Up the Down Staircase

Tuesday, June 3rd, Romans 3, Up the down staircase: 21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. Gerhard Forde in his book “Where God meets Man” uses the analogy of humanities original sin as trying to go up the down staircase, another way of describing the eating of the fruit of the tree and the desire to b e like god. God comes to us from heaven to offer salvation through loving grace. Not trusting that, we want to climb up the down staircase and storm the gates of Heaven. We never quite succeed in storming those gates, but in order to feel better about ourselves we can always kick a few people down a few steps so we can appear, in our minds, higher. For us, salvation becomes a game of “King of the Hill”. The problem is that while we are playing we lose sight of what we set out to do in the first place, to be a child of God.