvation would be impossible: “Abba Theodore of Enaton said, ‘If God reproaches us for carelessness in our prayers and infidelities in our psalmody, we cannot be saved.’”[1]
Sin, of course, should be avoided; sin destroys us from within, causing us much pain and sorrow (even if, with sin, there always is some good involved, and with that good, some pleasure and joy which comes out of it). When God’s anger or wrath to sin is mentioned, we should understand it metaphorically or analogically. We should see such anger, if we are to call it such, is aimed at the way sin causes us harm, the way sin wounds what is good in the world, and not at the sinner, who is a person whom God loves. God’s wrath works at the sin to eliminate it so that it’s harm can be undermined. God works to stop it from causing more damage than it already has, and in this fashion, God’s anger, God’s wrath at sin, is really a reflection of God’s love for the world, because it is aimed at making the world, and those who sin, better. For this reason, as sin can be seen to cause God to act, to bring grace to those who need it, and as such grace brings more with it than restorative justice, but deifying grace, we can understand, with St. Ambrose, that sin can ironically be seen as “beneficial.” This is not to say, of course, the sin itself is beneficial, as it is not; but rather, God is able to make some good, indeed, a greater good out of it, thanks to grace which God uses to heal the harm it has caused. Despite whatever corruption is involved in sin, God’s desire for creation will have God work with what sin has done and find a way to turn things around and establish something greater out of it (as, of course, the medieval hymn, the Felix culpa exemplified). And so, Ambrose explained, many of God’s greatest saints were also great sinners; God’s desire for the world had God work in and through them and what they had done, finding a way to overcome their failings so as to bring something good to the world through their lives. God, likewise, has a desire to do the same with us, despite whatever faults we might have:
In other cases we can also recognize that a sin is actually beneficial and through the Lord’s providence sins have sneaked up on saints. Saints are proposed to us for imitation and there is a concern that even they should fall on occasion. For if they would manage the course of this life among so many enticements without committing any offense, they would give to us weaker people the excuse to conclude that the saints had been of a higher and divine nature, so that they could not have any fault or complicity in any crime. This belief, of course, is one that would prevent us from undertaking an imitation that is impossible, because we would have no share in their nature. Thus the grace of God passes them by just a bit, so that their life might become a model for our imitation and we might draw from their actions a lesson as much in repentance as we have in innocence. Thus when I read of their failures, I recognize them as companions in weakness: when I believe that they are companions, I presume that they should be imitated.[2]
We, therefore, can and should accept our weakness, not as an excuse to continue to do wrong, but rather, as a reason to hope and understand that despite what we do, God’s love continues to be at work with us. God’s love is more powerful than sin. God can and will be able to take whatever good can be found in what we do and use it to make something better of us and the world around us. Of course, we need to do what we can to cooperate with God’s love, God’s grace, so that the greatest good possible can and will be achieved; that is, despite God’s desire for us and the world, God works with us in such a way to give us our freedom to act, allowing us to choose whether or not we will cooperate with grace and be made better, or resist it, and find ourselves continuing to suffer the consequences which sin brings to us through its corruptive nature. What Ambrose reminds us is that however much we try to cooperate with grace, how much we would like to be perfect, we will find, as we slowly progressing from where we are to a better state of being, we still are weak and our weakness will often get the better of us. When that happens, we should not despair. We should realize we can and will get things wrong. We should not do is give up. We must rather look forward to the future when our victory is assured, realizing that as long as we strive for it, we can know, thanks to God love and desire for us, we will receive the grace which we need in order for that victory to be achieved. God is not going to push us away because we slip up. God’s love is too great for that.
[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 79 [Saying of Abba Theodore of Enaton 3].
[2] St. Ambrose, “Defense of the Prophet David” in Treatises on Noah and David. Trans. Brian P. Dunkle, SJ (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2020), 108.
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