Aaron Proffitt

I am teaching through the book of Romans presently at Aletheia Church and it has been amazing to see how Jesus has shaped the theology of our church here in Tampa through our verse-by-verse study in this doctrinally rich text. We are in chapter 6 right now and this past week we looked at how our identity has been shifted and re-shaped as a result of the work of Jesus…through His death, burial & resurrection. Essentially, our lives positionally and practically are (and should look) radically different. Our old sinful self has been crucified with Christ and we are no longer under the authority of sin. This is all a result of the work of Christ and His grace that He has given us. We are now as verse 11 states “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”. There has been a death to life shifting that has literally taken place in our lives. Then we see a transition in verses 12-14. This is a call to action, meaning, we must take responsibility in making sure sin does not own us because as we learned from this passage already, we are under new ownership. Paul strikes a very good balance between the two ideas because he ends v14 by saying that grace is the fuel to our action.

This passage presents 2 misconceptions that people have about grace. The first misconception has to do with using and abusing grace. Paul asks the question in v1 “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Most Christians don’t feel that it is a good idea to sin as much as we can all day every day because it makes God look that much better. Rather, we take our so-called “Christian Liberties” to the extreme. I had a very thorough discussion with my city group guys on Monday night about knowing how, when and where to draw the line with alcohol, movies, cursing, television shows etc… I would love to get your input on this. How can we discern the things that aren’t as clear in Scripture…the so-called gray areas (if they even exist)?

The second misconception comes from verses 12-14 (“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”). Christians sometimes forget about the action part. If we are thinking about it, most of the time it takes the form of religious obligation or duty rather than acting out of love and devotion. We act because we feel as though we have to (and that if we don’t God will be mad at us). In relation to our sin, we filter it through feelings of guilt rather than the gospel. We say “man, that sin made me feel really bad (which, let’s be honest, it should)”, instead of saying, “man, Jesus had to go to the cross for that sin”. The final analysis is that we are not viewing our sin properly. We are viewing it more from an anthropocentric perspective rather than a gospel-centric one. We have to remember that it is our (my) sin that put Christ on the cross.

The question that must be asked then is how many of us are using grace as our crutch rather than our catalyst? The tendency might be to relax in our faith, thinking “I don’t have to put forth any effort because God is handling it all”. We get lazy and use grace as an excuse to get out of living our faith out in specific ways. Paul is speaking directly to how we (out of obedience) avoid allowing our flesh to fall into unrighteousness. There is another way we use grace as a crutch. It has to do with living on mission (translation: are we being missionaries in our life contexts?). Seriously, we get a little lazy in this area, don’t we? The grace that we have been given is not only supposed to be the fuel behind our being made holy in relation to not living in sin, but also carrying out the mission that God has called us all to be a part of.

How do these misconceptions impact the way you live out your life day by day? I’d be interested to get your feedback on all of this. Please leave a comment with your thoughts, or dm me on twitter, or facebook message me on…well, facebook.

Here is my sermon from this past Sunday on these very issues in case you have a few extra minutes to spare. Thanks for watching!

Untitled from Aletheia Tampa on Vimeo.