Chapter 1

Grace and the Finished Work: The Gospel's Unrivaled Power to Transform

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15)

There is no way to know for sure, but this might be the most relatable verse in all of the Bible. In one sentence, Paul sums up one of the greatest conundrums of our human existence. Why do we sin even when we desire not to?

If there is any good in you at all, you know what it is like to “have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18). Maybe you are a parent who wants to be more gentle and loving with your kids, but you find yourself almost incapable of going a day without an outburst of anger. Maybe you are a spouse who wants to be more present and thoughtful, but the pressures of work or the cares of life always get the best of your attention. Or maybe you’re someone who has been deeply hurt, and while you genuinely want to forgive and move on, within you is a bitterness that is seemingly too sweet to leave behind.

We all have planned to be done with that “thing” — overeating, over-spending, worrying, substance abuse, pornography, laziness, negativity, you name it — only to find ourselves doing it again within a short period of time. When will we finally be done? We know that social media breeds anger, jealousy, and insecurity. We know the news breeds fear and anxiety. Yet despite this, we mindlessly scroll. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that money can’t buy happiness. The very reason this phrase is so cliché is that it is so profoundly and obviously true. Yet we live as if money can buy happiness, going on about life miserably obsessed with financial freedom and material comfort. I could keep going, but you get the point.

To a great degree, we intuitively know better than to give ourselves to things that do not benefit the soul and have little or no eternal value, especially if we are Christian. But we cannot help ourselves. Deep down, even though we despise these things, there is a part of us that apparently loves them, too. The plethora of secular content today devoted to the area of self-help is evidence that we genuinely desire to be our “best” selves (whatever that means) and also that something within us makes this terribly difficult.

The verse above from Romans 7 clearly demonstrates that, while we may have the noblest intentions, apart from some fundamental change in what we are, we remain slaves of instinct and passion. Simply put, the flesh is a beast of nature that no one can seem to tame. Sure, some folks may appear to be doing better than others (if you’re inclined to compare yourself to the so-called “gurus”). But when it comes to the measuring stick of God’s law in the hidden life — that which at every hour demands love, patience, joy, sacrifice, humility, mercy, self-control, etc.; and these from the heart — it would appear that no one comes close to this standard of perfection to which God has called us. Thus, one must wonder: are we in a lifelong war that we cannot win?

The Powerless Gospel

This is where I found myself for many years as a Christian — desperately wanting to live a life pleasing to God but painfully aware of my inability to do so. The more I wanted it, the more it hurt, so it was usually easier to care less than I knew I should. Few passages in scripture brought me more comfort than Paul’s words in the latter half of Romans 7. In some of the most challenging times, I would cry out with him: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death” (Romans 7:24)?

It was very comforting to know that even the mighty Apostle Paul sometimes felt like I did. It reminded me that I could do nothing about this struggle; it was just part of the Christian life. We fight against sin; sin fights against us. We have some good days, some bad days, some wins, and some losses. It isn't easy, but it is worth it. It will all be over someday when Jesus comes to deliver us.

There is just one problem. This is not the gospel! Nor is it an accurate interpretation of Paul’s monologue in Romans 7 (more on that in a later chapter). It may provide temporary relief, but let’s be honest — is relief all we desire? No. We want deliverance, we want victory, and we want it now, not in some distant future.

If the gospel does not supply this, then it is hard to see how the grace of God is any more helpful in our day-to-day lives than an ordinary therapist, the next best self-help book, or better yet, a few glasses of wine. I emphasize the phrase "day-to-day" because, while we understand pretty well how the gospel affects our future in eternity, we know very little how it affects today. As a result of this, the church has replaced its ministry of the gospel with various forms of human wisdom devoid of real power. In today's church, the gospel is used as a practical tool for eternal hope but not a practical tool for life transformation.

But I am here to tell you that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only practical tool for transformation. It doesn’t just shift the momentum of a game you're still likely to lose; it changes the game entirely so that you cannot lose. If our understanding of the gospel fails to explain how this is so, on a practical level, then believers will have little to no advantage in this life compared to non-believers, let alone any message worth sharing. This, I believe, is the sad case for most Christians today, and it is time for that to change.

