More wisdom from the brilliant Jeff Turner:
The unconditional grace of God, while the most glorious truth in the cosmos, can, at first, lead one into a place of feeling purposeless, and even into a brief season of nihilism.
Why? Well, when you’ve spent your entire existence believing that your actions earn and equal out to God’s approval and blessing, a sudden realization that nary a single work of yours has ever changed God’s opinion of you in the least can feel like a bit of a slap in the face.
This is why the religious will always fight a message of grace and mercy, tooth and nail. It invalidates their efforts and works, and forces them into finding better reasons for being good than earning brownie points with their overbearing, rule-obsessed dad in the clouds.
To the self-righteous and religious, grace will always feel like death at first. But to the broken, exhausted and contrite, it is life itself.