“I do not frustrate the Grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Galatians 2:21
For many, if not most, repentance consists of repenting of their act of sin. What we fail to realize is the condition of our heart when we actually turned away from God.
Just as the prodigal son desired his Father’s goods without the presence of his Father and was soon dining with the swine, backsliding begins in the heart.
As soon as we begin to seek righteousness by any means other than faith in Jesus Christ and His redeeming work which broke the power of sin in the Believer’s life, we have turned away from God, left our First Love, and frustrated the Grace of God in our lives.
“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under Grace.” Romans 6:14
This Grace that we have frustrated is the same Grace that gives us dominion over sin yet so many fail to recognize from what we must repent. Instead of repenting of the condition of our heart, which was in fact the original sin, we are repenting of dining with the swine…the symptom of our heart’s condition.
While repentance of our “acts” of sin is of course absolutely necessary, we must also repent of turning our heart away from God for another means of righteousness. This is something we don’t realize we do. So often we place our faith in doctrines, sometimes even Scriptural doctrines, for our righteousness never realizing it is in that moment that our hearts have backslidden…that we have fallen from Grace and left our First Love.
“4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; you are fallen from Grace.
5 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” Galatians 5:4-5
Wait for the hope…do not frustrate the Grace of God.
-Donna Clark Warren
Living in The Spirit 