Before we go any further, though, let me be clear that this is not a "self-help" gospel. In fact, it could not be further from it — and thank God — for we have already determined that we cannot help ourselves. Moreover, this is not the way for you to become all that you want to be, unless you want to be holy. It is the way for you to become all that you were created to be. It is death to sin and life to God and nothing in between. It is complete restoration, with no limit and no compromise. It is amazingly practical and wildly inconceivable. It is “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints” (Colossians 1:26). It is perfect freedom today for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ.

The Same Old Me

During the first many years of my Christian life, I thought of myself as the same person I had always been, with a little extra help from God. I would have told you that I believed I had been made new — because the Bible says so — but I had no idea what this meant or how to apply it. In reality, I still thought I was essentially the same person as before, only now with a new direction in life, in the basic sense that I was trying to follow Jesus now.

Like Jesus’ own disciples in their first years with him (before his death and resurrection), I had simply chosen to leave my old life behind and to go with him. Now, with the Holy Spirit, I had him around to teach, lead, encourage, and love me. Nevertheless, I still felt like me, the same sinner I had always been, just trying very hard to be different, to be like Jesus. If you can relate to this way of thinking, I would ask you, Is this what you think Paul meant by "newness of life" (Romans 6:4)?

I also knew that the Bible said I was free from sin, but I was not entirely sure what this freedom entailed, given how I still struggled so much with sin. To be “free from sin” seemed a lot more like free will than it was like victory over sin. And when it comes to obeying God’s commands, what good is free will if your will is to keep on sinning? What good is the power to obey if one does not wholly desire to obey?

Despite all my efforts to obey God, I found that I was still under the influence of the same sinful passions, too often giving in to the flesh, and unable to reconcile the truth in scripture with the truth about my life. If I was actually free, then why did I keep sinning? I could not blame God (although sometimes I was tempted to); the problem had to be me. The only conclusion I could come up with was that, though I wanted God in some measure, I apparently did not want him enough. Though I had repented from sin many times, I apparently had not repented enough. Therefore, I was left waiting for the day that God would finally change me.

I spent years waiting for that breakthrough, praying for that “second conversion" when I would finally fall madly in love with God and conquer my flesh once and for all. Through these years, I would swing from zeal to disappointment to apathy to conviction, then start the process all over again. Something would stir me up and reignite my fire for God — a conference I attended, a new book I was reading, an inspiring sermon I had just listened to, or a simple “moment of truth” in my prayer closet — yet the passion would eventually wear off, leaving me in the same place I had started, committing (and then subsequently confessing) the same old sins for the umpteenth time.

I confessed my sins often, sought help from the body of believers, prayed for deliverance with fervor, and sought God the best I knew how. And I waited expectantly for a change until I inevitably grew tired and disappointed in myself, forced to accept once again that this was just the Christian life. This was what God had done for me — he had placed me in a battle that I must fight but could not win, not even with his help. Sure, there was “no condemnation,” but there was no genuine sense of victory, either. Not in this life, anyway.

How pitiful! How wretched! How dare we call this a state of grace! Sin without knowing God, and it hurts but a little. But spit in your Lover’s face — day after day — then thank him for forgiving you and tell him you love him, knowing full well that you will do it again. One cannot continue in this state for long without either beginning to hate themselves or growing numb to their sin. Not surprisingly, most choose the latter. It is simply too painful otherwise.

And I tell you, if it were not for the actual grace of God, I would have stayed in that hell for the remainder of this life. How many well-intentioned, misinformed Christians are stuck in that same awful state?

I was reconciled to God through the forgiveness of sins — that much I understood, or so I thought. But now forgiven, what advantage did I have in this new life over my previous state? What exactly is this “grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2)? I knew I had the Holy Spirit, full access to God, and any help I needed from him. But as far as I knew, I was still the same old me. I was still a sinner who, despite my ultimate desire to do God’s will, could not seem to do it in the given moment. And in the midst of my temptations, whatever extra help God was ready to provide, I was somehow still unable or unwilling to reach out and receive.

Let me ask you: What help is it to be in relationship with God or even to love him deeply if, whenever temptation arises, I cannot muster up the desire to call on him for help? What good is it to have the Holy Spirit in me if I willfully ignore him every time my flesh is aroused? How do I benefit from having access to God if I constantly choose not to access him? What good is it if part of me delights in God, but my flesh delights in sin, and I am still a man of the flesh? I will tell you bluntly. It is good for nothing. It is no help at all. As wonderful as it is to be in relationship with God, during that long season of my life, this relationship never changed me the way the Bible teaches that it should. And for this reason, I could never shake the feeling that there had to be something I was missing.

