This is my spiritual hypothesis for the week: There are two ways to cheapen God\u2019s grace. The more famous way is to think that because God\u2019s grace has already covered all of our sins, we no longer need to concern ourselves with things like sin and obedience and ethics and God\u2019s will. Or, as St. Paul wrote: \u201cShould we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?…Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!\u201d (Romans 6:1-2, 15).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second way to cheapen grace is this: to doubt that God\u2019s grace does<\/em> cover all our sins. To go on wallowing in guilt and shame. To believe ourselves to be unlovable or unforgivable. To think of ourselves as failures. As St. Paul also wrote: \u201cFor freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery\u201d (Galatians 5:1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope you don\u2019t mind if I get a little vulnerable here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A year or so ago, I was telling my therapist about some situation \u2013 I don\u2019t remember exactly what, only that the same old doubts were playing in my head: that whatever I had just done or said had finally made people realize what an insufferable idiot I was, that they would finally give up on me. I thought I was showing psychological progress when I said: \u201cBut then I reminded myself that my friends have known me since I was 18. They\u2019ve seen me do much stupider things. So they can probably handle this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is when my therapist broke in: \u201cBut Katherine, what if they just love you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pow.<\/em> Such a simple question, but with so much power. What if they just love you? What if their care for you runs deeper than whatever you do from moment to moment? What if you\u2019re safe with them? What if you don\u2019t have to constantly keep a record of your own wrongs because that record doesn\u2019t matter? What if they just love you<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now here\u2019s where it gets really good\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n God just loves us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In many places in our lives, we do need to prove ourselves. It becomes second-nature to us. We build up our r\u00e9sum\u00e9s; we apply for education and work; we put our best foot forward when we meet new people; we earn our keep. All that\u2019s enough to train us to constantly keep tabs on our behavior, to keep comparing ourselves to others, to keep wondering if we\u2019re measuring up, if we\u2019re enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then there\u2019s more. Because even when we can prove ourselves, even if we can get close to \u201cperfect\u201d \u2013 the chaos and the brokenness and the that\u2019s-just-the-way-things-are<\/em> of life can mess it all up. Hard-working people lose their jobs to budget cuts. Other humans love us the best they can, but they still hurt us. And\u2013 hopefully very, very rarely \u2013 we do really mess things up, and other people need to walk away. We need to face the painful consequences of our actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But through all things God just loves us<\/em>. And that is real, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person \u2013 though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us\u201d (Romans 5:6-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n These verses state it so clearly: Christ died for us not because we earned it, not because we felt bad enough about ourselves, not because of an agenda that this holy sacrifice would shock us back onto a more righteous path \u2013 but because God loves us. God just loves us.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n How does that change how you see and experience yourself? Really think about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, don\u2019t let anything \u2013 including your inner monologue \u2013 take that away from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pr. Kate<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rev. Katherine Museu<\/a>s<\/em> and Rev. James A. Wetzstein<\/a> serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is my spiritual hypothesis for the week: There are two ways to cheapen God\u2019s grace. The more famous way is to think that because God\u2019s grace has already covered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-katherine-museus","category-csl-newsletter-devotionals"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"dev@eridesign.com","author_link":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/author\/deveridesign-com\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2024\/10\/Devotion-Graphics-2024-25-4-300x169.webp","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Katherine Museus<\/a>","CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Katherine Museus<\/span>","CSL Newsletter Devotionals<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 1 year ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on October 2, 2024","modified":"Updated on August 18, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on October 2, 2024 8:46 pm","modified":"Updated on August 18, 2025 8:15 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valpo.edu\/devotionals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}