Has God’s Grace Cancelled His Moral Law?

        A comment I saw on YouTube some days ago prompted me to write this article. Its author asserted, “We (believers in Christ) are no longer under the law. This means we can do whatever we like. God does not care about what we do, but He only judges our motives.” I was like, “Wow! This sounds like a Gospel cooked in the pit of hell.

       Many people have sought to explain what they believe is the tension between the Law of Moses and grace which came through the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, some believers have tried to deduce that Paul and James, the brother of Jesus preached two different gospels; that Paul preached grace and James, the Law. Such claims are utterly false. Both men preached the same Gospel with emphasis on what God wanted to communicate to their respective audiences. While the Lord commissioned Paul an apostle to the Gentiles, James addressed his letter to Messianic Jews. It is pertinent to note that Gentiles in the time of the early church were not under the Law of Moses even though some of them were familiar with the Law of Moses through their interactions with Jews.

         Now, we will look at what Paul said about the Law as it relates to Gentile believers in Christ. In Romans 7:14. He says, “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.” He explained further in Romans 8:3-4, that “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, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

         Paul’s thoughts in the cited verses align with what Jesus Himself said in Mathew 5:17, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” It is clear that Jesus was not against the law. In fact, He raised God’s requirement for holiness to a higher level that our flesh cannot cope with. That is why He said to His disciples, “For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of heaven” (Mathew 5:20). Paul in his letter to the church at Philippi alluded to this kind of righteousness when he said:

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in
the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the
people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews;
in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the
church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

Anyone would be right to ask, “If the Jews had difficulty obeying the Law of Moses, why would Jesus raise the bar for obedience under the New Testament? The answer to this question is in Jeremiah 31:31, 33, “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.” “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 

Jesus raised the bar for righteousness because He does not expect us to be righteous in our own strength. That is the reason the Father gave us the Holy Spirit. In Zechariah 12:10, God said, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication..” In Hebrews 10:29, the author also called the Holy Spirit the “Spirit of grace”. Before His crucifixion, Jesus explained the function of the Holy Spirit to His apostles as recorded in John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all that I said to you.”

By raising the standard of the holiness beyond what no human can attain, Jesus expected us to lean on the Holy Spirit as our eternal helper. For instance, under the old dispensation, a man could only be held liable for adultery if he was caught in the very act. But under the dispensation of grace, a man who looked lustfully at a woman has committed adultery with her in his heart! Similarly, hatred becomes murder under the dispensation of grace. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15).

      If God Himself raised the standard of holiness under the dispensation of grace, how can we accept claims by the hyper-grace crowd that we can do anything we want because we are not under the law? Does grace mean lawlessness? In Titus 2:11, Paul said, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone.” Grace is divine enablement to overcome sin and to choose what is pleasing to God. Do we need grace to sin? Grace should help us to live a life that brings glory to God because it empowers us to say no to satan and the flesh. The people who preach grace as a license to sin are agents of the devil. They are the ones Jude spoke of in Jude 3-4:

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about
the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you
to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s
holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was
written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you.
They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God
into a license for immorality and they deny Jesus Christ our
only Sovereign and Lord.

The trouble with most believers is that they do not want to pay the price of knowing God for themselves. That is why they feed on junks fed them by charlatans parading as ‘men of God.’ No man led be the Holy Spirit would preach a Gospel that negates the finished work of Christ on the cross. If we cannot live a holy life in the power of the Holy Spirit, is Christ a minister of sin? What exactly did He come to the earth for, if we are still under the dominion of sin and the devil?

         In John 3:8, John the apostle summarised Jesus’ earthly ministry as the destruction of the works of the devil. The Father sent His Son to undo what satan did in the Garden of Eden when he used Eve to cause Adam to rebel against God. Therefore, anyone who still practices sin is of the devil (1 John 3:8). Anyone who delights in committing sin or living an immoral life in any form or shape has not met the Saviour. He or she is not a part of the Kingdom of God. It does not matter how proficient such a person is in ‘Christianese’. The devil still controls his or her heart.

       Repentance is the only conduit through which such a person can receive God’s mercy. The work of grace begins after God has dispensed His mercy in response to repentance. This grace does not invalidate His law; after all, He said in Jeremiah 31:33, “I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them in their minds.” We can only obey God’s laws by yielding to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

        That is why Paul the apostle exhorts us in to “Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” In Romans 8:14, he asserts that anyone who is not led by the Spirit cannot claim God as His Father. The Holy Spirit cannot empower us to fulfil the desires of the flesh or boost our carnality. He does the opposite! Therefore, dear brethren, be careful what and whom you listen to. Stay on the word of God and read the Bible for yourself. It will save you from being led astray by agents of satan who are masquerading as angels of light.