...Christians are not people who "have it all together." Being a Christian is not a badge accomplishment. Rather, being a Christian means standing in the grace of Jesus Christ, who chose disciples who were completely ignorant of, and often even resistant to, what he had in mind (e.g., Mark 8:31-33). Being a Christian means at times being like the disciples, who all deserted Jesus and fled when he needed them the most, just before his death. Being a Christian means living in the knowledge that one's discipleship is radically dependent on the forgiving grace of God shown in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. To be a disciple is to know that, at the core of one's life, one still has much to learn, and that the first step in our discipleship is always the step of receiving forgiveness. All our obedience, all our attempts at faithfulness and responsibility to God's call, thus flow from an even more basic posture of gratitude that we have been given a life which, in the most basic sense, we do not deserve and did not earn...
--James V. Brownson, The Promise of Baptism
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