The Sun Or The Son

Romans 5:15-16 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.  And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

A total solar eclipse is a pretty amazing thing to watch. The sun, for a brief period of time slides behind the moon and our day turns to night for a brief instant. The sun is not totally obscured, but that bright yellow star we call our sun is significantly dimmed. Total eclipse does not happen very often and even when it does we are cautioned to not look directly at the eclipse.

Common sense tells us to never look directly at the sun. What about the other bright light in our lives. The light of Christ is what I am referring to. What can keep us from looking to the Son? One possible faulty reason to not look at the light of Christ is being ashamed of our sins. We are at times embarrassed by how quickly we can fall into sin. Be it small in magnitude, or large in magnitude, it is still sin. If we try to handle it ourselves we fall into a pit of despair. We can become too embarrassed to look to Jesus. We feel as if we have failed our Savior and are no longer worthy. We have failed to do what we earnestly said we were going to do at confession on Sunday morning. This line of reasoning is dangerous, and wrong. Romans 6:17-18 lays it out nicely. But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness.  We are not to despair of our sins. They are forgiven by Christ the crucified. The prisoner has been set free. To continue to despair is to fall into the trap, that pit of despair, that Satan wants you to wallow in for the rest of your life. For if your forget, or disregard, the sacrifice and forgiveness won on the cross, you embrace the death in sin. Not a good choice. My friends this is the trap that many fall into. They believe their sins are to great, or too many to be forgiven. Fix your eyes on Jesus and embrace forgiveness found in Him. Now that does not mean to go out and keep sinning so that grace may be increased. The Apostle Paul has more words about that in Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. My suggestion to you is to spend some time in the study of Romans this season of Advent. My prayer is that you will find it inspiring and enlightening.

PRAYER: Father, Abba, We are Your wayward children. We can quickly become lost without the constant light of Your Son Jesus Christ in our lives. Help us with Your Holy Spirit to grasp onto the faith given to us. Let that faith grow strong within us such that it blots out all the darkness of this world. We ask this in the strong name of Jesus Christ, Amen.