Considerations ~ Falling From Grace?

“For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” (Romans 6:14)

This reminds me of a common description of a Christian who has been caught in sin as someone who has “fallen from grace.” However, it is not the Christian who sins who falls from grace, but the person who begins trusting in self to be good. As Paul wrote, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4).

When people depend on self to be good, they remain under law, and are guilty of all its requirements (James 2:10). The same is true when people deny their sin and believe they have no need for salvation. They, too, remain under condemnation because sin has dominion over them under the law.

On the other hand, when Christians respond to their sin by confessing their sins to God, depending on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ as their only hope of deliverance, they are standing as strongly in grace as anyone we would think of as the strongest grace-standing Christian of all.

Grace is the undeserved favor of God actively working in our lives to make us like Jesus. We are saved by this undeserved favor of God actively bringing us to faith in God’s Son (Ephesians 2:8-9).

We are transformed into the same image as Jesus Christ our Lord “from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18), by the undeserved favor of God actively working such monumental change in our lives.

We will one day be just like Jesus when we see him as he is (I John 3:2), because the undeserved favor of God will actively bring to completion the good work it has started in us (Philippians 1:6). 

To the Christian struggling with sin, we have this hope in the grace of God: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). This does not encourage us “to continue in sin that grace may abound” (Romans 6:1-2). Rather, it encourages us that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)