The second example is that of a group of angels who do not escape God's judgment. Even in the angel camp there were some who fell away. I like the way Jude says it--"abandoned their own home." How bad does that feel, to voluntarily give up all they've ever known and choosing to go with Satan?! What a gamble--what a loss. Those who had never known anything else quickly lost the glory of heaven and exchanged it for the gates of Hell. No going back, no mercy offered or received.
"How great is God's mercy toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." For some, mercy. For others, judgment.
We should never take God's mercy for granted, or use it as an excuse to sin, or even skirt the edges of possible sin. Why would we? Place your focus where it belongs--straight onto Christ and his death on the cross. Is it about us or is it about Him? Our minds can often deviate from the heart of the matter into peripheral concerns and there we go, down the trail of selfishness, stubbornness, pleasure, whatever.
For those of us who have received mercy, it should never give us license to sin. We have been delivered from SO much!
1 comment:
I think losing sight of (or never really understanding) what "God's mercy" really means is what makes it so difficult for us not to deviate into peripheral concerns. God's mercy can sometimes rest so much on being saved from eternal damnation or it can make us feel hopeless in our human nature -- unable to ever do anything right without God. We call to God but don't feel like we're being heard.
For me, it comes down to that hazy balance between what God is doing in my life and how I am supposed to be doing what God is doing in my life... if that makes any sense. I sometimes just have to ask: "So is anything about me at all?" Well, God loves me. That must mean I matter. But I only matter in the sense of reciprocating love for God -- a love that I can only have because of God, and I have a really hard time knowing how to do that. "For from him and through him and to him are all things." I know we sing that in church all the time, but it's so hard to hear that and see how we fit into this picture of God, the God that is so complete in himself and does not even need us to do anything from him and through him and to him.
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