There are certain passages of the Bible that I will never forget reading for the first time.
I'll never forget reading Luke 9 at summer camp in Iowa, and deciding to follow Jesus for the first time in my life.
I'll never forget reading Psalm 63 on a bench outside my office at Penn State and praying every day for the next year that I would truly believe that God's faithful love is better than life.
And I’ll never forget reading Romans 2 in a dark cafeteria in Moberly, Missouri, feeling like I’d never see victory over a specific sin I’d been struggling with.
I was in a year-long battle of ping ponging back and forth between “grace” and “holiness” with my sin, both of which left me exhausted.
In the moments when I’d lean into “grace,” I could easily find ways to excuse my sin. I knew that God was forgiving, and I turned it into permission to keep sinning. God would just forgive me, so it’s not really that big of a deal how I live, right? Other moments in that struggle I’d lean into “holiness,” and become obsessed with being the perfect Christian. I went to church every Sunday, my college ministry every Thursday, read my Bible and prayed every day, and of course looked down on those who couldn’t keep the commands as well as I could. But I often felt like God was looking down on me from heaven, shaking his head, and saying to me "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed."
I was in a season of leaning into my efforts towards "holiness" when I opened my Bible that morning, thinking that God would probably forgive me if I just kept up with my Bible reading plan, and flipped to the assigned passage: Romans 2.
The Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome knew of this struggle between "grace" and "holiness" too, particularly the Jewish Christians that Paul is addressing in Romans chapter two. We see throughout this text that these Christians were taking what they knew about God — his kindness and forbearance and patience — and used it as permission to sin. They remembered the numerous times that God had freed them from exile, freed them from judgment, been released and redeemed, only to presume upon God’s kindness and step right back into wickedness (v. 4). We also see them minimizing their own disobedience by pointing to the sins and the lawlessness of the Gentile Christians (v. 1-3). They assumed that the law was given to them to set them apart so they could push others down. They appropriated the law for self-exaltation, not for repentance.
And yet, the Romans were not the only ones to feel this tension. How many times have we as followers of Jesus been released, forgiven, redeemed, and rescued, only to look back and say, “I want to go back to that sin and unrighteousness.” Or, how many times have you read Scripture and only thought about someone else that isn’t keeping the commands as well as you are?
We all have a tendency towards these ditches, but the answer is not to find a balance between the two. The answer to the struggle with our sin is in the last half of verse 4: “…God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”
His kindness? Not his wrath? Not the threat of his eternal disappointment?
No, it’s his kindness – the culmination of his divine attributes on display and in action.
But it’s not just enough to know that God is kind. We have to let the knowledge of God’s kindness change us and inform the way that we understand Him, ourselves, and our relationships to others. The only way out of the tyranny of blackmailing God’s character or perfect law keeping is through grace-empowered change. Change that happens as His kindness leads you to repentance, and as you continue to change and become more like Christ. This frees us to actually believe and delight in the gospel.
What should our response be to that sweet truth, that his kindness is leading us to greater communion with him even in the middle of our most wretched sin? It's humility. It's worship. And we will almost always be inspired to confession in that moment, to repentance, to worship, and we will be rightly unified with Christ again.
So when you fail and don't keep the law, the gospel is actually good news because His kindness leads you to repentance. It’s not his disappointed face, it’s not a shaking fist, or even the fear that you’ll go to hell that leads to repentance. It’s a stronger, and better reason: God’s kindness.
Emily Seydell has been on staff as the College Connections Coordinator at Redeemer Lubbock since June 2021. She graduated from the University of Northern Iowa (#gocats) and served on staff with a church plant reaching students at Penn State.