Responding to Grace
Are believers free to sin? We talked yesterday about the freedom we have in Jesus. He freed us because his grace gave us the path to eternal life. Jesus is the Way to eternal life. When we follow him, we find eternal life. The closer we get to him, the more we enjoy our eternal life. Is that life easy? In a way. But it also requires that we obey. The freedom Jesus bought for us is the freedom to obey God.
So the author asks, should we continue in our sin. Can we live any way we want now that we follow Jesus? And his response is bold and definite. No! We can’t understand fully the idea of our salvation. When we follow Jesus, we experience his eternal life. We join his kingdom. But when we decide to sin, or simply neglect our relationship with him, we let him down. When we ask the question, can I sin and still get to heaven, we ask the wrong question. Another great question might be, when I sin, do I go back to being dead? In Genesis 1, God warned Adam that the day he ate of the fruit of the tree, he would surely die.
Sin separates us from God. Jesus forgives our sin, giving us the path to heaven. But if we keep on sinning, we still miss out on the relationship with Jesus now. Enjoy your salvation. Choose to do what Jesus says. We experience so much joy when we obey Jesus, why do we continue to choose otherwise? Because we’re powerless and lost. Our world, our flesh and our enemy are all lined up to take us away from the joy of being rightly related to Jesus.
Today, let’s choose to obey him. If you hear this on the way to work, take a few more minutes and ask God to show you how you need to obey him today. He will tell you. Ask God to give you an idea and then, today, watch for some idea you get to serve someone or make a sacrifice so someone else might move closer to Jesus. Ask him and he will do it. What have you got to lose?
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