God loves me…unconditionally and without reserve. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do that will change His love for me.
I don’t deserve it…I cannot earn it.
That’s Grace.
Yet, Paul says in Philippians 2:12 to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’
This means that I don’t get a free pass. I can’t use God’s Grace to play with sin. I still have a responsibility to live righteously, not according to my will, but His.
Again, in Romans 6:1…’What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?’
Grace doesn’t give me permission to sin.
The next verse, Romans 6:2 continues, ‘Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?’
The world tells me that giving lip service to God is better than nothing. Religion tells me that if I attend church on Sunday it covers all the bad things I do during the week, that God will let me slide into heaven because I am a good person…but…am I really a good person if I live like the devil during the week and attend church on Sunday only to get points with God?
The thing that the world and religion have overlooked, the issue that they’ve conveniently left out, is that to find salvation and then continue to sin…willfully…purposefully….is to cheapen the Grace that nailed Jesus to the cross.