Living by the Grace of God, Part 4

Romans 8:2-4: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Eternal life is the life of Christ imparted to us when we come to believe in Christ and pass “from death into life” (John 5:24). It does for us what the Law cannot do. The Law imposes upon mankind demands for a righteousness that man in his fallen sinful nature cannot meet. But the Spirit of life imparts into us the life of Christ which sets us free from the power of sin and death and empowers us to produce the righteousness of God in Christ.

So we thank God for His grace by which we receive the life of Christ to produce the righteousness of God. It is the work of the grace of God because we ourselves definitely cannot produce the life of Christ or command it into us. As Paul points out in Galatians 3:21: "For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law." God imparts into us at salvation the life of His Son by His own free will. If we have received the life of the Son of God freely from God we cannot boast of it as though we did anything to merit it. “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16).

The grace of God first ministered to us the life of Christ when we were spiritually life-less or dead in sin and raised us up to live in God’s righteousness in Christ. “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

We need to understand clearly the relationship between grace, life, and righteousness in order to appreciate how we can live a life of true righteousness by the grace of God. Because of fallen humanity’s inherent state of spiritual death, no one can produce the righteousness of God by human works since the righteousness of God is produced only from God’s life which fallen humanity lacks. But when by grace fallen man, dead in sin and trespasses, is raised to life in Christ, he finds the empowerment to live according to the righteousness of God through the life of Christ he receives. In other words, grace brings fallen man from death into life which is the true source of the righteousness of God. Therefore, you and I, who have been raised from spiritual death in sin into spiritual life in Christ by the grace of God, produce the righteousness of God not by the works of our old human nature, which has been crucified and buried with the death and burial of Christ. We produce the riighteousness of God by yielding the fruit of righteousness produced by the life of Christ in us.

Paul sums it up this way in Galatians 3:21-22: “For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.” And, according to John in 1 John 2:25: “And this is the promise that He has promised us--eternal life.”

Therefore, by grace, the life of Christ becomes in us when we are saved the powerful producer of God’s righteousness and the cause of our constant victory over sin. Paul describes the process in Romans 6:1-4: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

Paul goes on to explain in Romans 6:10-12: “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.”

Father, cause us to accept and trust the work of your grace which delivers from the bondage of sin and death into righteousness and life in Christ. Amen!