Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
It’s one of the shorter verses of the Bible, and yet it’s one of the most densely packed verses theologically and one that we can see played out most often in the news headlines.
All have sinned. It’s not hard to see that. I lived overseas in a country where one of the most horrific genocides of the 20th century took place. It wasn’t hard to see the utter sinfulness of man and the devastating effects of sin. Yet sin is not reserved to sinners “over there” in war ravaged countries. A scan of the headlines in the Star Ledger confirms that our own culture, right here, is devastated by sin. Sin runs rampant in all of our hearts. These verses are clear. All have sinned.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Our sinfulness magnifies God’s glory and shows us just how much we fall short. We are sinners, and God is perfect and glorious. He is everything that we are not. We miss the mark all the time.
But what does all this have to do with Lent? Our introduction reminds us that Lent is a 40-day period to focus our hearts and our minds on the person and the work of Jesus. Lent points us to what God has accomplished in his amazing grace in Christ. It is our sin and the sinfulness of man that made the work of Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection necessary. It’s all too easy to relegate sin to “those really bad people over there” and miss the opportunity and the grace to acknowledge and confess our own sinfulness.
Acknowledging our sin and confessing it is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to run towards Christ instead of hiding in guilt and shame. It’s an opportunity to revel in the beauty of the forgiveness of sins that God offers us because of Christ’s work on the cross. Let’s use this Lenten period as an opportunity to openly confess and repent our sin, and run to Jesus who lovingly paid for this sin so many years ago.
The GRC Children’s Ministry is also providing a family Lenten Devotional which is available here.
Note: Each day’s devotional is written by a different member of the GRC family.