51. How does preventing grace lighten the effects of original sin?
It prevents the full consequences of our alienation from God and awakens conscience, giving an initial sense of God and the first inclinations toward life in its fullest sense.
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Conscience and consciousness of wrongdoing is a gift, for it opens the door to repentance and returning to God. Wesley would regard God to be at work in people before they would ever acknowledge the fact, whenever they come to the realization that something is profoundly wrong with the human experience and that this is related to what we have become as human beings. The very awareness that “this isn’t how it should be for human beings” and, all the more, “I’m not who I should be as a human being,” is a gift from God. It is the voice of God calling people out from perpetuating (at least, colluding with) the forces that destroy human life—and from continuing to be the sort of person that does so. It is God calling people toward becoming something new—people whose ambitions and energies will have significantly more positive effects upon human experience as far as their impact can reach. It is God’s generous intervention in the lives of people who would otherwise “not only do” what is destructive of human flourishing “but even applaud others who practice” the same (Rom. 1:32).
In our alienation from God, humanity had lost all sense of that moral compass that would allow them even an inkling that they need to change direction so as to swim up toward the air rather than farther down toward drowning utterly. In God’s initiating love, he stops the needle on our moral compass from spinning and enables us to tell up from down. Many who search back through their own story of coming to faith can identify moments that they would consider breakthrough experiences. For some, it is hitting bottom. For others, it is the awakening of this moral sense that sets them on a quest for deliverance. For others, it is an inner stirring that brings the first real sense that there is a God, and this God actually cares. Whatever the nature of the breakthrough experience, God’s Spirit is actively drawing us back to himself.
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“Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:31–32)
One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. (Acts 16:14 NIV)
When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all. (Rom. 2:14–16)
See also Luke 24:45; Rom. 8:7–8; 1 Cor. 2:14; D&D ¶ 102 § 3
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This is an excerpt from Christian Faith and Doctrine: An Annotated Catechism for the Global Methodist Church. Seedbed is pleased to partner with The Global Methodist Church to offer this companion resource to A Catechism of Christian Faith and Doctrine for the Global Methodist Church.
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