Sinners and Saints

Finally finished the book What's So Amazing About Grace. Left the book on Holy Saturday for a while got to pick it up later... but the book is really difficult to read... tho it's a really good one.

This paragraph is from the last chapter of Yancey's book...

Strangely, God is closer to sinners than to "saints". (By saints I mean those people renowned for their piety-- true saints never lose sight of their sinfulness.) As one lecturer in spirituality explains it, "God in heaven holds each person by a string. When you sin, you cut the string. Then God ties it up again, making a loose knot-- and thereby bringing you a little closer to him. Again and again your sins cut the string-- and with each further knot God keeps drawing you closer and closer."

And how can you hate the sin but not the sinner? C.S. Lewis had this problem, he never could understand the hairsplitting difference between the two.

But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life-- namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man.