1 Peter 2:15-16 “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men-- (16) as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.”
And so we see that under the New Covenant believers are no longer judged with spiritual death the moment they commit sin, for as we read earlier sin must first become full grown before it produces spiritual death. In other words under the New Covenant there is a grace period given to the believer who practices sin, and during this grace period, even though the believer may be walking in unrepentant sin, their sin does not impact their spirits and their spirits remain alive unto God. Foolishly, some have distorted the truth of grace and used it as a license to commit sin, not realising that they are then on the path to ultimately committing the sin to death. I want you to notice that Paul states in his letter to the church at Corinth, that even though all things were lawful for him, he would not allow himself to be brought under the power of any (1 Corinthians 6:12). You will recall that our Lord Jesus taught us that the one, who commits sin, becomes a slave of sin (John 8:34). And so that is what Paul was referring to when he stated that he would not allow himself to be brought under the power of anything. Paul understood that even though, because he was under grace, there was no sin that he could commit that would affect his spirit, nevertheless to commit sin was to give sin power over him. Satan’s goal is to kill the believer and he knows that sin will get the job done, for scripture teaches us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). And so as long as Satan can get the believer to commit sin, he then has power over that believer to lead him down the path to eventually committing the sin to death. In the passage of scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit through the apostle Peter, warns believers not to use the liberty that we have under grace as a licence to practice a lifestyle of sin.
Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. (8) For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”
For those believers however who abuse the grace of God and continue to live in sin, the Holy Spirit tells us plainly in the above quoted passage of scripture that God is not mocked. In other words the believer who continues to sow to their flesh (i.e. walk in sin), will ultimately reap the wages of sin which is death. The word translated “corruption” in this passage also means “to perish”. There are two forms of death that sin can produce in the lives of believers who choose to continue to live in sin. The one is physical death and the other is spiritual death. The physical death that I am referring to here is early death, for until the Lord returns; we will all eventually die physically. Believers who are judged with early physical death do not live out their full time on the earth, and are taken to be with the Lord earlier than God intended for their lives. And so we see that if physical death is reaped first, then those believers will go to be with the Lord Jesus when they die, for their spirits are still alive unto God. However if spiritual death is reaped first, then those believers will go to hell when they die, for they would have committed the sin to death. It is by the grace of God that many of these believers reap physical death before they ever get to the place where they can commit the sin of reaping spiritual death. But as we have seen in the previous section this is not always the case, and sadly there are believers who reap spiritual death first. Sin is not to be taken lightly as it can carry eternal consequences. You can therefore readily see just how dangerous the false doctrine is of “once saved, always saved”.
Michael E.B. Maher
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