Morning Dew

 

Key Passage: Romans 6: 1-23.

 

Key text: Romans 6:1 – What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

 

I often hear parents complain that their children are ‘spoilt’ because they seem to have indulged them too much. They compare their generation with that of their children. They say things like ‘in our day we never had these luxuries’. We walked to school. We did a lot of house chores. There were no vacuum cleaners, no electric irons, no colour TVs and certainly no satellite or cable TV. We were severely punished for our errors and even the neighbours smacked us if we were naughty. They conclude by saying that their children are fortunate.

This analogy is quite similar to the dispensation of grace that we live in now. I bet the generation of the Old Testament looking at us will feel the same way. That perhaps we are actually spoilt kids and don’t really appreciate God and the marvellous provisions of His grace. Perhaps they are right. I did not get to come to the world when the law of God was the rule. I am born in the time when grace and truth has come through Christ Jesus.

But the truth of the matter is that the grace of God does not spoil a person, rather it makes a person better. There is no space for a person’s action in saving grace. It is God’s work from start to finish. Can a dead man raise himself from the dead? So how can a sinner save himself? God and only God through His grace saves man. Therefore the thought that message of grace could be misinterpreted that it is okay to sin, though plausible, is yet quite uninformed. Because if one truly understands the transforming and redeeming power and work of grace, then there is no place for sin in a person transformed by God’s grace.

Consequently grace cannot make you want to sin more, the converse is actually the truth. Grace makes you a saint. You not only hate and abhor sin, you have the empowerment to shun sin. In saving us by His grace, God did more than rescue us from sin, He did more than cleanse us from sin, He changed us from sinners to saints.

This is Paul’s answer to the question: “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 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. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Martyn Llyod Jones, an English preacher renowned for his teachings on grace made this comment “ … I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you really are preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation … ‘

 

Grace is not a licence to sin, but a permission to live right. So grace does not spoil it makes.

Let us Pray: Father thank you for your marvellous grace. Thank you that in your grace, I have been set free from the love of sinning and I have been recreated with the nature of Jesus Christ, who is sinless. In my new nature, I abhor and hate sin and love righteousness. Thank you for the power of your grace. In Jesus name. Amen.