Grace and Sin

"Grace is in God, and sin is in man. The Grace of God is not a substance, a manna-like powder, which is mediated to men through human acts. Grace is always in God's action; 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 essence of sin. Godlessness appears as the will to live without God, to ignore him to be independent and secure in one's self, to be godlike in oneself. It has a complacency of the self-righteously moral and of self-authenticated rational men, but also the despair of those for whom all is vanity." H.Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture