Grace Trumps Law

John 5:24 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

 In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord Jesus has very clearly stated that the saints will not come into judgement, for we have already passed from death into life. Some use this passage of scripture to teach the error that the saints will never be judged. A better translation of the word “judgement” in this passage however is the word “condemnation”, for as we will see in this section although the saints will not be condemned, nevertheless they will be judged. The reason the saints will not be condemned is because they have already received eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. You will recall that in the previous section we quoted the passage where our Lord spoke about the resurrection of condemnation, and we said that that resurrection pertained to all the unbelievers who would be raised at the end of the age to incur their final judgement of condemnation. And so it is that judgement of condemnation that our Lord is referring to when He says that His saints will not come into condemnation, because they have already passed from death into life.

John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  (17)  For God, did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  (18)  "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord Jesus has made it very clear that those who believe in Him will never be condemned. In other words the saints will not perish with the world, for they have already received everlasting life. And so we see that the point remains, that once we have believed in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour we have passed from death to life and we are no longer subject to the unbeliever’s judgement of condemnation. Jesus Christ died for our sins and all that He requires of us to be saved is to simply believe in Him and confess Him as Lord. When we do this our spirits are born-again and we are made alive in Christ, and the gift that we receive from God is eternal life.

1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” 

When we are born-again it is our spirits that are made alive once again, for it is our spirits that have passed from death to life. Nevertheless as we have already seen in the previous section, there is one sin that the believer can commit that will cause their spirits to die once again, which is the sin to death. Every other sin committed by the believer cannot affect their spirits however, and the reason for that is because under the New Covenant the saints are not under law but rather they are under grace (Romans 6:14). In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul reveals the truth to us that all things are lawful to the believer. So what does that truth actually mean? If we go back to the first sin committed by mankind we can better understand the difference between being under grace and being under law. When God created Adam and Eve He placed them under law, for the law He gave them was to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). For those who are born under law, the penalty that is incurred for transgressing the law is spiritual death, for the Lord said to Adam that in the day he disobeyed God’s commandment he would surely die (Genesis 2:17). That is exactly what happened, for on the day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they both died spiritually and were thus separated from the life of God. And thus they needed to be born-again in order to be reconciled back to God. And so all believers are made alive in spirit once again when they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and when that happens God places them under grace and not under law. For if God placed the saints back under law, the moment they transgressed any law they would incur the penalty of sinning under the law, which is spiritual death, and if that were to happen there would be no recourse for them, because one cannot be born-again again. And so it is for that reason that the saints are under grace and not under law, and thus all things are lawful for the saints. In other words because all things are lawful for the saints it becomes impossible for them to transgress any law, which means they cannot incur spiritual death which in effect means that their spirits are immune to sin.

Michael E.B. Maher

Eternal Judgement

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