With Christ, our heavenly Father gives us all things FREELY

Believers in Christ, do not be deceived. If anyone tells you that our Heavenly Father will only bless you when you keep the law or do certain things by your own effort, please beware such a person. Jesus died for you because of those very sins and shortcomings. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. 

How can a Saviour who came to save you from your sins use the same sins He came to deliver you from as an excuse for not saving you? This is akin to an oncologist asking his beloved child who has cancer to get rid of the cancer before he treats her. Christ the Great Physician hates sin (the cancer) but loves the child (the believer). His eyes radiate love for the sinner but burns at sin. He came to remove the sin in us because we can’t do it on our own, no matter how much we think we can. 

Isaiah describes the "good" things we do in order to be right with God as filthy rags, but many of us still try to be righteous by doing works of the law by which no one can be justified in God's sight.

This “do good, get good; do bad get bad” doctrine is the antithesis of the gospel - God’s undeserved, unmerited favour- and goes against the teachings of the Holy Spirit through Paul.

One is found in Galatians 5:4 - “For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.” Trying to get right with God by keeping the law puts one under the curse. No wonder many believers are suffering symptoms of the curse today.

Another is found in Romans 8:32 – “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

The reason many believers are not freely receiving is because they think that they have to give before getting from God. This is putting the cart before the horse. Would you ask your own child to go and work to earn his breakfast or a ride to school? No! It comes naturally to your child to want to please you because you first loved him. How much more our Father in Heaven? We receive freely from our Heavenly Father. Only then can we freely give.

Yet another is found in 2 Corinthians 8:9 – “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” Many of us run around sowing seed and giving in order to get God to bless us with good jobs or wealth in general. 

While some of these actions are commendable, if they are done to get from God or get right with Him, they are works of the law and can never justify one in God’s sight or earn His favour. In fact, Isaiah describes them as filthy rags (used tampons in Hebrew translation). We become rich not by our works but through our Lord Jesus Christ’s poverty. Plus, when you give yourself first to the Lord, you will excel in giving just as God wants you to (2 Corinthians 8:5)

Pastors and leaders, we love because He first loved us. The law and Grace don't mix. The mixture is the definition of lukewarmness in the church- neither hot nor cold. When the love of Christ is unveiled from the pulpit and not more laws and condemnation, believers will love God and their neighbour and will effortlessly not want to do things to hurt others. They will give more, pray more, come to hear you preach more, serve more yet not the believer but Christ in him. In fact, Paul pronounced a double curse on anyone who preaches anything different from the grace of Christ in Galatians 1:8.

It is Christ’s gift of no condemnation that makes us go and sin no more, not the law. Life in Christ isn’t about having the desire to sin and suppressing this desire by self-will. It is the love of God removing from our hearts the desire to continue in sin – notice not our love for Him but knowledge of His love for us as it is written “In this is love, not that we loved God but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” -1 John 4:10

The law cannot make anyone perfect in God’s eyes. The law is righteous, impartial, unbending. It is God’s standard of righteousness which no man can keep. Romans 7:5 says sinful passions are aroused by the law. Depending on law keeping for righteousness only produces more sin and according to Galatians 5:4, cuts one off from Christ.

But our Lord God's abundance of grace and gift of righteousness through our Saviour Jesus Christ makes us reign in life (Romans 5:17). As the righteousness of God in Christ, we reign over sin, sickness, poverty, selfishness, impatience, every ill. His righteousness is a gift that removes all condemnation from our lives and it is only this gift of no condemnation that makes us go and sin no more.

Believe Right and you will Live Right.