Let Us Not Set Aside the Grace of God

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God...” Galatians 2:19-21a

I read Galatians 2 in its entirety this morning, but when I read, “I do not set aside the grace of God,” I paused and put my Bible down.

How often I have set that grace aside. Even after spending quiet time with God, in a few hours I can find myself setting aside His grace.

And this morning, understanding His grace as dying to the law; living for God; being crucified with Christ so that I no longer live; and Christ Himself living in me so that now the life I live is by faith in the Son of God, who loves me and gave himself for me....

I think I may have not understood His grace, and that is why I could so easily set it aside.

A bit further in Galatians, we find this:

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

I think grace, for me, was still my attempt to live out the Spirit of Christ, not connecting it to Paul’s clear teaching of what grace actually is; the definition we find in Galatians 2:19-20.

Although I knew I have the Spirit and ought to listen to it, I believe the reason I could so often set His grace aside is because I was only half way there in comprehension.

I have not, in total confidence and commitment, remembered daily the life of Christ in me and the corollary of death to myself.

And although grace must be lived out in Christ through a material body of skin, brain, bones and muscle, which obviously still lives with every breath and heartbeat, a regenerated spirit within us also lives.

The previous spirit--the unregenerate one--the “I” before Christ, no longer exists. It died under the blood of Christ; a death we agreed to in our repentance to Christ (which means committing to Christ to turn away from that self). 

Our former self is dead.

It is when we stubbornly or carelessly allow the habit of the former self to tiptoe back in to tempt the redeemed self into returning to the actions and thought-life of its old self that we set the grace spelled out in Galatians 2:19-20 aside.

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:7-9).

We do not live out His grace by our attempt to control or tap into the Holy Spirit in us, as if we can reach in and help our self to as much or as little grace as we think the situation calls for.

Nor do we abide in His grace by the mere knowledge of the Holy Spirit in us, as if we could somehow succeed by telling our self, “I should be of grace in this moment because the Holy Spirit lives in me.”

We live out grace in that “we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Corinthians 10-11).

We die. That is how we live out grace.

We do not trust or put faith in our knowledge of the Holy Spirit, but trust and have faith in the Spirit Himself.

We rejoice in our death and continual dying and go forth in the daily new birth that is real and tangible.

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Notice our role here is to “lay aside,” not grace, but “every encumbrance and sin.”

And note how that “sin” is described as something that happens “easily.”

In other words, if we wonder why we are setting aside God’s grace, perhaps it is because we are not setting aside the sin that comes so easily!

Set aside the sin and God’s grace prevails!

Also notice our other role is to endure by “fixing our eyes on Jesus” who is “the author and perfector of faith.” We cannot muster up our own faith that in Christ we can be a person of grace. Our faith must reside in and derive from Christ Himself.

And finally, Hebrews 12:2 brings us full circle to where we began with the Galatians passage. Our going forth in God’s grace is grounded in—not to be severed from—what Jesus accomplished, in love for us and “for the joy set before Him,” on the cross.

It is in that love and joy—not just the remembrance of it but the actuality of it—that grace is not to be set aside.

Copyright Barb Harwood