Sin & Grace
I believe this message will challenge you as a believer, and my prayer is that you will walk away empowered and that much more sure of your identity in Him.
Hebrews 10:26-31 – “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Again verse 26 says: “For if we go on sinning deliberately (or “willfully” says the KJV) after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins…” In other words, if we go on willfully sinning after receiving knowledge of the truth, we have basically have rejected the sacrifice that is Jesus Christ.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The question may arise: what about grace? We talk a lot about God’s grace, but we also boast very proudly and arrogantly in our sins. The Word says that He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Grace is truly a gift from God, but oftentimes we do not have an understanding of what grace truly is. That is a-whole-nother teaching in itself. But since we don’t understand what grace is and what it’s for, we abuse it. The scripture says in Hebrews 10:29, we “outrage the Spirit of grace.” Many times we don’t truly operate in grace at all as believers when it comes to sin. Instead, we make provision for our flesh before sinning, during sin, and after sin, and we call that God’s grace when we just made up our own grace and gave it to our flesh so that it can comfortably sin when that’s not God’s will for us. The Bible says “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:14). But we have bought into this idea that the Lord is fine with our flesh being satisfied and appeased as long as we are doing it within Christianity, under the umbrella of the church and not under the umbrella of the world. But let me tell you what Paul said to the Galatian church, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other.” So we can be fully convinced by the Word that “nothing good dwells in the flesh,” and we realize here that flesh and sin is an enemy of God. More importantly, grace is not in place for continual, deliberate/willful sinning.
So let’s go back to the scripture Hebrews 10:26, the NLT says, “Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.”
This message is very challenging to the flesh because flesh wants to believe it has room to breathe as it wills. Many of us have learned what a man said and not what God said. It serves our fleshly desires much better to believe that not sinning in Christ is afar off somewhere unattainable than to believe that we are supposed to live without wilfully serving sin. The Word says in Matthew 5:48, “You, therefore, must be perfect [growing into complete maturity of godliness in mind and character, having reached the proper height of virtue and integrity], as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Although true overall perfection of mankind and this world hasn’t yet come or taken place, it is clear from scripture that there is a level of perfection in maturity that we are expected to reach as believers while here on earth. We find few preachers that will teach this, but yet an overwhelming number of preachers that teach every week from the pulpit that sin is still in control, that while we are in Christ we will continue to serve sin at will without a doubt, and that is not the truth of the Word of God. We must understand our mandate as evangelists or as leaders in the church is not to form a “barely making it” support group that says however you sin it’s ok just make sure you confess Jesus is Lord and join a church and we can all be sinners in Christ together. Because that’s not God’s will for us either. We always call ourselves sinners, but if you truly study the Word of God, sinners and believers are not the same thing at all. Sinners are those who practice sin. Even Paul seemingly called himself chief sinner, but I challenge you to study both that scripture and this topic more thoroughly before you call yourself a sinner again as a born-again believer. Once we are saved and have truly believed and received Christ and the truth of the Word of God, if we continue on as sinners, it’s highly likely that we will be the ones outraging the Spirit of grace and forsaking the sacrifice that was made for sin.
True enough, it’s understandable that we don’t want to “leave anybody out” or make the lost feel as if we think we are superior, but while having compassion on those who are STILL sinners, we have to make sure that we ourselves don’t get left out because of sin. Instead of forming fellowships of sinners all across America, we have to encourage one another and the lost to come OUT of darkness and into the light that is Jesus Christ.
Excuses for Sin
Let’s take a look at just a couple of commonly misinterpreted scriptures that may give the impression that a lifestyle of sin is acceptable or understood by God:
Romans 3:23 - “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” Now many people would use this to say “we all sin,” but we have to understand to Word of God in context. Paul is explaining to the Romans here, in past tense, the reason why faith in Jesus is important, because we could never be right under the Old Covenant because we have all already sinned and therefore we all come short of what God had required through Old Testament law. This is by no means a license to continue in sin. We all have sinned, yes, but we don’t all continue to make conscious decisions to sin. And I truly believe that there is a remnant of believers who truly desire, like the scripture says, to do the will of the Father with every conscious decision that comes before you.
So that was one scripture that’s used as a license to sin, let’s look at the other famous example courtesy of Paul, which is in Romans 7. But first, let’s look at 2 Peter 3:16, “there are some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” And I believe that is because if you take Paul’s letters out of context, you can definitely go off course. And this is another of the many reasons why we have to lean and depend on God for guidance and revelation.
Romans 7:15 says, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Now if you take that and stop right there, walking uprightly before God almost seems hopeless because here you have the Apostle Paul powerful man God and He doesn’t even have the fruit of the Spirit, doesn’t even have self-control it seems. But if you read on through the rest of the Chapter and into Chapter 8, we can understand that Paul is explaining this struggle in the flesh so that we don’t have to go through this. He says our flesh is subject to sin, this is why we struggle, because we are not walking in the Spirit the way that we ought to. He’s not saying to mimic this struggle, he is telling us how to avoid it. Paul says yes the flesh is going to serve the sin nature, but he goes on to encourage us in saying that’s why we don’t walk in the flesh, we walk in the Spirit–in Christ–where sin no longer has power.
