The Spiritual Ease of Grace

“For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace.”

~Romans 6:14 (NRSV).

In Romans, the Apostle Paul swims through every tributary of God’s theology of love in explaining the superiority of grace over the law. He had to. There was a fight on between the religious nemesis of false teaching and those of The Way.

Grace – Rising Above the Law

It’s not like grace comes with strings attached. But we’re fooled if we think we’re free without requirement to soar above the law.

By being free of the law, we take an obedient stance, so as not to sink in our sins, but to rise above them.

This is all a matter of Spiritual purpose—the ease of grace taking us higher, in Christ, than we could ever go otherwise.

When love fights for our side of the cause, fear is vanquished. It no longer has a role. But as we allow fear back in, our faith is denigrated, and our positional ascendency is, for a time, lost.

But that’s not the end of the story by a long stretch.

We know by the nature of life that we get many second chances—this is grace operating in and through us in the fact of freedom from condemnation. Felt condemnation is manifest through extended guilt and shame—the devil’s chief weapons.

When we’re no longer hemmed in mentally and emotionally, spiritual growth and freedom is the common result.

Freedom Breeds a Higher Standard

Suddenly there’s not so much the requirement to try harder, as we’re compelled by the Holy Spirit to simply trust the embodied Word of truth.

This is us, for the first time with our ready-to-live game-faces on.

Whenever we find our purpose in life, rising to a higher standard is inevitable. Commitment makes for something we now live and breathe.

This is the new standard that grace takes us to. We live for it because we’re so thankful to God for this extravagant gift which we could never repay. There is limitless account for love, both in receipt from God, and for growth.

So, when it comes to expelling the sins that we’ve struggled with all our lives, the Spirit achieves it through us, via our allegiance of doing what can be done each gathering minute.

Nothing has dominion over us because we’ve made the Lord Jesus Christ king over us. When God has dominion, freedom moves in, and nothing harms us.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.