{"id":7247,"date":"2012-08-08T15:47:57","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T22:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/?p=7247"},"modified":"2019-09-18T12:51:39","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T12:51:39","slug":"oh-blessed-vice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/soul-significance\/oh-blessed-vice\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Blessed Vice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">It is true that God can use all things for our good &#8211; even our sin and brokenness. St. Augustine would call sin his <\/span><em style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\">blessed vice<\/em><span style=\"line-height: 1.6em;\"> because he knew his sin would drive him back to the foot of the cross &#8211; relieving him from the heavy burden of it. \u00a0This is the beauty and the wonder of the love of God as revealed in the cross. \u00a0The answer is in fact &#8211; Jesus.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">The problem is, over the centuries, this Christian message has been replaced with a message of moralism. \u00a0\u00a0It is the attempt of the human heart to perfect, sanctify, etc. via moralism, being-a-good person, service, prayer, etc. as a way of dealing with shame and guilt when only Christ, and Christ alone can deal with our guilt and shame! \u00a0The response when we sin is not to hide behind &#8220;try harder&#8221;, good works and piety rather, in the words of Luther &#8211; to fly to Christ!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;\">It is the precious love and acceptance of God that deals with our brokenness; and repentance, being &#8220;good&#8221; people is a fruit of this relationship not a pre-requisite! \u00a0This is a fantastic video that lays this all out so beautifully and excavates the Christian faith from mere moralism to a truly liberating force that can transform the human heart!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Coe: Spiritual Renewal, Part 2 - Biola University Chapel\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jm75jhdeKuU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Jm75jhdeKuU\" width=\"700\" height=\"392\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is true that God can use all things for our good &#8211; even our sin and brokenness. St. Augustine would call sin his blessed vice because he knew his sin would drive him back to the foot of the cross &#8211; relieving him from the heavy burden of it. \u00a0This is the beauty and&#8230;","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,38],"tags":[129,167,179,197,348,418,473,553],"class_list":["post-7247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soul-significance","category-video-2","tag-daily-living","tag-everyday-spirituality","tag-faith-in-real-life","tag-free-from-sin","tag-love-paradigm","tag-personal-experience","tag-sin","tag-wholeness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}