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Maybe you have heard that too much grace will give a person a license to sin. You need to mix law with grace to balance it out. I believed this for years. I could not see how grace could stop sin in my life. I feared grace without a mixture or balance of law, would lead me to fall headlong, out of control, into sin. This is what is taught in most churches today.
The truth is, the too much grace will give you a license to sin line, is a lie straight from Satan. Mixing the law with grace robs us of the power of the gospel in our lives.
I know from personal experience how grace does just the opposite and it is the law that arouses our Sin nature just like scripture states, leading us into acts of sin. When I talk to believers, they are not looking for a way into sin, they are looking for a way out of sin. Most try and do it man’s way by law-keeping through dead works of the flesh. These are dead works because a believer is immediately right with God by the blood of Christ.
Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, Heb 6:1 NAS
Most believers are terrified of letting go of the Old Covenant laws completely. Like I was, Satan has them convinced they will fall deep into sin. I now know from experience, that I describe in this study, how grace actually defeats sin in our life. This only happens by letting go of the Old Covenant ways totally, including the law of Moses and fully embracing His righteousness and the abundance of grace and truth Jesus brought us with the New Covenant. I have learned that I do not need to try and hold onto Jesus through law-keeping, He has me firmly in His grip.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. “I and the Father are one.” Joh 10:27-30 NAS
First, I testify as to how grace has personally defeated sin in my life, in a way I could not possibly see before I experienced it.
Second, Since I have written on this before, I present the scriptural argument that is beyond dispute second. The scriptures that are abundantly clear that Christians are no longer under the law of Moses, the entire Old Covenant. And how holding onto the Old Covenant robs the power of the New Covenant from the believer. We are to fully embrace Jesus, grace and truth, the entire New Covenant of grace and truth that has replaced Moses Old Covenant of law.
My Testimony
This is my testimony of letting go of the Old Covenant letter of the law of Moses completely and embracing God’s New Covenant of righteousness, an abundance of grace and truth.
I have come to understand that the law can only deal with the outward acts of sin through behavior modification with the fear of punishment. The law cannot correct the root cause that will forever lead to acts of sin if left unaddressed. God’s way addresses the root, our inherited Sin nature. His goal is heart transformation not forever temporary behavior modification. He will transform us from the inside out if we cooperate. His love, grace, forgiveness, and righteousness are the power that transforms us, eliminating the root cause that leads our still fallen flesh to commit acts of sin in this life. This is crucial because while our newly born Spirit has been perfected and sealed, in our flesh still resides the same inherited sin nature we inherited from Adam. This creates a tremendous battle of Spirit and flesh within that Paul talks about in Romans 7:14-25. Paul tells us that this battle cannot be won in the flesh through the letter of the law, it can only be won in the Spirit, in Christ. In other words, God’s way, not ours.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. Rom 8:1 NAS
Grace undiluted by the law, teaches us and instructs just like scripture states and has led me out of sin.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Titus 2:11-14 NAS
God’s love and abundant grace have led me to be able to naturally reject anger, resentment, unforgiveness, bitterness, wrong thinking, fear, worry, guilt, selfishness, offense and much more before they can take root. I now realize I simply do not have time for these any longer in my life. All of these traits are sin in themselves, and if focused on, grow and manifest into outward acts of sin. I no longer meditate on any of these traits, replacing them with prayer for those involved and thoughts of my righteousness in Christ.
I quickly realize when Satan is trying to plant seeds of doubt, worry or fear and can reject these at the onset so they do not take root and trouble my heart.
"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27 NAS
Grace has taught me to reject seeds of worry and fear at onset.
"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Matt 6:25 NAS
Grace has taught me to reject any seeds of doubt about my salvation and God’s love for me.
"You of little faith, why did you doubt?" Matt 14:31b NAS
I see my thought life much more clearly since I have taken my eyes off the law that made me sin conscious just like scripture states – Rom 3:20. My thoughts and mind have been captivated by the obedience of Christ and His righteousness. In other words, my focus is on Jesus finished work, and His obedience, not self and my failures. I am no longer conscious of my sin as Hebrews 10:2 states we should be if we really believe Jesus sacrifice worked. My eyes are fixed on His righteousness that is mine all of the time, even when I fail and sin. I verbally tell the enemy this truth, especially when I fail, in my time of need, as he tries to attack me.
I am the righteousness of God in Christ.
