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Lent 2025: March 8

 I had a lightning bolt experience the other day. It was a deep and disturbing revelation on personal sin. 

I will not burden you with it. It is still shocking me to my toes, even though I know it is forgiven and will be forgiven if it happens again, and that it is not something I will act upon, the existence of the attitude and tendency and character trait involved is disturbing on a molecular level. 

We ARE sinners. That means we do, think, believe, feel sin. It is our being. That is not popular, even among evangelicals. I am a Puritan at heart. Our sinfulness does not change God's love, but it should remind us to "get a life" about our own supposed goodness. 

From the article I quoted earlier, the one by Chris Hunt in GroundWorkOnline: 

A century later, Puritan theologian John Owen critiqued the Roman church for the Lenten practices of mortifying the flesh, the self-denial of giving something up. Owen charged that Lent called people more to “mortification” for its own sake, to count as righteousness, than to actual belief in the all-sufficient work of a Savior. “The truth is, they neither know what it is to believe nor what mortification itself intends...Such men know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (p. 290).

Jesus' work is what I cling to, and no rites or practices can add to it; in fact, there is an argument that they try to (unsuccessfully) take away from it). But...I am still responsible to recognize sin and I think even ask for it to be revealed. That includes not making excuses for it.  Confession should never include a "but."


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