All The More

I just returned home within the hour from having a PETScan. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, let me give you a very technical (Ha!) description of what's involved in a PETScan. First you aren't allowed to eat for a period of about 12 hours prior to the test, nor are you allowed to drink anything for about 6 hours prior. Then you get the privilege of drinking this creamy liquid concoction that's supposed to have a slightly "coconut" flavor. It's a poor attempt to mask the metallic taste of this stuff that doesn't exactly go down like a milkshake. That's followed by the insertion of an IV that allows them to inject radioactive dye into your system. The theory is that the radioactive material will collect in places where there are cancer cells. If this is the case, then it should show up on the subsequent scan they do of your body. All in all, it's a 90 minute process. Fun, huh? Not!

Anyway, I got to thinking--what if something could be injected into your body so that figuratively speaking, a scan could be done to locate the cancer of sin in your life. What would they find when they did the scan of your body? Where would the cells of sin be clustered?

The truth of the matter is this--without getting into specifics, a scan of my life would find sin cells clustered in far more parts of my life than I want. Now I have to admit that this would have been a far more scary reality at one time in my life than it is now. I used to measure my spirituality by the absence of sin. Now I measure my spirituality, not so much by whether or not sin is absent in my life, but rather by whether grace is present in my life. Please understand, I desperately want to grow in grace and become all that I can be through the power of His grace, so I'm not trying to excuse sin's presence in my life. It's simply that I want to focus on grace rather than on sin. I want to focus on the positive rather than the negative.

I think this is the basic message of Paul in Romans 5. He acknowledges the presence of sin in our world and in our lives, but he also proclaims the superior presence of grace in our world and in our lives through the person of Jesus Christ.

Notice these words of Romans 5:20, "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more."

Isn't that great news! Sin may be present, but God's grace is more powerfully present. So join me in celebrating the increased presence of grace in our lives--all the more!