What I see happening is that the fruits of the Spirit are naturally replacing the lusts of the flesh, sin.As I stay fixated on my righteousness in Christ, the fruits of the Spirit are growing rapidly and choking out the weeds planted by Satan.This is happening naturally just like fruit that grows on a living vine. I no longer doubt my salvation even when I sin because I now know beyond any doubt that it is all about Jesus finished work and His righteousness. God has made me righteous and qualified me for the inheritance of the Saints.
giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Col 1:12-14 NAS
With my eyes totally on Jesus and His finished work, my awareness of how much God loves me has increased greatly. I know I am forgiven much, forgiven fully by Jesus one sacrifice for all, for all time. This allows me to love much according to Luke 7:47.
"For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." Luke 7:47 NAS
Realizing at all times that I have been forgiven much, leads me to love God greatly and to walk in love, manifesting the fruits of the Spirit like self-control, perseverance, brotherly kindness, and love. Scripture tells us that it is only those who have forgotten their purification/cleansing/forgiveness from their sins that do not have these qualities, the fruits of the Spirit listed in the following verses.
Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. 2 Peter 1:5-9 NAS
By pointing me to the law, Satan used to lead me to forget my total forgiveness, bringing sin consciousness and doubt into my life, cutting off, severing my supply of grace from Jesus, the vine that produces the fruits listed in the above verse.
You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. Gal 5:4 NAS
Galatians 5:4, just told us that adding the law cuts us off from Christ. It is talking about cutting us off from the life-giving supply of the vine to us, the branch.
"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. John 15:4 NAS
Doubt would always come when Satan got me to take my eyes of Jesus and look at self, compared to the law. All doubt flees when I look at Jesus, who is my righteousness, compared to the law.
I now minister exactly like God ministers to me. I minister and walk by the Spirit of the law which is love, and not the letter of the law that brings condemnation and death, as all Christians are qualified and charged to do.
He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor 3:6 NAS
Love, the Spirit, is the only thing that can fulfill God’s purpose behind all of His laws. Therefore, without even trying, I fulfill God’s purpose for all of His laws.
Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law. Rom 13:8-10 NLT
God’s purpose for all of His written laws is to get us to love Him and to love one another, to walk in love in this still fallen world. Love defeats the lust of the flesh. Love defeats our inherited Sin nature, stopping our acts of sin.
Any good deeds I do now come from the knowledge that my salvation is guaranteed, not to try and guarantee my salvation like I used to do through law keeping.
Love Is the Greatest
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown language and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.1 Corinthians 13: 1-13 NLT
When we let love reign in our life, we let God reign in our life.
We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 1 John 4:16 NAS
When God alone reigns in our life, we reign through Him in life.
For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Rom 5:17 NAS
Scriptural Argument
The Contradiction of Mixing Law with Grace
1) Jesus brought us grace and truth.
For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. John 1:17 NAS
2) Grace and truth is the New Covenant that fully replaced the Old Covenant of law that Moses gave the Jews.
In fact, that first glory was not glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the new way. So if the old way, which has been replaced, was glorious, how much more glorious is the new, which remains forever! 2 Cor 3:10-11 NLT
3) We are no longer under the Old Covenant of law, we are under the New Covenant of grace and truth.
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Rom 6:14 ESV
4) If Sin has dominion in your life and you experience fear, guilt, and condemnation, this is because scripture tells us this condition will exist if we are under the Old Covenant law. When Satan deceives us at any level to even think we are still under the law, we give him the power to accuse and condemn us. The law is the only thing that gives Sin and Satan the power to condemn and kill us.
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; 1 Cor 15:56 NAS
5) Scripture calls the Old Covenant law the ministry of condemnation and death. The law is what brings the guilt and condemnation. The law engraved on stones is the Ten Commandments.
But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was,how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. 3 Cor 3:7-9 NAS
6) The law also arouses our Sin nature inherited from Adam. This arousal leads to more acts of sin. To be free from the arousal of our inherited Sin nature, condemnation and death, we need to die to the letter of the law so that the law no longer has a hold on us. This is why we are to by faith see our flesh as crucified and dead with Christs. We now serve by the Spirit, which is love and not the letter of the law.
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. Rom 7:4-6 NAS
7) Therefore, Jesus is the end of the Old Covenant law for righteousness. The Bible is very clear that Jesus who brought grace and truth is the end of the letter of the law for believers.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Rom 10:4 NAS
8) We are made righteous by the blood of Christ alone.
For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. Rom 5:19 NAS
9) Our righteousness in Christ and removal from being under the law is what disarmed and defeated Satan. We will experience great victory in this life when we are established firmly in His righteousness and grace in our mind and thoughts.