Then, in one short season, everything changed when I learned that the grace I had been looking for had already been given and that I could walk in that grace through faith each day of my life. For years after being born again, I had been seeking a renewal of my heart, but as it turns out, I would be “transformed by the renewal of [my] mind…” (Romans 12:2). I did not need to learn how to do better; I needed to learn how to believe better.

Here is the crux of the issue. If you were to ask most Christians today, regarding a sin with which they have greatly struggled, “What is the key to your freedom?” the chances are high that they would give you one of the following answers: read more scripture, pray more frequently or more fervently, go to church more often, start tithing again, implement some form of self-discipline, care more, try harder, repent/surrender more sincerely, get an accountability partner, walk more deeply with brothers and sisters in Christ, dig into their past to understand why they act the way they do, go to therapy.

Notice what all these have in common. Each is a work that has yet to be done. It is unfinished business. Whether they imagine this work is for God to do or for them to do, the point is that they are left in wait, simply wondering when God will deliver on his promises.

I can relate to this feeling that there is something else we need to be doing! But we are about to learn that, by and large, Christians have been waiting for something that has already been done and can only be accessed by believing that it is true. I assured you of a gospel that sets you free, and it begins by understanding how it already has.

The Great Enigma

"For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14).

If you read the broader context of Romans, as well as many of Paul's other letters, it doesn't take long to see how important he thought it was that Christians have been released from the law (see Romans 7:4). Why? Because despite the law’s most obvious purpose — i.e., to bring about obedience — being under the law actually undermines this goal, making it more difficult to obey.

The "law" here refers to the moral law, including commands like the Ten Commandments, not just the ceremonial aspects of Jewish law (like circumcision, dietary restrictions, and animal sacrifice, for instance). Paul's example in Romans 7:7-8, concerning coveting, clearly demonstrates this. He argues that these moral laws, though "holy and righteous and good" (Romans 7:12), become the very means through which sin tempts, deceives, and "kills" us (Romans 7:11).

This concept was challenging for first-century Jewish Christians, who revered God's law, and it remains a point of contention for many Christians today. It seems to imply that Paul is downplaying the importance of God's commands. However, Paul was just acknowledging that we are like children who do exactly what their parents tell them not to do. It is not the parents’ fault for giving the right command, nor does it mean that the command should not have been given. Nevertheless, it is through the command that we are tempted to sin (see Romans 5:20 and 7:7-11).

While I suspect there is more complexity to this relationship between the law and sin, we can acknowledge that Paul was probably just "speaking in human terms, because of [our] natural limitations" (Romans 6:19). And either way, our takeaway is clear: "[T]he power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56, cf. Romans 6:14). Despite that God's morality-based commands are still good and relevant to us, to be “under” them or to serve them is to remain under the control of sin, unable to access the life of God that sets us free. But to be under grace is to be free from sin “in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4).

Thus, grace is the only practical solution to the problem of sin. While the law provided a sort of rubric for righteousness, it could not effectively produce righteousness in us (see Romans 3:20). Grace, on the other hand, is so powerful, that even as "sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Romans 5:20). There is no measure of sin that grace cannot overcome.

Consequently, it is of the utmost importance that we Christians live as ones who are under grace and not the law. Otherwise, sin will control us. At the same time, we cannot completely do away with the law as if God’s commandments are not relevant to us anymore. They certainly are (see Romans 3:31 and 1 Corinthians 7:19).

This leads us to one of the greatest enigmas in Christianity: How can we take holiness seriously without becoming once again enslaved to the law? How can we insist on obedience to God’s commands while insisting that obedience is no longer a means to salvation? How can we preach that it is “all by grace through faith” without diminishing the costly nature of discipleship, and vice versa? When does grace go "too far" or become "too radical?" When does it become "hyper-grace," as some call it today, and the very context for excusing sinful behavior?

Many have grappled with this apparent contradiction, and like me, they have felt either misunderstood, stupid, or crazy despite their intuition being correct — the gospel has to be better than this. In our Church today, there seem to be essentially two options: (1) Try harder. (2) Stop trying so hard. The former leads to legalism and the latter to licentiousness. Both leave the Christian in the grips of sin. Luckily for us, this problem is not new, and the solution is written across the pages of scripture.

