Those first lines from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans today (7:21,22):

"I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law, at war with the law of my mind."

We, too, delight in the law of God, in our inmost selves, but there is that part of us, another law, at war with the law of our minds. I think we keep good company with St. Paul on this one, this terrible dilemma of wanting to do right, but finding evil so close at hand.

St. Paul was unique in his ability to describe this dilemma, this furious struggle, but he was far from alone in experiencing it. It is a universal experience, shared, by all of us - this desperate battle between the good that we would do, and the evil that we actually do do, this tug-of-war between sin and redemption, between intention and performance, between ... well, you know - Law and Grace.

St. Paul found it a law that when he wanted to do right, he found evil always so close at hand. But it is, Paul says, a false dilemma, "thanks be to God". For in any single-minded, self-centered search to be holy, in and by and through our own efforts, we overlook the Good News of God in Christ, namely that the huge effort is simply unnecessary. It has all been done. On our behalf, without our aid, by Jesus Christ - the only one who could do it and who would do it, and did do it all, for all of us. The bare-bones truth of the Gospel is that we need to be saved, but we don't need to do the saving ourselves. It has already been done - for us, once for all, for all time. We cannot do anything to earn, deserve, or merit salvation The glory of the love of Christ is that we do not need to. All that needs to be done has been done. We have only to accept it.

Nevertheless, this great proclamation of grace is vulnerable to us twisting it around a bit, or a lot. A common variation is the smirking assumption, "Well, if I do not need to do anything, then by all means, let me not do anything." Grace does not mean that we simply do as we please, with our own lives, and to others' lives, without any thought to the consequences, smugly convinced that we are, as the preachers say, already saved.

What's missing in this cheap, fraudulent version of God's Grace, is the role of love. We are talking about being loved by Christ, not manipulated. And we are talking about loving him in return, not using him. If we are not talking about this when we talk about Grace, then we are not talking about Grace at all. In our ordinary human lives, and our human relationships, we know that we cannot make people love us. They either do or they don't. All the schemes and all the games and all the subterfuge, and even all the decently conducted kindnesses, will never produce love. So it is with Grace. We cannot enchant Christ with our winning ways. We cannot so fix ourselves up that he cannot help but be impressed, has to show some interest. He loves us at our most unlovable and at our least attractive. That's the start. That's the part that's up to him. Now, the ongoing development of responding to someone who loves us, and will love us regardless, seems to me to be the "Works" part, the bit that is up to us.

None of what we think or say or do will make God love us. He does that first, and without our charming it out of him. Ahhh, but then, we do not go our merry way. We do go a certain joyful way, seeking to be, to become, to hope to grow into, that person seen by the One who loves - the type of person we are imagined and intended to be by the Oe who can see the best and the greatest possibilities in us. We respond and develop and flourish as we could not possibly otherwise have done, because he first loved us and loves us still and always will.

We have been saved, and are loved; we have been redeemed, and are now sanctified. Not because we are lovable, we are not. Not because we deserve it, we do not, not because we are entitled to it, we are not. Not because we have earned or merited it, we have not. And even, amazingly, not because he thought for a moment that we would never again do wrong. So then ... not because of anything we did or said or won't say or do. No. For no other reason, than that he loved us and loves us to this day. Because, and only because, God in Christ first loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice, so that we might be delivered from bondage to sin and death, and be free to become the children of God. That becoming business - that's your responsibility. So let's get on with it - there is not a moment to lose, and everything to gain. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. To him be glory and honor for ever.