Do grace and holiness really go together? I mean, if God is constantly having to give you grace, how can you be holy, if you need grace then you must have done something wrong, right? If you were holy then you wouldn’t need grace……would you? These terms seem like a contradiction because our understanding of them is usually based on a religious mindset.

In the English language we use the word “grace” in a very different manner than New Testament grace, which is the Greek word “charis”. When we hear the word we think of a grace period where our negligence is overlooked for a time and we are not charged the penalty of our transgression. In religious terms grace has come to mean being able to transgress the laws of God without penalty, that because we are under grace we will not suffer the consequences of our actions. God just overlooks our sin and we can go on our merry way. This understanding of grace has led to doctrines that frown upon grace or at least limit it because it is seen as a license to sin.

We are not in a grace period, where God overlooks our sin until we can get it all together, but we are in a dispensation of grace. Dispensation is defined as; an exemption from a set of rules or usual requirements. What does that mean? It means, you can’t break the law if you are not under it!!! There is a big difference in being given amnesty and being exempt from the law altogether. Under amnesty you are guilty but pardoned, being exempt means there was never a transgression in the first place!

Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

“Dominion over” comes from a Greek word that means lordship. In other words, do you want to be under the lordship of sin because you choose to be under the law or do you want to be under the lordship of Jesus Christ and under grace? Which one makes a better master, sin or Jesus? One or the other is going to be calling the shots and it is up to each one of us to make a choice.

There are some very religious people who have chosen to place themselves under the law, thinking they are submitting to Jesus when in reality they are submitting to the dominion of sin. The law has no power to change you, it only identifies wrong behavior and motivates by fear of punishment. If you are guilty of breaking the law you are condemned to receive the penalty for breaking it. In contrast, grace is by definition, the divine influence on the heart and it’s reflection in one’s life. Grace leads you into right behavior through a motivation of love! There is no condemnation under grace.

You see, the law has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death and replaced with the grace of God, which is divine enablement to fulfill the requirements of God without the threat of punishment as the motivating factor. In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul calls the law, and specifically the ten commandments, the ministry of death and the ministry of condemnation. If you are in Christ you are not under the law but under grace. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” (Romans 8:1)

Now we are beginning to see how you can be under grace and be holy at the same time.

Matthew 5:20
20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Does that sound like a grace statement? I mean, the scribes were charged with making copies of the law by hand, writing each letter one at a time. They knew every letter and punctuation mark in the first five books of the bible by heart! The Pharisees were the lawyers of their day, they had studied the law and every commentary on the law until they could quote it forwards and backwards, they knew the law! To them, righteousness meant keeping the law without fail. They even had laws on how to keep the laws, their whole life revolved around the Law of Moses.

Now Jesus comes along and makes a statement like verse 20. It sounds like he is saying that to get into heaven we have to do a better job at keeping the law than the scribes and Pharisees. Impossible! How could Jesus expect us to do that? The issue here is that Jesus is talking about a different kind of righteousness, one that exceeds theirs. Exceeds means to go far over and above, super abundantly. The kind of righteousness he is talking about is so far above what comes from keeping a bunch of rules that you really can’t even compare the two, you have to contrast them like light and dark. If you get them confused you end up under the dominion of sin.

So what is Jesus saying here and how does he expect us to achieve that kind of righteousness? The answer is, he doesn’t! The kind of righteousness that he is talking about, the kind that super abundantly exceeds the kind that comes from the law is the righteousness of God! Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and HIS righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Nobody achieves that kind of righteousness, they receive it by faith.

Paul, in contrasting his pedigree as a Pharisee and his position of being in Christ makes this statement in Philippians 3:7-9

7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

Last week I was talking about trusting in grace, this is one element of that, we cannot trust in our own ability to acquire righteousness. And why would we want to when we can receive God’s by faith? In Romans 10:3 Paul says that the because the Pharisees were ignorant of God’s righteousness and tried to achieve their own, they have actually rejected the righteousness of God. Why would anybody refuse what God is willing to give them in favor of something they can’t attain?

In 1Peter 1:15, immediately after saying that we should put all our eggs in the basket of grace, Peter tells us to be holy, to not be conformed to our our former pursuits. He says that we should be holy because God is holy. Holiness is an outflow of righteousness, it means to be blameless and pure. We have already seen that when we are under grace that we are blameless concerning the law because we are not under it’s requirements. Therefore, our holiness is also something that is given by God and received by faith. We are His holy people because Jesus paid the price for our holiness and our conduct should reflect the righteousness and holiness that God has imputed to us through faith.

If sin is a major issue in your life, maybe you are under the dominion of it instead of being under the dominion of grace. You will gravitate towards the thing you focus on the most. If that “thing” is trying to keep a set of rules you will invariably break them! In 1 Corinthians 15:56 Paul says that the strength of sin is the law! It is a divine paradox that sin would be strengthened by the very thing that says don’t do it. On the other hand, if you focus on the goodness and grace of God then you will automatically begin to operate out of His goodness and even the need for the law becomes obsolete.

In Christ and under grace you are holy, blameless and above reproach in the sight of God. Grace and holiness go together like a hand in a glove. Holiness should be the outflow of the grace that is upon your life!

If you think that because you are under grace that you can sin and get away with it, that grace is a license to sin, you are not under grace but under deception! Satan has fooled you into thinking that God doesn’t care about your behavior because He loves you so much. Nothing could be further from the truth, He cares so much that He sent Jesus to fulfill the law on our behalf and then filled us with His grace so that we are no longer under the dominion of sin. We are now free and empowered to live the life that God has prepared for us!

Blessings,
Jeff