Christians today are in contention arguing about which is the correct gospel. Others claim that grace is the cause for licentiousness among the Christendom. However, that is not what the bible says about grace. The arguments are that, if you claim that once saved, always saved there is no way you will care for your salvation because you are not going to lose it no matter how hard you can live in sin. Some leaders want it to be on their shoulders that their members live a holy life while they themselves fail.
This is the work of grace that you live a life worthy of your calling. If a leader or pastor will be able to make his congregation to live according to the way God wants, who will get the glory? God and the pastor will get the glory. It will also make this pastor to even have a difficulty in solely praising the Lord because he manages to make people to live a godly life. I know some people feel like that is how a leader should be, to take control of their lives. Your life belongs to the Lord and to Him alone.
I want you to be cognisant of this above all; when you give your life to the Lord Jesus it is Him who will take control of it. Yes, your leader or your pastor will give you guidance as he is given the jurisdiction by the Holy Spirit above, but he cannot dictate or impose it on you. We are all members of the body of Christ, we assist one another there and there with anything including advices concerning wrong things that could disturb our relationship with the Lord. I have deliberately said this, but what I am going to say below you may feel like I am being delusional and controversial.
We cannot lose our position with the Lord no matter how bad we can behave. Well, I am adding because at some point there is a mixture of gospel that comes to derail a child of God which may lead them to sin. I am not condoning sin in any way; however by the blood of the Lamb we are saved and we cannot lose our salvation. When one is living in sin, he loses the benefits he was intended by the Lord here on earth, such are good health, open doors, stress-free marriage and list goes on. The Lord hates it when one lives in sin because He knows that we are sabotaging ourselves.
While I am still there, I want to tell you that, there are slim chances of a born again Christian to live in sin. Nevertheless, if he does, he will be brought back by the Shepherd who is our Lord Jesus. There are three parables in the book of Luke that support this, in fact two of which we can relate to because they are referring to a man and a sheep. Now, both a man and a sheep they willingly strayed. For example, the prodigal son’s father we see that he did not get angry at his son and he always gazed at the horizon every day in the morning to see if his son would return. The day he returned, he saw him from afar off.
Concerning the lost sheep, the shepherd went and looked for it until he found and when he found it, he rejoiced and called all of his neighbours to celebrate with him. Question, how did the sheep stray from the other flock? It was a deliberate action, but when the shepherd found it, he did not even scold it. When I was a shepherd many years ago, I could not do what this shepherd did. Why? Because you become angry when the other sheep or goat goes astray, your life might be compromised because you would be going everywhere even in unsafe areas. Believe it or not, you are likely to find it there.
Now this shepherd when he found it he took it and put it on his shoulders. According to Jesus, this is repentance. When one agrees to follow you to the house of God, and accept Jesus as their Saviour, Jesus calls that repentance. I believe in not trying to control people’s minds and hearts but to let the Lord which we are in His body to take care of His flock. So now if you are reading this and you are feeling like now I can go and sin because I am saved and I am not going to lose my salvation, know one thing, you are not saved if you are still looking at the grace of God in that manner.
When you are saved, you look to Jesus and not to your self-efforts works. You are His righteousness by faith not by works. The bible says, “And he believed in the LORD, He accounted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). What did Abraham believe? He believed in what the Lord told him that he was. Today the Lord tells you that you are saved by the blood of Jesus. If you believe this, it is accounted for righteousness to you. Now when Abraham became righteous before the Lord, he was tested and his faith was not yet strong and he fell. Sarah, his wife told him to sleep with their maid and Abraham went in to their maid and made her conceive.
Now looking back at Genesis 15:6, you would say Abraham needed to repent and confess his sin to the Lord and ask for forgiveness and fast for seven days or whatever; as much as the Lord did not depart from Abraham, but the Lord became quiet for as long as fourteen years, that is a long time not talking with someone who usually visits you. When the Lord came back, He said, “...I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). What the Lord said here is very interesting. He did not say if you want to walk before Me, you have to be blameless. Remember that, Abraham sinned and the Lord became quiet and the first thing you would expect from the Lord would be to scold Abraham but still Abraham found favor in the sight of Lord.
Once again I am saying I do not condone sinning. The Lord Jesus found a man who could not walk and this is what transpired; “Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath” (John 5:5-9).
