God’s Grace vs The Consequences of Sin

“This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.” John 1:5 The Message (MSG)

by Alexandra Copeland

The Christian journey is the most magnificent life that any person could ever possibly hope to live. It is filled with endless possibilities, and when you couple this with spiritual elevations and promotions, you have an extraordinary portrait for living in Christ! There are times when life doesn’t feel as wonderful as God intends it to be. We sometimes hit a brick wall in our circumstances and it seems that we can’t go any further. This can be a very puzzling predicament. On one extreme we have the more than abundant life that Jesus Christ made available through his sacrifice and resurrection; and on the other side of the spectrum we have a life that seems to be stuck in neutral. So the question that many of us will ask ourselves when we’re stuck is “what did I do wrong?”

This is a particularly tricky question when we understand a little bit about God’s grace. You and I didn’t do anything to earn God’s grace, nor could we ever do anything good enough to warrant such a gift. God’s grace is His unmerited favor, and He gave it to us through Christ, because it was His good pleasure to do so. Again, we couldn’t have earned it; God gave it to us to satisfy a promise that He made to Himself. He wanted a people that would love Him because they chose to love Him; not because we were made to or programmed to love Him. We are members of God’s family, and we love Him because He first loved us.

Some religions teach that a person has to work to earn God’s grace and approval, but that simply isn’t the case. He sent His only begotten son to the earth, and His son, Jesus Christ, loved us so much that he gave his life to purchase something we could never have purchased for ourselves. He, Christ, redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Most of us know the Ten Commandments, but there were many other laws as well; and before Jesus Christ, humanity had a very difficult time trying to obey all of the laws. Now you might think, surely those in earlier biblical history didn’t have to obey every single one of the laws to be in good standing with God. Well, that’s the thing really. God is supremely holy, and to maintain a quality relationship with Him, it stands to reason that His children would need to be holy as well. After all, that’s how Adam and Eve started out initially. They were holy until they sinned. Sin caused them to lose their holiness; therefore, sin caused them to lose their fellowship and communion with God.

Romans 5:12-13(MSG) tells us, "You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses." After sin entered the picture, it changed the spiritual DNA for humanity and let death in the gate. The end result is that, before Christ, folks back then couldn’t fulfill some of the law all the time, or all of the law some of the time, and still maintain communion with God. They had to fulfill ALL of the law ALL of the time in order to have a relationship with God. And if they couldn’t do this, they were required to offer sacrifices, the blood sacrifice of a first born animal without any blemishes or impurities. Their sacrifice was an acceptable way of covering the sins they might have committed knowingly or unknowingly. Looking at this, a person can very easily see how keeping the law became a never-ending vicious cycle of sin and sacrifice. This was truly a curse.  

This scenario may seem a bit harsh for the folks in earlier biblical history, but the big take away from knowing about sin consciousness and the law is that we can clearly see God’s Holiness in all of this. Through the law, we can see God’s perfection, justice, and faithfulness. We can see a true portrait of His supreme sovereignty, and this really does serve to develop a deep level of gratitude for the wonderful qualities that God has. He’s not a God that is unkind, but He is incredibly patient, loving, and compassionate towards us, because after Adam sinned, humanity was in quite the pickle. God didn’t leave us that way. As humanity grew to understand more and more about God, we also began to understand how badly He wanted a relationship with us; so badly in fact that He gave us His only begotten son.

When we sin, God doesn’t punish us. We have been taught this for a very long time, but it isn’t true. 1 John 1:5 The Message (MSG) tells us, “This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there’s not a trace of darkness in him.” God is ALL light! This is something we can count on with our whole beings. He does not punish us for our wrong doing, and when we ask Him for forgiveness earnestly, He forgives us. We can maintain our lovely relationship with God all because of Jesus Christ. But consequences of our sinful actions is the thing that we sometimes get a little foggy about.

You and I don’t get to escape the consequences of our actions. If you steal and are punished by the authorities, you do not get a ‘get out of jail’ pass from God for the wrong doing. God’s Immutable Laws teach us that for every action there is a corresponding re-action. This is law. God helps us and very often cushions the blows through His infinite grace and mercy, but His grace and mercy does not equate to skipping the consequences that are a result of wrong actions and poor choices.

Unlike those in the Old Testament, because of the sacrifice of Christ, we can maintain our communion and fellowship with God, but maturity beckons us to grow up and understand to whom much is given, much is required. The love that God has lavished on all of us through our Lord and Savior is an overwhelming love. At some point in our spiritual development, our gratitude for what Jesus Christ has done for us should rise to such a level that we shouldn’t want to do anything that isn’t Godly. Consequences should open our eyes to see that sin and punishment isn’t a part of our new spiritual DNA, and that we can grow infinitely closer to God through Christ as we honor His grace and kick sin to the curb. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.