In Christianity there are 2 types of people. Those who live in and through Grace and the legalistic Pharisees!
Those legalists don’t understand the gospel!
They are so judgmental!
They need to listen to Christ more!
This was how I thought. I loved when I heard preaching on Grace! I could find those people and be like, “See! See what you have missed! There is a speck in your eye!” All along I had missed it.
I didn’t understand the gospel!
I was being so judgmental!
I needed to listen to Christ more!
And that is exactly what I have been doing! Jumping into His Word daily, working on deepening and personalizing our prayer life, and searching out wisdom from others through community, books, and podcasts. And it has been revolutionary to how I see the the gospel, Christ, and others.
Earlier this month I read through Romans and then started a podcast for The Church of Eleven22 on Romans. It has been so challenging! Especially to my beliefs on Grace and the Law and how the 2 are not in opposition but rather work hand in hand. So lets talk about it!
Let’s start in my on fallacy! I always started with the idea in Romans 3:23-24 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”
or more well known in Ephesians 2: 8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
See! It’s all about grace and not works. Boom! Even have the verses to back it, including Romans 5: 20-21 “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Look, that one even talks about how “the law came in to increase the trespass…” ! That looks pretty bad to me!
The problem was I used this as an excuse. If you continue to Romans 6:1 it says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”
That’s just it! This was the logic I would follow. If we are saved by grace and where sin increases grace abounded all the more, why is my sinning a problem?
Why should I try if grace is a free gift not as a results of works?
For years I was stuck here, saved by grace but living in my sin. Seeing an incomplete gospel!
Let’s look at Romans again this time 6: 1-4, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? BY NO MEANS! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Wow! When you become a child of the King, you no longer live in sin. No! You put your old self onto Christ in his death and are raised a new creation that you may walk in newness of life.
And your old self is the self that walked in sin. So as a new creation why would your return to the old dead self? That is no longer who you are you are called higher as stated in Romans 6:10-11, “For the death he (Jesus) died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Hallelujah! This is amazing news!
Now if you tend more to the side of legalism, I only have one more verse for you. Romans 3:20 “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
This means that the Law has the power to point out your sin but no power at all to save you from it!
It starts in Romans 3:23-24 and Ephesians 2:8-9, By grace you have been save. And because of that grace we are made a new creation (Romans 6:4,10-11). And because of this grace we no longer live in sin but seek after holiness!
This is the reality we live in if you are a child of the King. It is not easy or safe or painless but it is so, so GOOD!
