God loves us toughly enough not to allow us to be happy with our sins. The recollection of sin rightly brings misery of conscience. How else could moral awareness be saved from sentimentality? The deepest human happiness, we learn, is grounded in holiness - God's holy love and our responsive attempts to reflect it fittingly. Thomas C. Oden
About This Quote

Sin can bring us happiness but it will not last. The true and deep happiness lies in defining and living with what we believe to be the right and best in life. When we make mistakes and fail we can learn from our mistakes and use them to grow.Sin brings us misery of conscience because it reminds us of who we really are and how we failed to live up to what we know is right and good.

Source: Pastoral Theology: Essentials Of Ministry

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More Quotes By Thomas C. Oden
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  2. Grace works ahead of us to draw us toward faith, to begin its work in us. Even the first fragile intuition of conviction of sin, the first intimation of our need of God, is the work of preparing, prevening grace, which draws us gradually toward...

  3. The faithful have no dread of using the traditional language of the church. Terms like incarnation and resurrection need to be explained, not avoided.

  4. Some contemporary theology has been enamored with the heady idea of an imagined freedom that functions without any law or norm or rule of obligation. The technical name for this idea is antinomianism. This yen for freedoms other than Christ's freedom has compounded the problems...

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