Ed and Patsy now live in Athens, Alabama and are members at the Pepper Road church. As administrator of this blog, he enjoys sharing thoughts about spiritual maters. Not only his thoughts but good articles from other authors. He is also thankful to have been able to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ for over sixty years.
I suspect that most readers of this blog have heard the age-old question: “How many legs does a dog have?” The obvious answer is “four” – unless one calls the tail a leg – then the answer would be five – or would it? Hardly. Identifying the tail as a leg does not make it so!
It is common practice to identify as “Christians” any who “accept Christ as savior” with great emphasis on the forgiveness of sin with very little attention to the avoidance of sin. Both the secular and religious media extol certain celebrities for their abilities to balance their “Christianity” with their worldly life-styles. It is not only about celebrities. We see it often in our day by day observation of people in general.
The idea of so many seems to be that since “no one is perfect” that our best efforts to avoid sin are futile. So, we need to just relax, bask in the warmth of God’s saving grace, and quit fretting about our sins. If one follows his fleshly lusts, uses bad language, publicly dresses (or undresses) in a shameful manner, rarely attends worship services, or misses the mark in other ways – so what? He is covered by God’s redeeming grace! This is not the concept of a Christian and the grace of God taught by the New Testament.
1 John 1:7-10, John tells Christians how to maintain fellowship with God. It is by freely acknowledging and confessing our sins as we walk in the light. Then he says he is writing that we avoid sin (2:1) – but if, despite our efforts to avoid it, we do sin and have access to forgiveness through Christ. All of this is a part of the grace of God.
Grace not only forgives, it teaches:“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”. (Titus 2:11-14)
In Acts 11:23, Barnabas was able to see the grace of God at Antioch. How so? He saw a people who had believed and turned to the Lord (v. 12). He could see it in their behavior. It was more than their having access to forgiveness of sin – it was a life-changing grace.
The Hebrew writer warns that by going on sinning wilfully, after receiving a knowledge of the truth, one “insults” the Spirit of grace. (10:26-29 NASB). As long as he continues in that state, he has nothing to look forward to but certain damnation. He cannot look forward to another sacrifice for his sins – the only sacrifice available to him is Jesus Christ. There will be no other. His only option to avoid eternal punishment is to be forgiven by returning to God’s perfect sacrifice for his sins. But, that sacrifice does not allow him to wilfully continue in sin.
Some seem to have the idea that by trying, to the best of our abilities, to keep all the commands of God in order to go to heaven that we are somehow dishonoring God and His grace. In fact, the opposite is true. By not trying to do our best to obey all his commands, we are flying in the face of the teaching of the grace of God that brings salvation.
As Paul succinctly put it: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid…” (Romans 6:1-2).
Hello, this might be off topic, but where did you get the html template for the site? Thank you!