Grace: Freedom with Responsibility
- Michael E.B. Maher
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
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”.
1 Corinthians 5:1-5 “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles--that a man has his father's wife! (2) And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. (3) For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. (4) In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, (5) deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above the Holy Spirit gives us a clear account of a believer being judged with early death because they chose to continue practicing sin. In this account the believer in question was living in the unrepentant sin of adultery, and the apostle Paul pronounced judgement on this individual by handing him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh (i.e. physical death). There were two reasons that this was done. The one reason was to remove the contaminating influence of sin from the church. The second reason that this was done, and this is the point I want to concentrate on in this teaching, was so that this believer’s salvation would still be intact on the day of the Lord Jesus. And so what the Holy Spirit reveals to us in this passage is that if this believer had not been taken to be with the Lord, then he would have eventually reached the point of committing the sin to death and he would have lost his salvation. And so we see that even though this believer would die while practicing the sin of adultery, his salvation was still assured and he would not be condemned with the world. The reason for that was because his spirit was still alive unto God at that time, and it therefore remained unaffected by the sin of adultery that he was practicing. Eternity is far more important to God than this life, and as we have already seen in the previous section, the Lord will do whatever is necessary to ensure that all of His children spend eternity with Him. And so if needed, our Lord Jesus judges His church in this life, and He does this so that we can be kept from the judgement of condemnation which will be incurred by the unbelievers on their day of judgement.
1 Corinthians 11:30-32 “For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. (31) For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. (32) But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.”
We have already established that in the passage of scripture quoted above that the Holy Spirit is writing to believers, not unbelievers. The judgement that He is referring to in this passage is the judgement that believers can expect in this life, if they refuse to repent of sin in their lives. And so we see that in order to keep them from being condemned with the world, there are numerous ways in which the Lord Jesus judges His saints in this life. One of those ways is to take the believer to be with Him earlier than God originally intended for their lives, and He does this if He sees that the path that the believer is on will ultimately result in their committing the sin to death. And so we can clearly see in this section that even though believers may die in unrepentant sin they will not be condemned with the world, the reason being that they are born-again with the nature and life of God in their spirits, and their spirits remain unaffected by sin.
Michael E.B. Maher
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