You’ve heard the old saying, "Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile!"   We are often like that, aren’t we.   Are we like that when it comes to the grace of God?   Paul anticipated such a response to grace.   He knew that some would say, if they hadn’t already said it, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" (Rom. 6:1).   The idea was that if grace has the power to increase when sin increases (which is what Paul had just said in Rom. 5:20), then we ought to sin more to receive more grace.   Sounds like our "logic" sometimes, doesn’t it?   But it’s wrong!

        The Bible is absolutely clear, we are "saved by grace through faith not by works so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8,9).   We cannot earn our salvation.   No amount of good works can ever make up for or atone for sin.   We are completely dependent on the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sin and our hope of heaven.   And the good news is that God will give us just that!   We can have confidence in our salvation, not because of what we do, but because of what Christ has already done on the cross.

        What is astounding is that some learn the lesson of salvation by grace, and then mistakenly think that their obedience, their complete obedience, to every command of God is not all that important.   After all, we are not saved by works, are we?   This response to the message of salvation by grace is the most ungrateful response we could have, other than completely rejecting Christ!

        What should be the proper response to grace?   Gratitude! An undying, outpouring of grateful expressions of gratitude.   Our lives ought to be a living message that we love God and His Son for what they have done for us that we could not do for ourselves and we count it a privilege to obey everything God says to the very best of our ability.   The solution to the problem of presuming on the grace of God regardless of how we live, is not to go to the other extreme of teaching that we must earn our salvation.   The solution is to know where we were before we became a Christian (lost in our sin), what remedies there were for this problem (only the blood of Jesus), recognize what an indescribable gift our salvation is, and show our gratitude to God by determining that we want to obey every command God gives us.

        Grace gives us great freedom.   Freedom from the penalty of sin, freedom from having to try to earn our salvation.   But grace is never freedom to live any way we want to live.   In fact, Paul describes our new relationship to God as slaves!   But we are voluntarily slaves to God, slaves of righteousness, because we have been set free from sin (Rom. 6:15-18).   When we really recognize what God has done in the giving of His Son, and we see the tremendous price Jesus paid to set us free from sin, the ultimate act of grace, how could we do less than live in complete devotion and obedience to God?

        The price Jesus paid to save us by grace was not cheap.   We must not cheapen His grace by living as we please.

-- Wayne Sharp