The Grace in Which We Stand

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" (Romans 6:1)

The question above is a product of the enigma that we just described. The people asking it were not looking for an excuse to go on sinning. Rather, they mocked Paul's gospel of grace on the presumption that it allows and/or encourages people to go on sinning. We know there were people who thought this way toward Paul's gospel because he addressed this criticism earlier in the letter: "And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying" (Romans 3:8). Like Paul, they understood and agreed with the believer's call to holiness. However, the way that Paul spoke of grace — as a complete replacement of the law — appeared to provide people with a license to sin without fear of punishment. Therefore, although they may have agreed that eternal salvation comes through faith in Christ, they thought that Christians still needed the law for everyday holiness.

There is only one reason they thought this way. Like many still today, they equated grace with merely the forgiveness of sins. They came to a logical conclusion based on a faulty premise. If grace is merely forgiveness, then it would not matter whether a person flees from sin as the Bible tells us to (see 2 Timothy 2:22), for sin would not at all be opposed to God's saving grace. One may even conclude that the more we sin, the more God forgives, so there is no need for repentance. Hence the question meant to attack Paul's gospel: "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" In this case, Paul's gospel would be deeply flawed and an affront to holiness.

It is no wonder that so many were (and still are) offended by the gospel of grace! No wonder they insisted (and still do) on the practicality and necessity of the law to bring about obedience. And no wonder so many others go on sinning like it is nothing. Every bit of it comes down to what we believe about grace, or, more specifically, the grace that a person receives immediately through faith in Jesus Christ.

To remove this confusion and avoid this grave error, Paul sets out to explain in greater depth this "grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:2). Here are some verses worth highlighting in Romans 6, which I encourage you read carefully:

"How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (v. 2)

"We know that our old [man] was crucified with [Christ] in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." (v. 6)

"For one who has died has been set free from sin." (v. 7)

"For the death [Christ] died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (v. 10-11)

"But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." (v. 17-18)

"But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." (v. 22)

I cannot tell you how many times I read this chapter before I ever understood what was really going on here. For years, my only takeaway was that it is not okay for Christians to keep sinning (which, of course, is true, but not the main point). With a slightly condemning tone and an air of disappointment, I heard Paul saying: "Sin?! How could you?! After all that God has done for you, how dare you still desire to sin?"

At times, this was just one more chunk of scripture to put in the "stop sinning" bucket. In this case, it was only relevant for those who were excusing their sin, but not relevant for me and others who were actually trying to obey God. Other times, this scripture led to subtle doubts regarding my salvation since I was still struggling with various forms of habitual sin. Of course, I would eventually remember that I am saved through faith, not works, but then I could not help but wonder whether my faith was sincere. I knew it was supposed to produce righteousness, but it did not appear to be doing that.

However, as we look again at the verses above, we will learn that Paul is saying something much different and more helpful. Pay close attention to the language he uses to describe their condition. Notably, he does not view their freedom from sin as something still to be obtained (through spiritual/religious practices) but something that was accomplished by Christ on the cross through their baptism into his death. It is a finished work, and it is apparently true of every believer in Rome, for this letter was written to the whole Roman church, with no exceptions made. More than that, when Paul wrote this letter, he had never even visited the church in Rome! And yet, somehow he knows with great confidence what is true about them, spiritually. Why? Because he knew these things were true of every believer, that they define what it means to be a believer. And so, we can safely assume that all of it applies to all Christians everywhere, then and today.

Many Christians, like myself, have mistaken our "freedom from sin" to mean simply that we now have the freedom to choose whether or not to sin (whereas, some say that before Christ we did not have this choice, referring to the total depravity of the flesh and so forth). I suppose that this could be viewed as an improvement over my life before Christ, but let's be honest — my freedom to choose obedience never happened to produce much obedience, anyway. And more importantly, it misses the obvious point that Paul makes: If we have died to sin, is it even possible to live in it? Can a dead person choose to live? Does choice have anything to do with it at all?

Moreover, we have become slaves to God and slaves of righteousness. Can we be slaves to these and at the same time free to sin? I don't think so. Notably, the language Paul uses here suggests something quite different than, or perhaps even directly opposed to, our generic notion of free will. Contrary to what most Christians have believed, in Christ we are not free to choose anything other than righteousness.

