We are not permitted to nurse a sense of guilt: we must fully and completely accept and embrace his forgiveness and love. Guilt feelings and inferiority feelings before God are expressions of selfishness, of self-centeredness: we give greater importance to our little sinful self than to his immense and never-ending love. We must surrender our guilt and our inferiority to him; his goodness is greater than our badness. We must accept his joy in loving and forgiving us. It is a healing grace to surrender our sinfulness to his mercy.                                                          

                                        —Thomas Merton

What?

His goodness is greater than our badness?

We must accept his joy in loving and forgiving us?

This is almost too large for me to take in! I have all sorts of red flags going off in my spirit as I re-read these statements. Isn’t this a license to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die”? A kind of carte blanche to go our own way, to forget about living a life of obedience, and dependence on God?

Actually, no. It is a bold invitation to embrace, in a fresh way, why Jesus came: to die to pay the penalty of our sin and to rise Easter Sunday to prove for all eternity that he succeeded. The Apostle Paul touched on this life-changing reality in Romans 6: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (vv. 1-4).

As we continue to grow in our understanding and application of grace, it pulls us toward a life of greater intimacy and devotion to our Lord, not away. Remembering all Jesus went through for me—the mocking, the beatings, the humiliation, and the separation from his Father, because of love—I’m undone. I bow down in adoration. No one else has ever loved me like that. No one else has ever wanted a relationship with me so much that they’d lay down their life for it. Recalling these facts demands I live a whole new life, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It means I am free to melt into his forgiveness and bottomless love.

Laying hold of his grace calls me to believe his word and not my feelings. It speaks boldly into sin cycles, exposing them for what they are: destructive bondages that actually prevent me from living in the blessed freedom secured on the cross by my dear Jesus. .