This week’s Learning God’s Story of Grace lesson is on “The Fall: Wrecking Shalom.” On the Facebook page for the book, I posed the question, “Why study sin?” It’s truly astonishing to me to read the story of the fall and to see how it nails me and how I relate to other people. Kevin Twit has done a great job of summarizing thoughts on idolatry, and I copied in his summary of Tim Lane and Paul Tripp’s book, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making. Why study sin? To see how desperately we need a Savior and to see how amazing God’s grace is.
“God created us to be other-centered but sin traps us in the “inward curvature of the soul” (Luther’s phrase.) This can’t help but have a huge impact on our relationships. Tim Lane and Paul Tripp summarize the six ways sin affects us this way (see the chart on page 36 of their book “Relationships: A Mess Worth Making”)
1. Sin makes you self-centered – When you reject God you create a void that you try to fill with yourself.
2. Sin makes you committed to self-rule – When God’s wise and loving rule over you is replaced with selfrule, other people become your subjects and are expected to do your bidding and bow to your control.
3. Sin makes you self-sufficient – When you reject God, you believe that delusion that you are not dependent. And if you don’t believe you are dependent upon God you will rarely be dependent upon others.
4. Sin makes you self-righteous – When the holiness of God is not your standard you will set yourself up as that standard which makes you want to show other people their “sin” but never want to look at your own.
5. Sin makes you self-satisfied – When you fail to find satisfaction in God you will use everything else (material things or relationships) to try to find satisfaction. You will never live for something bigger than yourself – everything becomes a means to the end of you being satisfied.
6. Sin makes you self-taught – When you are you own source of truth and wisdom, you will never develop the humble teachable spirit that is vital for good relationships.” from Kevin Twit, http://homepage.mac.com/kevintwit/3%20Idolatry%20and%20Relationships.pdf
![When’s the last time you highlighted your weakness?
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Cor. 12:10
All-Powerful God,
We confess,
we in Western culture
crave power, control, and independence.
The last thing we want
is to seem weak.
And yet, weakness is the way of Christ,
so it must be our way as well.
The apostle Paul understood that,
so in the face of accusations
that he wasn’t an apostle,
he countered the boasting of the “super-apostles”
with some boasting of his own:
“If I must boast,
I will boast of the things
that show my weakness” (2 Cor. 11:30).
And then he mentions how he was lowered in a basket through the window of a wall in Damascus, of all places,
a place he went to persecute Jews only to be knocked down on the road,
struck blind, by his Lord and Savior himself.
Paul shares many other weaknesses in 2 Corinthians,
a book that’s all about weakness as the way
of followers of Christ.
He asked that you would relieve him from a “thorn in the flesh,”
but you did not.
Instead, you said,
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in your weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
Lord, we know we really are weak —
[for each of these areas, name any weaknesses you have]
weak in our bodies,
weak in our work,
weak in our wills,
weak in our faith,
weak in our hope,
weak in our love.
We believe
that you your power is made perfect
in and through our weakness.
Help our unbelief.
In Jesus’s name. Amen.
Read 2 Corinthians 11:30-12:10.
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