.  Living Hope Fellowship Church....Sermons by the Pastor 

REIGNING GRACE

(Part 2)

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

            Except the Spirit of God draws you, you can’t get born again.  Consequently, you can’t get born again just any time you want to.  

Romans 5:2 says, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”  We rejoice in the hope that God will do something special in us, and not just get to go to heaven when we die. 

Look in the same chapter at something else.  Romans 5:20 says, “. . . where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:”  It does not say grace was on an even keel with sin.  It says it is much more powerful than sin.  Grace abounds much more.  Where sin abounded in whosoever, now the potential is there for grace to abound. 

Romans 5:21 says, “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Sin reigning unto death means it takes you down eventually.  There is more power in grace in this salvation of the Lord than there is in the sin you used to walk in. 

Jesus cast the devils out of the demoniac that had thousands of devil powers working in him.  It was so much so that his actual physical body became supernatural in its scope.  He terrorized people in that area.  People tried to bind him, but he broke the bonds.  He ran naked, and cried out, and cut himself with stones.  He lived in the tombs.  He was miserable and dangerous.  He was a homicidal, suicidal maniac.  He had thousands of devils in him.

There is a Devil at work.  The sooner we realize that he is as real as God is, we can understand where the war is.  Jesus is the victor, and as we walk in the Lord Jesus, He has given us power over all the power of the enemy (see Luke 10:19). 

He said in Romans 5:20, “. . . where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” and in Verse 21 He said that grace might reign.  Reign means to rule, dominate, overcome, and stay in an overcoming position. 

The grace of God is operative in everything that God ever gives anybody.  It is by the grace of God that we are alive.  In the child of God the grace of God goes further and can minister.  God can heal anything, and He can save anybody.  In 2 Peter 3:9 it says God is not willing that any should perish.  He does not want anyone perishing physically and certainly not spiritually. 

3 John 1:2 says, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”  It is conditional on the soul. 

Matthew 10:22 says, “. . . he that endureth to the end shall be saved.”  However, Jesus talked far more about overcoming than he did about just enduring.  Read in the book of Revelation many times, “He that overcometh. . . .”  He gave promises along with the condition of overcoming.  John 15:7 says, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”  

God wants us to rule and reign in our life.  He does not want us to constantly struggle against sin, or be worried about this, that and the other.  He wants us to yield ourselves as a living sacrifice to God and to yield our minds to the Lord.  When we read something in the Bible, He wants us to believe it. 

Everything else is variable, but one thing is for sure, and that is Jesus Christ.  Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”  When we stand before the living God on judgment day, we will be judged by the words in the Bible.  This is an open Book test.  Get the Holy Ghost so you can interpret it properly.

Romans 6:4 says, “. . . we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  Believe God for what His Word says.  We are born again, and we can walk in newness of life by the Holy Ghost in us.

God forgives your sin, but He wants to take your love for any future sin away, so that grace might abound and reign literally in your life.

Romans 6:6 says, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” 

Romans 6:14 excites me.  “For sin shall not have dominion over you. . . .”