The video above will rescue you from a false understanding of the grace of God and explain why God’s grace is so amazing.
This text in the book of Acts teaches us to not misunderstand grace (Acts 5:1-11).
We think that grace means that God is not that concerned about sin. That’s what we think grace means. “Oh, I’m under grace. I can do whatever I want to do. Well, God showed me grace and he’ll let me off the hook, so therefore sin must not be that big of a deal before God.”
We think that grace means that God is not that concerned about sin.
If that’s what we believe, then we could never with any degree of authenticity sing again the song, “Amazing Grace.”
The grace that comes to us in the person of Jesus through his work on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, the forgiveness that is found therein, is only so amazing because God takes so seriously sin and its results.
Grace is amazing because what God is willing to forgive through the cross—that is, Christ—is so enormous in his sight.
Grace doesn’t mean that God doesn’t take sin seriously. Quite to the contrary!
We don’t realize that what grace does—the work of grace in our lives through the cross of Jesus Christ—what it does is free us from sin, not free us to sin.
We think, “Well, I’m under grace so I can sin.” Woah, woah, woah! Grace frees us from sin—its power and its penalty. It doesn’t set us free to sin. That’s not what God is doing there.
What exacerbates this false idea about grace is that we, in our estimation, seem to get away with so much sin. We seem to get away with so much sin. We have to confess that Ananias and Sapphira is not the norm, or you’d all be dead (Acts 5:1-11). I’d be dead.
We seem to get away with so much sin.
But the Bible teaches us that God will deal with all unrepentant sin. And the Bible teaches us that God only deals with sin in one way—judgment. It’s the only way that God deals with sin. God judges sin.
And that gives humanity, then, two ways. We can either stand before God in our own sin and be judged for it, or we repent of our sins, put our faith in Christ, who was judged in our place upon the cross, and stand before God in him—holy, righteous, and forgiven—because his judgment was poured out on Jesus in our place.
God only ever does one thing with sin, he judges it. That only ever gives us two options—to stand before God to be judged on our own, or to stand before God in Christ our righteousness.
Second Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV).
Therefore, the Apostle John could write in 1 John 1:9 and say, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 NIV).
That is amazing grace!
And grace only comes to us through Jesus and the gospel and his finished work on the cross.