The Tiers of Sin

One of the significant slivers of conditioning that I’ve had to wrestle as a shattered-and-redeemed woman, is many years of training that sin has tiers.  Sort of like a small, medium and double-triple-XL spectrum of sin measurement. Unfortunately when I learned the beautiful gift of confession, it was apparently attached to a commensurate punishment, which of course, meant my 12-year-old brain would simply pre-calculate the right level of sin to confess.  Easy.  Sorrowfully tell just enough to be believable but don’t tell the part about that really bad cuss word I test drove on the playground last week.  Sin had tiers.

Yea, I didn’t get it.

So, if my long dance with deception (fast forwarding now) was something closer to double-triple XXL, does that make my experience of redemption all that much sweeter? To wit: Is our enthusiasm for the miracle of scandalous grace from a God who’s crazy in love with His children commensurate with the depths of darkness from which He plucked us?

I know. It’s not. It’s just a bone I discovered as I began to realize that God really did redeem and rescue me fully. He didn’t leave me dangling, in need of more stuff. The measuring scale is obliterated.

That’s scandalous.

How could He love us so much that my tiny little individual existence has been re-formed from the inside-out?

As I’ve learned more each year about the stunning power and never-changing story of God’s love and character, I grow more astonished.  The simplest of truths, day in and day out.  The intellectual complexities of understanding how it all happened (so far) and realizing the new life to which we are called, keeps us challenged and awestruck.

The most thrilling way to live.

Now I actually seek out the gunkiest crud that I want to confess to a Father in heaven who invades my heart with grace and who delights in showering me with love. Love that I feel in every bone of my body. There’s still plenty of sin to confess, but now I have the whole story.

It makes me brave.

And you?