What grace is not?
We have studied a lot about what grace is and the crucial part it plays in our lives, but one wise man said that “truth out of balance leads to heresy”. There is a lot of wisdom in that simple statement and I don’t want to be guilty of sharing truth out of balance. Therefore, I would like to end our three part series on the grace of God, by focusing on what grace is not, so we can appreciate all the more what grace is. Please consider the following true story of one.
Willfully sinning can destroy your faith and here is my story!
From https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/bmbh2y/willfully_sinning_can_destroy_your_faith_and_here/
So I grew up in a Christian home and had great witnesses in my family about Jesus. Despite that I never grasped the gospel until age 17. One day it just clicked and I repented of my sins and placed my faith in the cross for the payment of my sins. I experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in a changed heart.
From age 17-21: I was great. I went to church, followed my conscience, and followed the Holy Spirit's promptings and it was all good.
Age 22 in 2012: I got angry at some people at my church and left. I have no real explanation of why I did that, but I was pretty confused at the time. I did not know that I was spiritually destroying myself. I started slipping back into pornography and doing it occasionally.
Year 2013: I was lonely and started to go to the internet for friendships. I got involved with some very worldly thinking and went against promptings of the Holy Spirit.
2014: I continued down this path more, as I enrolled for college. I was doing lots of pornography at this time.
2015: I went to college. Things were okay for a bit. I felt convicted about some things, but went ahead and did them anyway. I joined a fraternity and started drinking and smoking weed. I desperately wanted friends and had no Christian friends, since I abandoned church. I was very worldly and a carnal Christian for sure.
2016: I harvested what I had sown. One day my heart just changed. It became hardened and I no longer felt convicted anymore. I no longer thought about Christ anymore. I only thought about the next carnal thing to do. I no longer could feel love and other fruits of the Spirit. I just died spiritually. I wanted to repent of my sins, but it was too late. My heart was hardened.
2017: I ramped up my efforts to repent. I tried to be more "Christian", but the problem was the Holy Spirit no longer had any influence in my life.
2018: I quit my fraternity and started seeking God more intensely, but at this point I started to realize that I was a Hebrews apostate.
2019: I am still seeking the Lord, but my heart is too hardened and I no longer feel convicted of my sins.
Galatians 6:7-8: Do not be deceived.. God is not mocked! For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh, will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
- Grace is not permission to sin or a license to sin or just to live your life any way you want. Jesus paid the ultimate price for your life. Therefore, if you have asked the Lord Jesus to save you from your personal sinfulness and become your personal Lord and Savior, then you gave up the rights to live your life anyway you want or to indulge yourself in the things of this world or the lusts of the flesh. Consider the following verses and how they apply to your life.
1 Corinthians 6:20: You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 Peter 1:18-19: For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
- Grace is not divine tolerance of sin. God hates sin!
Psalm 11:5: The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
Proverbs 8:13: The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.
Psalm 97:10: O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of His saints; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Zechariah 8:17: Do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord.
- A true Christian (born-again child of God) who chooses to use his/her freedom in Christ from sin...to sin, will face discipline and judgements in this life, that can eventually lead to the sin unto death (premature death). The Holy Spirit will not allow His holy grace to go on being insulted, abused, or blasphemed.
1 John 5:16-17: If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.
Based on 2 Samuel 11:1-26, the story of King David and Bathsheba reveal a clear example of someone resisting God's grace to pursue an intentional sin. We know that David had received grace from God in the form of warnings and clear moral guidance from his mediation of Scripture, yet he chose to ignore them to commit adultery and murder.
David's intentional sin
The biblical account of David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11 details David’s deliberate progression of sin, after he resisted God’s grace.
- The initial temptation: While his army was at war (and David should have been with them), a bored and restless King David went up on his rooftop, where he saw a married woman named Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop. The text notes that "the woman was very beautiful". David had to resist God’s grace to look at Bathsheba until he felt the compulsion to have sexual relations with her.
- Acting on lust: Then, despite her marital status, David sent messengers to bring Bathsheba to his palace, where he had sexual relations with her.
- Attempting to conceal the sin: When David learned that Bathsheba was pregnant, he attempted to cover up his transgression. He called Bathsheba's husband...Uriah...to come home from the battlefield, so Uriah would hopefully and naturally sleep with his wife during his break from war. If Uriah did sleep with her, David could then claim that her pregnancy was caused by Uriah.
