Grace Abuse

Let’s pick up our study in Galatians 1:4 where it says of Jesus: “Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:” The bottom line is that God allowed His only Son to be killed so that we could be delivered out of this present evil age. All around us, the world is going to Hell. I.e. murders and massacres, child abuse and drug abuse, witchcraft and Satanism, alcoholism and AIDS. This world that we live in has been, and will continue to become, more and more evil, but the good news is that God's grace is offered to us to deliver us from this. The question is, “Will you accept it?”

Notice v.5 which says, “To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Paul writes, "to God be the glory." We can’t take any of the credit. There was nothing that we did to qualify us for salvation.

Notice vv.6-7, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.” Remember that grace is God's unmerited favor upon us. It is the fact that God: a. loved us when we despised Him; b. adopted us as His children anyway; c. sent Jesus to pay the penalty for our sins before we even knew we had sins; d. gave us everything when we deserved nothing (Romans 5:8; Titus 3:5; Romans 5:6)!

However, as human beings we have a tendency to corrupt everything. And with grace, the Bible addresses two problems that we as sinful humans introduce. First, we tend to abuse grace. I’ve heard people say, “If I'm saved by grace, not by my works, then I can sin all I want!" No, it does not work that way, my friend. Those are teachings of the ungodly. Jude said in Jude 4 “For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.” We will discuss the second problem next week which is that we tend to want to maintain it by works or good deeds.