All this is to make a very important point. When we believed and were baptized, God did something to us that changed us — something that we will explore in great detail throughout the book. When Paul says in verse 2, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?", he means literally how? He means that if you understood correctly what God has done to you in Jesus, you would see that you are not capable of continuing in sin. Why? Because it is no longer who or what you are. Being alive to God means you are dead to sin. As it says in 1 John 3:9, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God" (my italics). And, "We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep sinning…" (1 John 5:18).

Notice, it does not say that he shall not keep on sinning but that he can not and does not keep on sinning — an important distinction.

To be sure, then, the grace of God — which was given to us when we first believed and is marked by our baptism — does not merely consist of a "turning" toward Jesus or a relationship with Jesus, but a complete change in our state of being as a result of that relationship. It is not "the same old me with a little extra help from God" as I had supposed for so long. It is a new me entirely, in union with God. It is death to our flesh and a renewal of the spirit. It is freedom from sin and slavery to righteousness. God's grace has successfully "crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Galatians 5:24), brought the body of sin to nothing (see Romans 6:6), and caused us to be born again as new creatures, slaves of righteousness, sons of obedience, children of God, etc.

It is this new godly nature, then, that naturally produces the "fruit [of] sanctification and its end, eternal life" (Romans 6:22), just as every good tree naturally bears good fruit (see Matthew 7:17-19). The mechanism that propels believers toward sanctification is not the things they do; rather, it is the things they are by the grace of God in Christ (which we receive and walk in by faith). We may be inclined to think that none of this has occurred yet, at least not in full, since it does not align with our experience. It may not be what we see and feel in our day-to-day lives. And yet, we are called to "set [our] minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For [we] have died, and [our] life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:2-3, my italics). Our inclination to view ourselves according to what we can see, as opposed to the way God says we are, is what keeps us from being able to access the grace we have been given. For "we have… obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:2, my italics).

Forgiveness of sins and "newness of life" (Romans 6:4) go hand in hand. Grace should never be understood as the former without the latter. It is not that we are given the certainty of forgiveness with the option of righteousness. Nor is it forgiveness now and freedom later, or even freedom gradually. It is a package deal. The two cannot be separated, as both are received entirely and immediately when we believe in Jesus Christ and receive his Spirit.

By definition of God's grace, one cannot be both forgiven and still enslaved to sin. We are not only free from sin but also slaves to righteousness. Therefore, anyone who has convinced themselves that they are forgiven by God despite an inward state of unrepentance (i.e. intending from the heart to continue in sin) has believed a false gospel and is not actually forgiven or saved. To be born of God and then to keep one's face toward sin is a denial of one's position in God, in whom there is no sin. To "go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth" (Hebrews 10:26) ought to be a terrifying thing for anyone who understands what they are doing. And yet, while all this is true and worthy of deep consideration, I will contend that it has been used by Satan to sow doubt and confusion among genuine believers to whom it does not currently apply — those who Paul says "have [already] become obedient from the heart" (Romans 6:17) — keeping many from experiencing the victory over sin that is already theirs.

Ultimately, the point is this: grace far exceeds the law in its practicality to bring about righteousness in the life of a believer. For the law demands that we obey God despite our opposing nature (an impossible task), but under grace we have a nature that is now in alignment with God's commands. When grace is properly understood, then, it removes both the excuse and the power to sin, meaning it is entirely sufficient on its own to conform us into the image of Christ. All else is manmade religion and is "of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh" (Colossians 2:23). If your understanding of grace requires something in addition to grace to keep you from sinning — like any of the various methods previously mentioned or the law itself — then you do not understand grace.

Let us consider, then, how we may have warped Paul's teaching in the following way. Paul says, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:2). If you are like me, your natural mind reads it like this: "How can I have died to sin if I am still committing it?" Do you see the difference? If not, read it again.

For Paul, who has a spiritual mind (i.e., thinks in a mature way), the logic goes like this:

1. We have died to sin.

2. Therefore, we cannot continue living in it.

For those who have a natural mind (or think in an immature way), the logic goes like this:

1. We keep sinning.

2. Therefore, we must not yet have fully died to sin.

Paul's starting point is Jesus Christ, his finished work, and our new life in him — all things that remain unseen and therefore require faith to access (see Romans 5:2). Our starting point has been ourselves, the unfinished work, and our old life in the flesh — all things that we can easily see and require no faith at all. Maybe it is time that we take Paul's lead and learn to "walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7).

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