Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:3-4 ESV)

For the most part, everyone has a pretty simple theology that they abide by… it’s something like this, “If you do what I do… and believe what I believe… then you’ll be right with God… because I’m right with God.”

Here is the obvious issue. When we do this, we become the judge of man. Not only is that not our place, but it brings judgment back on ourselves! We essentially start interpreting the law and creating the acceptable and unacceptable. We feel like we can do this because we suppose that we’re just cool enough with God to get away with not obeying the commands we just don’t think are that big of a deal. We create “comprehensive categories of the law.” Essentially we break the commands into catagories that look like this:e:

- This will keep you out of heaven.
– This will keep you from getting a big mansion in heaven.
– This will keep you from being blessed on earth, but you can go to heaven.
– This will grant you favor with God.
- This will grant you MEGA favor with God. 

The problem with this is that James said “you fail in part you fail in all of the law.” The law was never meant to keep us totally sin-free. It was designed to increase the trespass. (Romans 5:20) When we try to bring people under any form of the law, we’re essentially setting them up to sin more. The only way to overcome the issues of sin is through grace. (Rom 6:14)

We struggle with this because grace requires a 100% commitment to a very broad and abstract thought. Grace doesn’t require you to never sin again, yet it provides the freedom from the power of sin. Grace enables you to not sin and bails you out when you do… actually it doesn’t bail you out, it just doesn’t pay any attention to your fault. The law demands perfection, grace provides perfection through Jesus. You can’t be perfect under grace and you can’t be perfect under the law. You can stand on the law and be judged by your ability to be perfect, or stand in grace and be judged by Jesus’s ability to be perfect.

Apostle Paul was very clear when he said we shouldn’t just keep on sinning… but he also said that his flesh consistently contradicted his flesh. (Rom 6:1, 7:22-23)

Here’s the fact, Jack!

We naturally say, “Do this.” (Mark 15:30)  But Jesus simply says, “It’s done.” (John 19:30)