Read Romans 7 & 8 when you have time, and there are also a few other scriptures that can be misconstrued, but on the contrary there are some very clear indicators that God’s will and expectation is that we remain conscious of avoiding sin. For example twice Jesus told those that He healed to “sin no more” (John 5:14, 8:11). I don’t know about you, but in the world of compromise that we live in today, even as Christians, this seems like an impossible request. But whether He meant it literally or as an encouragement, again, His expectations are made very clear. Here are some others:
1 John 3:6-10 - No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. (And there we can go back to depart from me I never knew you) Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.
Romans 6:1 says What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
And also verses 11 &12 say “…you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.”
So finally, I just want to make this plain. Some of us may sin UNKNOWINGLY or out of ignorance or weakness because at those times we’ve forsaken the instruction of the Spirit and failed to lean and God for strength, or out of ignorance, because we’ve failed to gain knowledge of the Word of God. And this is why 1 John 2 says, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” Now, take note that he says “if,” not when, but it seems from the scripture to be fathomable that some of us may sin unconsciously and sporadically, and that, I believe, is something that we can and definitely should lean on Jesus in repentance for, but then there are those who consciously CHOOSE to continually sin and as we have learned here today, those people are in a dangerous, dangerous place with God, as the scripture says in Hebrews 10:31, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
How to Approach Sin
So how can we bring ourselves into alignment with God’s will for us as believers who desire to serve Him wholeheartedly?
1. REALIZE THAT SIN HAS NO POWER OVER YOU WHEN YOU WALK IN THE SPIRIT / RECEIVE FREEDOM FROM SIN THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
The Bible says in Romans 6:14 – “…sin will have no dominion over you.”
And we already discussed this earlier, Paul gave great encouragement in Romans 8: 2-9: “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit…You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.”
2. RECOGNIZE TEMPTATION / SIN FOR WHAT IT IS
I believe most of us are aware of common sins that are clearly listed in the Bible such as fornication, lying, homosexuality, idolatry, etc., and we must be aware of recognizing temptation before that desire has conceived and given birth to sin as James said (1:15). There is also less-commonly recognized sin.
Romans 14:23 says “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” Or as another translation says, “Anything that is done without believing it is right is a sin.” Do you know what that means? Before you make a move, be sure that you truly believe it’s God’s will. Don’t be tempted to act out of your flesh to make things hurry along or in order to get your desired outcome when you know that you haven’t consulted God or are not in faith that what you are doing is pleasing Him.
And then lastly James 4:17, “…any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it, to him it is sin. How many of us actually know what’s right but let our fleshly desires, opinions of man or even our own opinions, our bitterness or unforgiveness, or our own fears come in the way of doing what we know is right? The scripture says this is also sin.
So we have to understand that sin is not only worldly pleasures, but also operating in a lack of faith as well as knowing what’s right and not doing it. That’s a big issue for a lot of us as believers, but we have to understand that continually knowing what God wants from us and not doing it puts us in a position of falling into the pattern of sin that is the basis of this message.
3. AVOID SIN
So now that we have gained a greater understanding of our freedom from sin and how to recognize temptation & sin, how can we avoid it? The Bible says in I Cor 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
Notice I didn’t say avoid temptation, but avoid sin. As the scripture says, TEMPTATION is common to man, but as we can see clearly from this lesson, giving into the temptation should not be common at all amongst the people of God.
James 4:17 says “Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee”
4. I saved this for last because it’s most important and is actually not a separate step but is instead a part of every step, and that’s: LEAN ON THE HOLY SPIRIT / WALK IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST
WE CAN’T DO THIS BY OURSELVES OR IN OUR OWN POWER. That’s why the Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” We know that we are to walk in the Spirit. As the Bible says, we don’t operate in the flesh because the flesh serves sin. The Holy Spirit is never going to lead us into sin, this is why we are to walk in the Spirit. Many times when we sin even unknowingly or ignorantly, it’s because that means we aren’t leaning and trusting the Spirit but we are relying instead on our own awareness of obvious sin rather than letting God truly direct our every step. So we have to be sure to do as Prov 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
Prayer
Just want to end by praying this prayer together.
Lord God, we come to you this evening in repentance for doubt and unbelief and for being ignorant of your Word and Your will for us. Lord, we confess that we have given into sin time & time again willingly, knowingly, and deliberately and we have neglected to turn to You for the strength & power to overcome. But we repent tonight for that because we have come to the knowledge of the truth that that’s not pleasing to you. We believe in Your resurrection Jesus. We believe that You truly freed us from the power of sin when You rose with all authority & power in You. And we thank You for that. We are grateful God. We truly desire to believe and to serve You wholeheartedly, & we ask You, Holy Spirit, for wisdom and guidance in the face of temptation so that our lusts do not conceive and bring forth sin. We don’t want to outrage the Spirit of grace with willful disobedience God, so we submit our mindsets and fleshly ways to You, and we ask for forgiveness. We submit our sexual sin to You, our idolatry to you, God we submit it all, and we ask for forgiveness. We ask that You encourage & strengthen those who are weak so that they will continue to grow in faith in You. God we don’t take this opportunity for granted to turn from a lifestyle of sin and to truly believe and walk with You in faith. We thank You not only for what You’re doing now, but for the seeds of Your Word that have been planted & that will flourish as we continue to follow & grow in You both as leaders and as believers in Jesus Christ. We bless you, and we honor You in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Listen to the full sermon here:
