total depravity, irresistible grace

It is currently 4 am, and I am somehow still up, trying to fill an empty page with a string of words that actually means something. Spent an hour looking for jobs instead of writing my paper, which, interestingly enough, is on Crime and Punishment. Actually, I think the whole theme of the story can be summed up by the four words in my entry title. Then again, they also summarize my whole life up to this point. There's a reason why these two phrases go together (besides accounting for the T and I in TULIP, something that I'm not equipped to write about at this point, but maybe someday...) I don't think you can live in total depravity without realizing irresistible grace - to do so is to diminish God's boundless love for us.

Let me explain. For the past two years (and intermittently before that), I've been living in what amounted to an emotional black hole - all my life experiences, good and bad, and all the feelings associated with them, disappeared into the mass of unfulfilled expectations and failed attempts to be "happy." As time passed, my daily attitude became "wow, I suck at life, and there's no hope for me." Obviously, this didn't exactly help my mood or productivity, and I felt, in a sense, "totally depraved."

Now, as a senior facing an uncertain job market, (still) unfulfilled expectations, and a questionable future, I still have those moments, quite often, actually. Recently, though, I've come to the realization that my attitude of "there is no hope" is actually quite accurate - but missing a crucial piece - that of reconciliation. To quote Paul, "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" (Romans 5:10).

The implications of this verse are enormous - it is not enough to realize that we are saved from our sins through Christ's death on the cross. True, that is an integral part of Christianity, and probably the concept most of us would use when justifying our own failures. We must realize that in addition to being freed from sin (a sort of negative construction), we are also free to live without it (a decidedly more positive one). This isn't to say that we will never sin again (because of course we will) - but that our actions need not be hindered by the fact that we are awash in sin and can never do anything right - because we are reconciled and justified in Christ. In essence, Christ's death means that our guilt is taken away, and we can live with Him forever, but His resurrection means that our shame is taken away too - and that we can actually begin to live through, and for, Him.

I'm going to end this with something a dear friend once told me: "Of course, God's always there to be like... 'Hey guess what, I'm in charge. You will never be successful enough that you won't need Me, or such a failure that I leave you.'" When we finally realize how totally depraved we are, that's when God's irresistible grace comes in - and shows us why we truly live.

EDIT: I wrote this sometime last fall, before I took a year off from school.