How we view sin affects how we understand salvation. When sin is framed as a legal infraction, the violation of a code, salvation becomes a forensic matter requiring a courtroom acquittal. This reduces human reality to a set of rules and transactions. Sin, however, is not the infraction of a law but the brokenness of a relationship. It is to turn away from God, from one another and is even a rejection of our own true selves. It is what St. Augustine called incurvatus in se, a curving inwardly upon ourselves, away from all else — which is not how we were created to be.
Salvation is not a legal adjudication with God delivering a verdict from some neutral corner. In Christ, God does not remain external, delivering a verdict, or granting forgiveness from afar, but unites himself with our nature, entering into our life and death so that humankind might enter into his divine life. Salvation is not an abstract transaction but the concrete reality of Christ’s life lived in us — the re-making of humanity in communion with God. For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19).
The good news of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, we become partakers of the divine nature, Christ living in us. This life is not abstract but real and tangible. It is what St. Peter and St. Paul confessed in their writings, and saints ever since have shown us what it looks like.
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
In some corners, sin has been understood as a legal infraction and salvation as a legal solution. These, however, are abstractions that do not even begin to address the reality of being but distance us from it. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, plunges us into the very heart and truth of what it means to be divine and what it means to be human.
No comments:
Post a Comment