“This is love for God: to keep his commands.” —1 John 5:3 NIV
A few years ago, a pastor friend said of a particular kind of sin, “I’m not so sure that’s a sin any more under the new covenant in Christ.” Aye yai yai! I was stunned. His was but one voice articulating what I perceive to be a troubling trend among believers today: the notion that Jesus’ love tolerates sin (it doesn’t) as if to make it OK (it isn’t). God’s liberating love and grace are far greater—far more empowering and transformational than this. Let’s look.
Our sin is onerous before God; it has been so since our Edenic fall. Indeed, it was our sin that put Jesus, our unblemished sacrifice, on the cross. “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities.”1 He did not come to make us comfortable with sin, but as Him who “takes away the sin of the world!”2 Then, if we have been rescued from the penalty of our sins, are they now OK? “By no means!” exclaimed Paul, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?”3 Sin still exists, and God’s disposition toward it has not changed.
In fact, it is in the context of grace that Jesus tells us to obey God’s commands, and it is only in the power of grace that we can. Jesus taught His disciples, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”4 And Peter exhorts us to appropriate the grace we have received: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”5 Peter again, “[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”6
Then does Scripture put us back under the Law, so as to earn God’s favor through our own power and grit? No, we have neither the natural strength or inclination to do so. Rather just as by grace God’s Son suffered our death, so also by grace His Spirit guides our life. For what God foretold has proved true: “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”7 God’s Spirit, alive in us through faith in Christ, leads us away from sin and onto God’s ways of good and right. Jesus’ love does not tolerate sin; it overcomes its power, both in death and in life. Trust Him, and obey. He will lead you.
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.—
1 John 2:1 NIV
Father, thank You for Your unconquerable love and grace. Open my heart to know Your presence and to follow Your lead. Just for today, I lay aside my will for Yours. And tomorrow, may I do so again. In Christ I pray. Amen.
1 Isaiah 53:5 ESV
2 John 1:29 ESV
3 Romans 6:1-2 ESV
4 John 14:23 NIV
5 1 Peter 2:16 ESV
6 1 Peter 2:24 ESV
7 Ezekiel 36:26-27 NIV
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Paul Nordman—Author 