THE POWER OF THE GRACE OF GOD..........Romans chapters 6, 7, 8.
Paul has declared the grace of God to be a real living power, with the ability not only to change destinies but also to change lives. He describes it as a monarch empowering all who are in the kingdom of God. His teaching is that grace changes people, "where sin abounded, grace did super abound," and " where sin reigned, now grace reigns." He develops this in chapters 6,7 & 8, and his teaching is that grace empowers the believer by changing relationships. The following is a summary of the three chapters:-
- Chapter 6 - grace changes our relationship to sin.
- Chapter 7 - grace changes our relationship to the law.
- Chapter 8 - grace changes our relationship to God.
These are general summaries, but they give the overall picture in that the tyrant sin has been deposed, the law which was unable to save us has been replaced, and the Christian is now infused with holy spirit power.
The theme of Romans chapter 6 is the Christian's victory over sin through the power of grace, by allowing the grace of God to subdue sin in their lives. He presents this in a two-fold way, by asking two rhetorical questions (questions which have obvious answers). The first is in Romans 6v1 "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid." Secondly, in Romans 6v 15 he says "Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? God forbid." Essentially what Paul is asking is that, is it compatible to receive the grace of God and still to maintain a relaxed attitude to sin?; and the answer is an emphatic no. In doing this Paul is acknowledging that the preaching of grace is risky, because when properly explained it can be perverted in such a way as to minimise the seriousness of sin The ungodly mind will say, and do say, since God's grace abounds over sin let us sin all the more so that grace will the more abound. This is known as antinomianism and was prevalent in the early church and is prevalent today. Some think this was the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes referred to in Revelation chapter 3. Certainly Jude wrote of ungodly men " turning the grace of God into lasciviousness", making God's gracious gift as a licence to sin. The Russian monk Rasputin was an exponent of this and preached and practised salvation through living in sin and calling down God's perpetual forgiveness. This is of course a perversion of the truth and it is precisely what Paul has in mind here. The grace of God will never rest happily with sin and must always be antagonistic towards it.
So grace and sin are opposites and he treats the subject in two ways; in verse 1 he uses the present subjunctive, speaking of a habitual continuous action; he is asking shall believing Christians continue in a life style of sin and the answer is no. In verse 15 he uses the aorist subjunctive referring to a single act of sin; he is asking shall we be happy to commit individual acts of sin, shall we dabble in sin? again the answer is no. He is not teaching sinless perfection, rather that we oppose sin, and grace can enable us to overcome.
To sum up this overview of chapter 6 the force of the chapter is this: believing Christians should neither happily continue to live in sin, now should we be happy to dabble in sin because sin and grace are opposites to each other.
A final overview of the chapter is this: in verses 1 - 14 we should not continue in sin because we don't have to, by the grace of God it is now unnecessary, whereas before we did not have a choice. In verses 15 - 23 he is developing the thought that we should not commit irregular sins happily, because we should not want to, because we have tasted something better. In these last verses of the chapter there is a warning sounded, that the nature of sin has not changed, and to dabble in it may lead to a habitual practice once again: so in receiving Christ in a world which has a largely rejected Him, Christians have been pitched into a war zone, spiritually, and the subject matter here is the resources we have been given to overcome it.
Later we will see how Paul develops this great subject.
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