I was reading a blog this week by Tullian Tchividjian. He makes a few brilliant statements that I have to share. He says that sin turns us inward and the gospels points us outward. Sin is about me... My wants, My will, My happiness. Like a little child, sin causes me to cry out Mine! "Martin Luther picked up this imagery in the Reformation, arguing that sin actually bends or curves us upon ourselves (homo incurvatus in se)"
The Gospel on the other hand points us outward. The gospel draws us to the other. We are designed to be drawn to God and our neighbor.
"Many of us, in other words, think about spirituality exclusively in terms of personal piety, internal devotion, and spiritual formation. We focus almost entirely on ourselves and our private disciplines: praying, reading the Bible, and so on. That, we conclude, is what spirituality is first and foremost…The gospel causes us to look up to Christ and what he did, out to our neighbor and what they need, not in to ourselves and how we’re doing. There’s nothing about the gospel that fixes my eyes on me. Any version of Christianity that encourages you to think mostly about you is detrimental to your faith–whether it’s your failures or your successes; your good works or your bad works; your strengths or your weaknesses; your obedience or your disobedience.”
One of my favorite professors, Jim Keenan say that Sin is the "failure to bother to love." Love is outward it moves us out of ourselves. Love is gospel. To sin then is to fail to live Gospel