We do not know the reason behind this man’s sickness. Now later on, he met with the Lord Jesus in the temple and the Lord Jesus said, “...See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you” (John 5:14). What is it that the Lord Jesus meant by this. The word sin here in the Greek is hamartanō, meaning to offend (verb) not the offence (noun). Now when Jesus said this, he was referring to a certain act of sin which caused him to be in that condition.
For instance, I believe it might have been syphilis, an STD, it is spread via sexual activity, caused by bacterium Treponema pallidum. Medical Scientists say that it was first discovered from the French troops who returned from war 1494/5, this is the first written records. This shows that it existed years before although we do not know for how long. It has stages, the primary stage, second stage, latent stage and the tertiary stage. It has been proven that, ten to thirty years of the initial infection, one may experience complications such as:
• Brain (Neurological) problems
• Stroke
• Infections and inflammation of membranes around the brain and spinal cord
• Numbness
• Deafness
• Visual problems or blindness
• Personality changes
• Dementia
• Heart valve disease
• Aneurysm
• Inflammation of blood vessel (Source: Diseases Treatment Dictionary).
The bible did not stipulate the name of the disease or what kind of sin did this man commit. But looking at what Jesus said to him, it shows that there is a certain sin which he committed that got him there. Most of complications above could cause a man not to be able to walk on his feet. It is also proven that it can result in death. When the Lord Jesus met him, He said hamartanō mēketi meaning offend no more, lest something worse happen to you. Something worse in the Greek is also for more evil. This is not hell everybody. This may mean that if he had to go back to this sin, he could experience something more painful which could result in death.
Many preachers claim that the worse thing the Lord Jesus is referring to here is hell. Hell no! However, sin (hamartia) does bring bad consequences upon believers although they cannot lose their salvation. Notwithstanding that the Lord can allow things to be hard for you and sometimes even the devil can get the chance to work on your life. Paul by the Holy Spirit said, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 5:4-5).
So you have to understand that the Holy Spirit does not glory in sin, nonetheless His grace abounds even more in sin to reveal Jesus so that sin may be exterminated and sinners may repent. The Lord Jesus also had a woman whom the group of Jews claimed she was caught in adultery and in the very act, testing Him, the bible says He looked down wrote something on the ground. The Lord Jesus was in the temple premises when this occurred, and where Jesus was, the floor is made of stones.
So when He wrote on the ground ignoring them, it is like He was saying, ‘You are telling Me about the law, don’t you know that I wrote the law on tablets with My finger?’ This is what happened, “When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, ‘Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more’” (John 8:10-11).
Jesus uses the same words here as He used to the lame man. More reason for us to believe that He was referring to the sexual sin. But hey, it could be any sin. But with this woman we know because the bible stated. Jesus strengthened the woman first by telling her that He is not condemning her, now she can go and sin no more. How would Lere deal with this situation? He would ask the poor woman about why she did it in the first place; and why can’t she find her own man, and tell her not to sin anymore and he won’t condemn her.
Aren’t you happy that I am not God? In God it is always about giving support and strength first. Go, and sin no more, meaning that she is no longer under condemnation so she is free of her sin and she can sin no more. Something is not right with the whole passage, they brought the woman alone, and the act of adultery she was caught in, was she alone in it? No! She was trapped in it by one of them. Why? Because they wanted to test Jesus to see how would Jesus react knowing His ways of grace, and quoted the law perfectly. Later on after the same incident, Jesus went to the treasure house where He preached to the Pharisees about knowing the truth.
So look here, whenever you hear someone saying that they are in grace and that they are no longer under condemnation but lives in adultery and they are alcohol bibber, they are not in grace. Jesus said to the Pharisees after this, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12). Grace will not lead you to darkness but to light and your whole life will be filled with light. Receive the light of life, in Jesus’ name!
If you want to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, this is your chance. So you will follow this prayer; Father I thank You, for You sent Jesus Your Son, to come on earth to live and die, for my transgressions that I may be free, Father I accept Your Son Jesus as my only Lord and Saviour, my whole life is in Him, and He is in me, Jesus is my Lord, forever. Father I thank You, in the name of Jesus my Lord, amen.
My friend, you are now a new man in Christ, you are His righteousness.
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