I want you to think back to your school years.
Do the names of any special teachers come to mind?
What made them special?
Most of the time it’s that they poured themselves into you and challenged you to learn.
I certainly had some great teachers, but the best teacher of them all is grace.
That’s right: God’s grace.
You see it’s the grace of God that teaches me to say ‘No’ to ungodliness.
The Law simply condemns and hands down a penalty.
But grace educates and says, “Don’t do that, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Grace is always motivated by God’s love.
It’s not a celestial killjoy; rather it wants us to learn to en-joy the real Source of Life and that’s the life of Jesus flowing in us and through us.
When we were in Adam and under the Law, we didn’t have to learn to sin; we did it naturally once we were given the Law: “Don’t do that.”
Sin used the Law, perfect as it was, to produce death in us.
In contrast, grace teaches us about our new identity in Christ as saints and children of God.
We are free from the power of sin.
It is no longer our master.
However, sin still dwells in the members of our body and uses our flesh to try to keep us in bondage.
Grace has unlocked our jail cell and has the key so that we can never really be locked up again.
Beloved, grace is not freedom to sin; it is freedom from sin!
We have to learn from grace how to walk in our new freedom by putting off the flesh and putting on the mind of Christ.
As grace teaches us to walk in the power of the Spirit, it leads us into all righteousness and warns us against choosing unrighteousness.
When we do listen to sin and default to fleshly choices, grace is there to lovingly lead us back to truth and freedom as we confess, renounce and reclaim the ground we gave to the enemy through our fleshly choices.
The more we learn to listen to our teacher, Grace, the more consistent we will grow at saying ‘No’ to ungodliness and ‘Yes’ to the Spirit who leads us into all truth and the victory that is ours in Christ Jesus!
Blessings!
Robyn Henning