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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Led by the Spirit, #6
Having your conversation [behavior] honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:12)
The current understanding that Divine grace replaces righteous behavior is the worst possible interpretation of the Apostle Paul. Paul never contrasted Divine grace and righteous behavior. He contrasted Divine grace and the Law of Moses.
Notice in the following verses that Paul was speaking of the Law of Moses in the early chapters of the Book of Romans.
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, (Romans 2:17)
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; (Romans 3:20,21)
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. (Romans 3:28)
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law. (Romans 3:31)
For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. (Romans 4:13)
In many of his Epistles the Apostle Paul speaks of the absolute need for righteous behavior.
Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:21)
Contemporary Evangelical thinking is in profound error when it presents grace as an alternative to righteous behavior. The New Testament teaches Divine grace as the means of obtaining righteous behavior, not as an alternative to righteous behavior.
Paul understood that his teaching of the transition from Moses to Christ would cause people to speculate that God's grace in Christ would enable them to sin and still be acceptable to God. And so we have Chapter Six.
Chapter Six of Romans. Chapter Six of the Book of Romans is one of the clearest expositions of the manner in which the new covenant operates.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? (Romans 6:1)
After having stated that we no longer are under the Law of Moses but under Divine grace, Paul asks the inevitable question. "Does this mean we now are free to sin?"
His answer, given in several verses in Chapter Six, is that we, having received the blood atonement, must now choose to be a slave of righteousness.
If we do not choose to be a slave of righteousness then we, although having chosen to be washed by the blood atonement, will die.
Paul does not mean we will die physically, for all people die physically whether or not they choose to be a slave of righteousness. Paul means we shall die spiritually. We had been touched with eternal life, with the Holy Spirit. But, as in the parable of the sower, the germinating life was overcome by the lusts of sin and no fruit was produced. The plant died.
To be continued.