- Murder to hide the truth: As a loyal soldier, Uriah refused to enjoy the comforts of home and family, while his fellow soldiers were fighting. When this messed up David's plan, the king then sent Uriah back to the battlefield with a secret letter to Joab (David’s general and Uriah’s commander), instructing Joab to ensure Uriah was killed in battle...which Joab did.
The resistance of grace
This biblical narrative illustrates David's resistance to God's grace at multiple points:
- He Ignored his conscience guided by God: David had a strong relationship with God and clearly understood his divine and moral law. His actions show that he consciously put this aside for his own desires.
- He rejected God's "restraining grace": As some theologians explain, God's "restraining grace" is His work to limit sin and evil in the world. David's decision to move forward with his plan, even when his initial cover-up failed, shows a rejection of this restraining grace. This allowed his heart to become more hardened, leading him to commit murder.
The final confrontation and repentance
The biblical narrative does not end with David's attempted cover-up. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David with his sin. Nathan told David a story about a rich man who steals a poor man's cherished lamb, enraging David, who declares the man deserves to die. Nathan then delivered God’s message: "You are the man!".
When directly confronted by God’s prophet, David finally acknowledged his sin, saying, "I have sinned against the Lord". This was the turning point, at which time he finally stopped resisting and accepted God's conviction.
While David did receive God’s forgiveness, he and his family faced severe consequences for his intentional choice to sin...when he resisted grace. His child with Bathsheba died shortly after birth and God told David, that the sword would never depart from David’s family (2 Samuel 12:10).
The "sword" symbolized violence and internal conflict within David's family. His family would face continual strife, betrayal, and death, as the prophecy came to pass through the actions of his sons... Amnon and Absalom.
- Amnon raped Absalom’s sister Tamar.
- Then Absalom killed Amnon.
- Later on, Absalom sought to kill his own father David, so he could be king.
- This led to General Joab killing Absalom.
- Then when David was on his death bed, his oldest living son at that time (Adonijah) proclaimed himself king, when David had already designated Solomon to become king upon David’s death.
- This set up an on-going conflict between Solomon and Adonijah, that eventually led to Adonijah being put to death.
In the late 19th century a Russian monk had considerable influence over the royal family of Russia. His name was Gregory Rasputin. Rasputin held a distorted and perverted view of God’s grace. He taught that to know and experience the grace of God, you needed to sin more, because grace was given freely. He taught that the more you sinned, the more grace would be made available. So Rasputin lived in gross immorality and drunkenness...a life that was a product of the abuse of grace.
From “Abused Grace”....Devotions with Pastor Jason Lim
The following verses directly address a Christian who considers intentionally sinning.
Romans 6:1-2: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Ephesians 2:8-9: For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Ephesians 4:30: And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20: Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own...you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
Ephesians 2:8-9: For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Hebrews 10:26: For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
Hebrews 10:29: How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
1 Corinthians 11:30: That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. {They partook of the Lord’s supper with conscious and unconfessed sin in their lives.}
1 Corinthians 5:5:You are to deliver this man(a church member)to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. {The man was living in sin with his step-mother.}
1 John 5:16: If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life — to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death! I do not say that one should pray for that.
Acts 5:1–10 describes what happened to the man named Ananias and his wife named Sapphira, who chose to intentionally sin by deceiving the church, and lying to the Holy Spirit about financial assets they gave to their church. They both died in church on the same day. They committed a sin unto death!
If you have sinned, but desire to get right with God again, there is only one way to do it. You must acknowledge you have sinned, confess exactly what the sin was, and ask God the Father to forgive you and cleanse you for that sin or sins...through the blood of Jesus Christ.
1 John 1:9 expresses what will happen when you do this transaction with God the Father. This is another excellent example of God’s grace at work!
1 John 1:9: But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
To bring our study of grace to a close, I would like to end with five outstanding Scriptures that will help impress the greatness of grace deep down into your spiritual being. These will enable you to both live by grace and enjoy the life of grace God wants for you.
Hebrews 4:16: Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. {The path to the throne of God is made of grace.}
Philemon 1:25: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. {The only way you can experience Christ in your spirit (inner-being) is by grace and through grace.}
1 Peter 1:13: But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen. {You can grow in God’s grace and as you do, you also grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.}
2 Peter 3:18: But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! {The sacrificial work of Christ is the only reason any of us gets access to God’s grace.}
John 3:16: So that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. {When grace reigns in our lives, then righteousness will also reign in our lives.}
I thank you for the grace you both used and showed in reading this piece. May the Lord bless your growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Gene
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