The Holiness of God

I LOVE to read.  I wish I could read more but with Aden's new-found mobility, I spend a lot less time reading than I would like.   Right now I am slowly but surely making my way through a book by R.C. Sproul called the Holiness of God.  It was free on my kindle but is so good that I would have paid for it!  Here is an excerpt that I read today that just hit my heart like a 2 x 4.

The key to Kung's observation is that he speaks of sinners' continuing to live in the average situation.  That is, it is customary or usual for God to be forbearing.  He is indeed long-suffering, patient, and slow to anger.  In fact He is so slow to anger that when His anger does erupt, we are shocked and offended by it.  We forget rather quickly that God's patience is designed to lead us to repentance, to give us time to be redeemed.  Instead of taking advantage of this patience by coming humbly to Him for forgiveness, we use this grace as an opportunity to become more bold in our sin.  We delude ourselves into thinking that either God doesn't care about it, or that He is powerless to punish us.

The supreme folly is that we think we will get away with our revolt.

For me it is easy to down play the little sins in my life.  What Pastor Aaron Campbell (a pastor from Antioch Calvary in Philly that John and I listen to on iTunes) calls the "cute" sins.  You know... the sins that everybody understands and does... like failing to set aside time for knowing and reading God's word and sitting in His presence, having seasons of prayerlessness (yes, this is unfortunately a sin), and many others.  I say things like "Oh, well... I am just really busy 'serving' this Christian team we have here."  "I would have had to wake up at 5 am! Aden wanted a snack in the middle of the night so I am too tired to wake up early and my day is jam packed."  "Oh the day just slipped on by and I plum FORGOT to pray!" Or when I am guilty of envy, discontentment, etc.

The quote from this book is referring to the supposed unfairness of God when he quickly smites somebody in the Old Testament but I think it applies to today as well when God chastises us.  It often (wrongly) surprises me that I am chastised for my sin when God is often so long-suffering.  I am just thankful that though the punishment for sin is death, that I have a Savior that took that punishment on himself.  While I am not in danger of being suddenly struck down for my sin like Uzzah, I don't want that to give me confidence and boldness in my sin, but to instead run in repentance to an all-forgiving God.