The Ultimate Rivalry

I love the auto correct function on Microsoft Word. Basically, it fixes your mistakes quicker than you even realize that you have made a mistake. I don’t even notice the vast majority of these corrections. I am either typing too fast or am looking at a book or something. The program just automatically fixes mistakes I make. You can even tailor the program to fix commonly misspelled words. It is great!

Auto Correct. It is a great thing. In the spiritual realm, we have the same sort of thing. We have an auto correct system. Check out a passage of Scripture from Romans 5:18-21 in The Message Version:

“Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. Because where sin increased, grace increased all the more. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. But God is putting everything together again through the Messiah. Grace invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.”

When I read this passage I envision a spiritual rivalry as heated as the Red Sox and Yankees, Duke Blue Devils and NC Tar Heels, or UK and UL. The two teams involved are the “Worldly Sinners” and the “Kingdom Gracers.” This rivalry is as old as time, and for a long time the Sinners had been winning. But eventually the Gracers got a new GM and he started recruiting better players so that the Kingdom Gracers won the championship. And the Sinners, being sore losers, upped the ante and added more top notch players. But Gracers signed the ultimate player who was better than all the Sinners’ players put together. Now, even Sin’s best player, Death, cannot contain the Gracers star—Yeshua.

This is the same picture that That Scriptures says that every time sin tried to increase, grace increased all the more. Adam is the archetype for sin and the continuation of sin throughout humanity. That means over time, things have gotten worse it seems. Sin runs rampant in the land. We are in a bad situation. But where sin increased, God’s grace increased even more. Jesus is the archetype of forgiveness and grace. Every time we seem to draw further away from God, he comes closer with his forgiveness. God is the one doing the auto correction. No matter what you have gotten yourself into, God is there one upping sin with is grace. That is why “Grace is Greater than sin.” There is no sin that God can’t and won’t forgive. There is no mistake you have made or will make in the future that God can’t make right. Before we even commit a sin, God is there ready to forgive. Some people can’t comprehend that God would forgive murderers, and rapists, and awful people like that. But he does. Sin doesn’t have a chance against God’s grace.

And what is more, God also invites us into his presence for eternity. God wants all of us, despite our flaws and sins at his great party in heaven. That is why he has chosen to extend His grace to us. Sin’s biggest threat—death—has been destroyed by God. Though we might die in this life, God promises us a life that will not end. It’s all because of God’s Amazing Grace. His grace that is greater than sin could ever be or ever will be.