What Grace Says
“Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law but under grace.” The secret of victory, therefore, is to keep under grace, which is walking in the Spirit. How is this to be done? All Christians who have real assurance of salvation see clearly that we are saved by grace. Law has condemned them. Law says “Do,” and we cannot do.
Grace says, “Jesus Christ has done it for me.”
“How much in the matter of my salvation has he done?”
“All of it.”
“How much is there left for me to do?”
Nothing. “Faith does nothing”; faith believes that Jesus has done it all.
Now this is exactly the case with Christian living, and the keeping of the law of God. Whenever a Christian sins, sin is having dominion over him, and that means that he is living under law where he does not belong, and needs to get under grace. Here, just as in salvation from the penalty of sin, grace means that Jesus Christ is doing it all. What is left for me then in the matter of winning victory over sin? Nothing. Faith believes that Jesus is doing it all. That is grace, and nothing else is. For if my effort enters, it is not of grace, but partly by the work of the law. That is making void the grace of God, “for if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought” (Gal. 2:21).
Christian liberty is changing the bondslavery of sin for the bondslavery of Christ; it is freedom from the law in order that the law may be kept in us by Another; it is changing the law that “made nothing perfect” for “the perfect law, the law of liberty.” “So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a law of liberty” (James 2:12).