Super Abounding Grace

Here are some musings on grace from Romans 5:12-21.  I pray that this might be of encouragement and help to those who happen to come to this post. 

The great reality about being a Christian in the Biblical sense of the word is that you come to know the wonder of God’s grace. In fact through Jesus Christ you have access into God’s grace in which you now stand.  By grace you have been saved and by grace you have been brought into the dominion or reign of grace in which you now and forever will stand.  What this grace means is that because of and through Jesus Christ God is favorably disposed toward you, your sins have been forgiven (and will continue to be forgiven), God is no longer your judge who condemns you, He is your heavenly father who has justified you and adopted you and is no longer angry with you, and one day he will bring you into his eternal kingdom to live with him forever with no sin in your heart and no disease in your body but will so transform you to make you fit to live eternally in a new heavens and new earth.  It just doesn’t get any better than this. 

Living in Grace means that you have moment by moment access to the throne of grace.  God is so favorably disposed toward you that he is ready to receive you and help you.  Yet God’s grace comes to you with God’s truth, as well.  God is light and this means that God wants you to know the truth about Him, his character and grace and about you, your status before him as his dearly loved child and the remaining work that needs to be done in your life to make you more and more like your elder brother Jesus. 

Here he states that a Christian is a man or woman who now belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.  A Christian is a person who stands in the grace of God, who lives under the reign of grace that is mediated through the Lord Jesus Christ.   This being the case a Christian is no longer connected with Adam.  A Christian has been transferred from the dominion of Adam’s headship to the dominion of Christ’s headship.  A Christian is no longer in Adam but is now in Christ. 

Paul describes here only two kinds of people: those who are connected with Adam by virtue of simply being human beings and those who are connected with Jesus Christ by virtue of receiving the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness (5:17).  He stresses that all people without exception share in Adam’s one transgression – his one trespass.  Adam was ordained by God to be representative of all his descendants – progeny.  Adam’s descendants share in the guilt of his one transgression by imputation and that is why we are sinful (morally corrupt) and why we die.  In fact his one trespass led to condemnation for all people and by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners. 

This further means that sin reigns in death.  Sin rules over the hearts and lives of people confirming its rule through death.  This means that not only are we culpable for Adam’s sin but we are slaves of sin. Sin is personified here as a tyrant that rules over us.  We are in bondage to its power.  Now sin has been in the world and operating in the lives of people from the time of Adam’s fall to today.

Paul contrasts Adam with Christ, sin with grace and death with life.  Christ has not come simply to redo what Adam failed to do but rather to go way beyond Adam’s fall.  Not only is there the transgression of Adam, there is the obedience of Jesus Christ.  Not only is there the condemnation that comes from Adam’s transgression there is the justification that comes from Christ’s one act of righteousness.  Not only does death reign through that man’s trespass, we who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

The whole thrust of this passage is to underscore the superlative power of God’s grace over sin.  We are never to focus on sin as an end it itself.  Yet we need to understand the plight of sin and its historical and personal dimensions if we are going to grasp and be grasped by the greatness of God’s grace to us in Christ Jesus.  Yet we never stay hovering over our sin – we take our sin again and again to Jesus Christ.  When our sin is exposed it is for the sake of repentance, confession and the receiving of fresh applications of God’s mercy and forgiveness. 

This grace is God’s favorable disposition toward the ungodly that moves him to deliver you from the condemnation of Adam’s sin and the rule of sin over your lives.  This comes to us under that banner of the gift of justification that has been secured for us through the obedience of Jesus Christ.  Just as Adam’s act of disobedience brought upon us the condemnation of sin and its bondage leading to death, so the obedience of Jesus Christ secured for those who will receive him by faith, justification.

So salvation is not about what you can do but what has been done for you by Jesus Christ – by faith in Christ you are justified and come to know peace with God. 

To be justified further means that your ties have been severed with Adam and you are now united with the exalted and reigning Jesus Christ.  He is your new representative – you now bear his name and his victory over sin, condemnation and death are yours.  You have been transferred from one dominion where sin ruled to a new dominion where grace rules.  You have been set free from the guilt and power of sin.  You are now under the benevolent rule of grace that is greater in its power than your sin.

So what must you do?  You must see who you are in Christ and have assurance that you are now put in the rank of the righteous.  You have been put in the category or rank of a righteous person in Christ.  This super abounding grace is indeed amazing.  So be open to what God wants to show you in your life that he wants to change. Don’t refuse to see indwelling sin.  Look for it with the assurance that you do so not under God’s frown but under God’s smile. Talk about the need to change and grow in your Christian life should encourage you not discourage you. Be also assured that no amount of messes you make exclude you from God’s gracious presence.  He will say, “What took you so long to come to me, I have been waiting for you.”  He is just that loving and he is just that graciously determined to change you into the image of Jesus Christ and this is a very, very, very good thing.  “For his grace does reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  What super abounding grace this truly is!