Salvation & Grace
A friend told me that since grace covers everything, how he lives is nobody's business but his own. Something in that feels wrong and I cannot explain why.
“Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.”
David wrote this after being confronted about the worst thing he ever did, and it is the most raw confession in the Bible. What is easy to miss is where the prayer goes next. Restored joy leads straight into teaching other people the way back. Forgiveness in this psalm does not terminate in the forgiven man. It produces something outward almost immediately.
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
Paul has just pushed grace so far that he knows the objection is coming, so he raises it himself: shall we sin more so that grace can increase? His answer is not a threat about losing your place. It is closer to bewilderment, an appeal to what has already happened to a person. Someone who has genuinely died to something does not go looking for it again.
A path forward
Do not argue him into a corner. Ask him what he thinks the grace was for. Questions get further than verdicts, and this is not a conversation you win in one sitting.
Read Romans chapters 5 to 8 yourself this week. If you want to answer this well you need Paul's own reasoning rather than a slogan borrowed from someone else.
Check the same question in your own life honestly, in prayer. Is there an area you have quietly filed as covered so that you never have to look at it again?
Closing verse
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;”
- Titus 2:11-12
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