Hebrews 12:14 NIV – Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
Faith is a gift of God by his grace; it simply trust and rest on Jesus the Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10). Being overwhelmed by grace allows faith to express itself in the journey of life (Hebrews 10:19-25).
Sin is no longer the master in a man or woman who has come to Jesus the Christ. It has been checked and crucified by the power of God, which we know as grace. The life of the man or woman in Jesus is a life of victory and not one of failure. But that does not mean there isn’t a battle. The contest between our nature and the spirit testify to a great truth, this contest shows the enormous power and vitality of sin.
How powerful is sin? That even after it has been crucified it is still alive. Happy is the man and woman who really understands this. They can rejoice in Jesus the Christ and at the same time put no confidence in their nature.
1 Corinthians 15:57 NLT – But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I believe it is very difficult for us to realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin in the sight of the one we call Holy. We on the other hand, sin is natural to us. Everyone we know is a sinner, filled with imperfections and in that condition it is hard for us to fathom any adequate conception of the evil of sin.
The blind man can see no difference between the rainbow and the graffiti on the wall. A deaf man cannot distinguish between the sound of music and the breaking of a glass.
Sometimes we deceive ourselves into the belief that sin is not quite as sinful as God says it is and that our natural nature is not all that bad. We forget that when we are tempted, sin rarely presents itself it its true colors – “I am your enemy and I want your ruin and your death in hell.” No, sin comes to us like Judas, with a kiss. The fruit that Eve was not to eat seemed good and desirable and yet it cast her out of the garden.
How thankful we should be for the gospel of the grace of God found in and through Jesus the Christ. We need no longer to be afraid of looking at our sin, when we have taken God’s remedy for it – Jesus Christ my Lord.
Romans 8:1 NIV – Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Enjoy being overwhelmed by grace.
Hebrews 12:14 NIV – Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
I was a young man when I first read this and it has been a concern for my journey ever since. Personal holiness is very freeing and it relieves us of many heat aches and condemnations. Now with that said, wrong views about holiness are generally traceable to wrong views about our own human nature. We have nothing to offer to God out of our natural nature.
The truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the foundation of a real saving faith that would be called Christian or Christ like. J. C. Ryle – “Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors and false doctrines of the present day. If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.”
What is sin? Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. 1 John 3:4 NLT I believe that for most of us we have a somewhat hazy view of sin and we do not want to discuss it.
Sin- in short is a vast moral disease which affects the whole human race, of every class, education, wealth, name, language and nation. Sin consists in doing, saying, thinking or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.
The sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within. It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve. It is not the result of bad training or picked up by bad examples. Search the world over, from east to west, north to south, Europe, Asia, Africa and the America’s. Look at every class of people in every circumstance and condition and you will find that if the people have known nothing else, they have always known how to sin. Jeremiah 17:9 NIV – The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
When a baby is born, we all think what a beautiful moment and it is. Yet that little baby carries in its heart a nature that has a backwardness for good. You will see the budding of temper, selfishness, self-willed, greediness and jealousy and if let alone these things will appear with painful rapidity.
It is in this condition - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the World to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16,17 NIV
2 Corinthians 5:17,18 NIV – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God…
Enjoy being overwhelmed by grace.