Death, Sin and Grace

(Romans 5:20) “Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:”

(Romans 6:1-4) “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life.”

The law cannot help you after you have sinned.

The only thing that the law can do is make sin greater. All law can do is show us our sins. The law cannot undo sin.

There is no forgiveness in the law. So that if you learned the law (Exodus 20:15) _”Thou shalt not steal,” after you have stolen, the law
cannot help you, because you have already stolen.

There are two things we need to understand about the law:

  1. Knowing the law will not undo someone’s sinful acts
  2. Knowing the law does not mean that you will not violate it. Just because one knows to do good does not mean that one
    will do good.

Knowledge is not action. (Romans 2:13) “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.”
And knowledge of the law will not keep you from doing evil or violating the law. The penalty of the law needs to be enforced if the law has been violated. And God will be the enforcer. God will enforce his law in his own time.

Yet God in his grace has made it possible for us to have forgiveness of our sins. He did this by sending His Son, Jesus, to die for us to pay the penalty for our sins.

In the grace of God, there is forgiveness of sin.

God’s grace means that if one keeps on sinning willfully, he is not in the grace of God. If he was, he would be a new man that does not want to sin. This is not to say that the new man cannot sin, for he can, but he will not want to.

(Romans 6:6) “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”

Death will keep us from sinning. It is Christ’s death that will keep us from sinning. Since the old man died with Christ, the old man does not have control over us; so that we will not have to sin.

Paul is saying that when anyone will confess his mouth that Jesus is Lord and will believe in his heart that God hath raised him from the dead, he will be saved. Then, God will start to make some changes in his life. The change that God will make when one has been justified by faith is the power to walk in the Spirit. When one is saved, he does not have to walk in the flesh anymore; for God crucified the old man when Christ was crucified.

Just before Paul tells us that our old self is crucified with Christ he tells us that if we are in the grace of God we have been “baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”

The Greek word “baptized” is the act of baptizing, which produces a permanent change. (Romans 6:3) “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”

This doctrine that Paul is teaching here is very important, for it is the doctrine that the saved one is “in Christ”. Paul wants us to understand just what means when to be “in Christ”. If we do not understand this truth we will not understand Paul’s teaching in this chapter and the next two chapters. We need to understand these truths, for they tell us how and why we should live not in sin, but live in the power of the Holy Spirit, so we will not sin.

*Devotional written by Ralph Williams, retired pastor and member of One Hope Mobile.

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