Grace and Sin

"Grace is in God, and sin is in man. The grace of God is not a substance, a manna-like power, which is mediated to men through human acts. Grace is always in God's action; it is God's attribute. It is the action of reconciliation that reaches out across the no-man's land of the historic war of men against God. All human action, all culture, is infected with godlessness, which is the essense fo sin. Godlessness appears as the will to live without God, to ignore Him to be one's own source and beginning, to live without being indebted and forgiven, to be independent and secure in one's self, to be godlike in oneself. It has a thousand forms and expresses itself in the most devious ways. It appears in the complacency of the self-righteously moral and of self-authenticatedly rational men, but also in the despair of those for whom all is vanity."

H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture