Galatians 2:17 - On sin and the stuff of heaven...

"But if seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves also were found sinners, then [is] Christ a servant of sin?  May it never be!"

-Is Jesus Christ a servant, a minister of sin?  He did call Himself a servant, but when He shows up in a person’s life, when they trust in Him, does sin tend to increase?  Paul gives us his emphatic, may it never be!  That would never happen, not in a million gazillion years.  No way, not here, not now, not ever!  In this case, the question is at least somewhat legitimate, in that Paul is contemplating how on God’s green earth a God-fearing Jew could trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins and end up falling into sin, 'cuz that's what it looked like was indeed happening in Galatia.  But it flies in the face of reason and of Scripture that anyone - especially those who are no strangers to the ways of the God of Abraham - would, after giving their heart to Christ, be found doing things which break His heart.

-Which begs one of the questions of the ages: how is it that we can account for the missteps and the massive tragic screwups of those who name the name of Christ?  Sheldon Vanauken wrote about Christianity dying a thousand deaths when those who claim to follow Christ "are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive".  But surely the power of the Gospel is siphoned off completely when God’s people fall into sin.  Abuse, infidelity, greed, worldliness - one does not need to look very hard to see the stain of sin in the lives of so many who say they are Christians, leaders in the church even!  Yet even the darkest fallen heart knows instinctively that sin and the stuff of heaven are incompatible.  Some insist that the very reason they choose not to believe in Christ is because those who (allegedly) are following Him are hypocrites, and that the church is full of them.  Our job then, those who follow Christ, is to walk in the grace of God such that we are free to unmask ourselves and be honest about the fact that we are not yet perfect - simply forgiven - even as we make every effort to cooperate with His Spirit in living a life which increasingly reflects what He is like.  Give 'em heaven as much as possible and own it when we don’t.  Authentic, honest, aspiring, transforming, life-giving - a minister of life.  When we - those who are truly following Christ - show up, LIFE (not sin) happens. Life abounds in fact, life as it was always meant to be...