“For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace.? May it never be.”
Grace is not a free pass to do whatever we want, it is the divine power that sets us free from the grip of sin.
When will we grasp the magnitude of God’s grace. Our past, present, and future mistakes are covered by His favor it can spark wonderful and overwhelming relief. It’s great when we realize we don’t have to earn God’s love through a checklist of rules and rituals.
But there is one dangerous question that lurks in every human heart since Paul wrote in Romans: “If I am fully forgiven, does it matter how I live?” Paul’s answer “By no means.”
“Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it” -Romans 6:1-2
Grace is not a pardon to return to prison. Imagine someone sitting in a dark, cold prison cell for a crime they didn’t commit. A merciful king walks in, tears up the criminal record, unlocks the heavy iron door, and says, “You are free. Go and live anew life.”
It would make no sense for that person to step outside into the sunlight, turn around and voluntarily walk right back into the cell, locking the door behind them. Yet, that is what we do when we treat grace as a license to keep sinning.
Grace didn’t rescue us just so we could camp out in the very habits that were destroying us. It rescued us to break the chain.
Grace is power, not permission. We often treat grace like a “get out of jail free card in monopoly. Something to pull out of our pocket after we do something wrong.
In the Bible, grace is not a low-standard safety net that lovers God’s bar for holiness, it’s a transforming power. Romans 6:14 (from above) that sin will no longer rule over us. Grace doesn’t give us permission to sin, it gives us the strength to overcome it. The grace of God trains us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions.
