How great is our God? He gave us His one and only Son, so that we can be saved. Yes, when Jesus died on the cross, he suffered and died so that we may receive grace and forgiveness, and by defeating death, we now share in the inheritance of Paradise.
The cross made it possible to find forgiveness through Him, no matter what we did, how big it was, how long we did it for or how much damage it caused. We read in Is 1:8 “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” We also read in 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
You see, no matter what our past looks like, Jesus will come and wipe that out and we will become a new creation in Christ, just like we read in 2 Cor 5:7. But, what is very important, is that we truly understand the meaning of becoming a new creation in Christ.
Let’s read John 3:3 “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Brother and sister in Christ, to be born again also means to become a new creation, but this time with Christ in us. When we decide to accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we accept to become new, to be reborn, and to let go of our old lives.
If we become new creations, if the old dies and we are reborn, then this new life also needs to reflect in and through us. We cannot continue to be the same and do the same things. Let me explain. If I am a person who enjoyed going to parties and get drunk, then that needs to stop. If I am a person who lived in lust and jumped into bed with everyone, then that needs to stop. If I was addicted to drugs, alcohol, porn, etc., then that needs to stop! You cannot become a new creation in Christ, but then you still hang on to the old you.
I can clearly see a new trend lately, a new generation of Christians, that gives their hearts to Christ, but then do not become reborn, they continue to live the way they always have, and when questioned, they say that they received grace through Christ Jesus. The worst of it all is that they do not see anything wrong with it.
Brother and sister, grace is not a license to sin! When we accept Jesus into our hearts, we need to reflect Jesus. The light of the Lord needs to shine through us, and people need to be able to see the difference in us. They need to say: “What have you done; you are different; I want what you have”.
We read in 1 Pet 1:16: “Be holy because I am holy”. Yes, we are not perfect, and we will make mistakes, but doing them knowingly, is not what the Lord wants from us. Our lives need to change, and we need to try at least to be holy. Yes, if we make a mistake, we receive the grace and forgiveness, but if we deliberately continue to sin, knowing what we do, we are playing with fire.
I am not writing this article to judge, but rather to warn, a warning not just to you, but to me as well. We can so easily get distracted by the world, that we start to believe that it is ok to abuse the grace we received. Let us examine our lives today, all of us, and make the necessary changes. I want to end with Romans 6:
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
GRACE IS NOT A LICENSE TO SIN!
God bless you.
Jaco van As