Friday, July 19, 2013

Sins Cannot Overcome God’s Grace

Who was to blame for humankind’s first sin in the Garden of Eden? Was it Adam’s fault for failing to keep the serpent out of the garden and then standing silently beside Eve while the serpent deceived her (Gen. 3:6)? After all, he had been assigned by God the task of guarding the garden. Or was it Eve’s fault, as Adam was so quick to suggest (Gen. 3:12)? Was it really the serpent’s fault, as Eve suggested (Gen. 3:13)? No, as God makes clear in his judgment, all were at fault.
 
Yet even out of that sordid scene in the garden comes a message of hope. God’s purposes for man’s ultimate good will stand; they cannot be frustrated by human failures. This is a tremendously important biblical principle: your sin, even while it may have real and lasting earthly consequences, cannot derail God’s gracious purpose for your life
 
This principle of God’s goodness and firm purpose enduring in spite of, and even through, human sinfulness, is evidenced once again in and through the sorry sight of family disharmony that we encounter in Genesis 27.
 
--- Iain M. Duguid, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: 
The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob, 2002.

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