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Weekly Devotion

Rom. 6:1
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 

The rhetorical question that opens Romans 6 logically flows from what Paul asserts at the end of chapter 5. There, the Apostle teaches that "where sin abounded, grace overabounded" (Rom. 5:20). Why? It is because in Adam, death reigned, but in Christ, grace reigns. And so, if grace does indeed reign in the believer's life, then what's the point of holy living? What will motivate me to change? What's to deter me from a life of sin?After all, all my sins (past, present, and future) are covered by God's grace.

This rhetorical question highlights a profound aspect about grace: true grace is vulnerable to abuse. Think of a scenario in which your friend takes you out to dinner. He says to you, "Get whatever you want; it's on me." But in reality, you are not free to "get whatever you want." What stops us?

  • Social norms: generally understood standard of decorum that governs social dynamics 

  • Shame/Personal dignity: we don't want to seem greedy or needy

  • Empathy: we don't want others to do the same to us

  • Physical limitations: we can't eat the whole left side of the menu

But God's grace is open to be taken advantage of. He really means it. And that's what's so amazing about the Gospel. As Martin Llyod Jones once said, "The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel." Based on the flow of Romans, it seems that Paul's preaching of the Gospel is spot-on.