You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmedthe spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. Col 2 13-15 NLT
10) The reason there is no condemnation for Christians from God’s view is because He has made us righteous in Christ, right with God by the blood of Christ alone and no longer under the law that condemns. But, if we think we are under the law to any degree, we will still experience condemnation in our thoughts and minds. We will struggle to try and be right with God through the law, a dead work. This is because we are already right with God. There is absolutely no condemnation for you, Christian.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. John 3:18 ESV
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. Rom 8:1-2 NAS
11) We are saved by God’s grace. The power of the gospel is grace. Satan does not want the power of the gospel to rest upon us.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Rom 1:16
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— Eph 2:5 ESV
12) If you mix grace with the law, you make the grace of no effect. You dilute or remove the power of God from your life. This is Satan’s goal when he deceives believers into believing they are still under the law, robbing us of the power of God. The only way the Bible teaches we can fall away from grace is to go back to the law to try and be right with God. You cannot fall away from grace by sinning. Grace is the antidote for sin.
But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. Rom 11:6 NAS
You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. Gal 5:4 ESV
For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God's grace. Gal 5:4 NLT
13) If you are mixing law and grace, it does not mean you are not saved. It just means your life here will be a struggle compared to how much better it would be if you let go of a law you are no longer under and allowed grace, the power of God to reign in your life. We can only reign in this life when we embrace God’s abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness alone. The New Covenant says nothing about embracing the law. It states we are not under, dead too, and free from the law.
For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Rom 5:17 NAS
14) Coming from the background of a Pharisee, Paul at one time still thought he had to keep the law to be right with God. He had to learn to accept his still fallen flesh and boast in his weakness in keeping the Old Covenant law as opposed to his fleshly desire to boast in his self-righteous ability to keep the law. Here Paul tells us he does not boast in his ability to keep the law any longer as the Jews he was trying to convert were still doing.
You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God? Rom 2:23 NAS
15) Paul boasted only in his weakness and Christ crucified so the power of God would rest upon him. The power for all believers is in God’s grace alone, where we allow God to work through us freely and fully.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Cor 12:9 ESV
But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Gal 6:14 NAS
16) The only way to experience the full power of God in our lives is to let go of the law of Moses, the Old Covenant fully, and completely embrace Jesus and grace alone 1,000 percent like Paul, the New Covenant Jesus died to bring us.
And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Luke 22:20 NAS
Isn’t it obvious why Satan wants us to boast in our own ability to keep the law? Satan does not want the power of God to rest upon us.
If we think God is judging us and we are still under the law, we will judge others, essentially boasting in our ability to keep the specific law we see them violating. Boasting that we are better law keepers than they are. If we do this and boast in our ability to keep the law in words or actions, the power of God will not rest upon us. Do you want the power of God in your life?
Satan will do all he can to deceive you into thinking you must keep the law to be saved. He will use lies and deception to do this, knowing that if you think you are under the law to any degree, he can accuse and condemn you.
If a believer has a strong sincere desire to please God but lacks the knowledge revealed in the verses in this study, lacks the knowledge of His righteousness and their right standing in Christ alone, the easier it can be for Satan to deceive them into law keeping to try and be right with God. To God, this is a dead work since the believer is already right with God.
Satan erects a great wall of fear to keep believers in bondage under the law. He will make you think that if you let go of the law you will fall headlong into sin and be lost. He will use other well-meaning believers who he has deceived to deceive you and fight against the truth in the scriptures you have just read. If you make a firm decision to let go of the law and embrace Jesus righteousness and his grace 1,000 percent, you will not be disappointed. But you will face opposition, mainly through fear generated by Satan’s lies, other believers who live in doubt and fear and an unrenewed mind. Therefore, if must be a firm decision if you are to succeed. I will tell you that on the other side of that fear is the flow, the promised land that God wants you to freely walk into. But it is up to you. You were saved when you trusted in Jesus. If you stay in a mixture of law and grace, that will not change. But, you will be doing dead works, be an obstacle to others who want to go into the promised land and struggle much more in this life.
From my personal experience, God’s way of abundant grace is not a license to commit acts of sin. It is the only way to defeat our inherited Sin nature, the root cause that leads us to commit acts of sin.
Many more New Covenant Bible Studies HERE.
Jesus poured out His blood for the New Covenant of grace and truth, replacing the Old Covenant law of Moses. Believers are exclusively under the New Covenant, the last will and testament of Jesus that began after the cross.
And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood. Luke 22:20
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