God expects us to be lawful. To be lawful is to keep the commandments of the Lord Jesus and His Apostles, and of the Old Testament where applicable. The only true Christian is the one who meditates in the Word of God each day and seeks God's help in doing what the Word teaches.

One may agree with all we have said and still insist we ultimately are saved by a grace that exists apart from a transformation of our personality, apart from the creation of a new righteous character. There are two problems with this position. First of all, the demonic pressures of lust, violence, and covetousness in the day in which we live are so great that if we trust that no matter what we do we will be saved by belief in Jesus, we will fall. We will be overcome by sin.

Second, we misunderstand what Divine grace is. Divine grace includes the written Word of God, the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of God. These are given to us so we can reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God through Christ. Receiving grace in this manner always results in the desired change in our behavior. And it is this change that itself is salvation. We are saved from sin and brought into the Presence of God.

To claim we are saved even though we are still sinning is to claim we are healed when we are still sick. It is acceptable to state we have faith that Jesus is able and willing to remove all sin from us. This is to point toward our land of promise. But then we do not sit in Egypt. We follow the Holy Spirit through the wilderness of testing. Then we have to fight our way into the land of freedom from sin and take possession of it.

The Lord God does all the fighting when we come out of Egypt. But we have to fight, as helped by the Lord, in order to enter our land of promise.

The grace of God does not change what we reap, it changes what we sow.

The grace of God did not appear to only forgive the drunkard, it appeared to make him sober. It is the change from drunkenness to sobriety that is salvation.

The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. His name is Jesus because He saves His people from their sins, not in their sins.

When our belief in Jesus does not change us from a lawless person to a lawful person then we are not being saved. We have received the grace of God in vain. We are turning the grace of God into an excuse for lawlessness, which is precisely what Satan has in mind. Satan knows that God will have no fellowship with a son who does not obey His Father.

To be continued.