God Will Forgive Me, So Why Not?

How is everyone doing tonight!? Hey, my name is ______ and if we have not had the chance to meet, I have the opportunity to serve as the student pastor at ______ Campus! If you are just joining us, we are in week 2 of a series we like to call, “Lies Christians Like.” Last week, we tackled the lie that God will not give us more than we can handle, and tonight, I want to give us another lie that we might, as followers of Jesus, begin to believe. Before that, I have a question: How many of you have experienced a time when you did something just because you knew you would get away with it or be forgiven? The thought comes to mind, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. How many have heard of that?

[Communicator Note: Tell a story of a time where you did something knowing you could get away with it, or you were going to get forgiven for it.]

For me, that time was when I was in the 2nd grade. The only reason I remember this is because it was traumatizing for me, haha. Remember, as kids, our teachers would give us something to color, but part of the project was that we had to cut the picture out so we could glue it to something else. See, it didn’t matter if you colored outside the lines because you knew you were supposed to cut it out. I decided I was going to color this scarecrow brown, the whole page, because I was “just going to cut it out later,” and the problem was, it looked bad, and all my classmates told on me! I was doing something wrong, even though I thought I could get away with it. Once I cut it out, no one would have known, but then my teacher found out and I got into big trouble.

TENSION:

I think sometimes we do this with our faith, and whether we believe it or not, we begin to believe this lie, I know God will forgive me, so why not. I know God will forgive me, so why do that thing? Why not give in to that specific sin? When we start to “color outside the lines” of our faith/ relationship with Jesus, we can find ourselves in places that we would have never imagined we would be in.

For Example: Things that you think no one will know about.

You may find yourself saying things that are not true even though someone may not know.

You may find yourself looking at things that no one would know that you are looking at.

You may find that crossing boundaries with your significant other even though no one would know.

So tonight, I want to speak some truth over the lie that we can so easily fall into, “I know God will forgive me, so why not?

If you have your Bibles, we are going to open them up to Romans 5:20 and 6. As you are turning to Romans 5:20 and 6, I want to paint of picture of what is happening in this passage of scripture.

Paul is the author of the book of Romans, writing this letter to believers living in Rome. Romans stands as one of the clearest and most powerful presentations of the Gospel we have today. In it, Paul outlines how sin separates us from God, how Jesus atoned for that sin through His sacrifice on the cross, and how God’s grace now covers our sin. He offers a pathway to experience God's salvation. Which brings us to Romans 5:20-21.

20 God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. 21 So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Pause. When I look at this verse, there is so much good news here. God’s grace covers sin! We are now saved by grace through faith. This sounds amazing, and it is AMAZING! But if we are not careful, we can let this lie creep into our lives. If God's grace covers my sin, then I can sin as much as I want. In other words, I know God is going to forgive me, so why not?

But here is what you need to know. Most lies that we believe as followers of Jesus come from an incomplete understanding of God’s word. I don’t think that we set out on purpose to live lives where we are actively believing things that are not true about God's word. This is why understanding God's word IN CONTEXT is so important.

For example:

Have you ever walked into a friend’s conversation that has already started, and when you join the conversation. It doesn’t make sense, or worse, you begin to believe things about your friend that are just not true? The book of Romans is a conversation between Paul and believers. It is kind of like a text thread and when we jump into that text thread without knowing the full conversation it can get confusing, let look at this passage in context.

Romans 6:1-4

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

Man, this verse makes way more sense when we read it in its full context. If we had just stopped reading Romans at chapter 5, we would have missed the point that Paul is trying to make. That point is this. God’s grace is not a license to continue sinning.

Paul is saying that yes, God’s grace covers our sin, but when we are followers of Jesus, we must die to our sin. In other words, we have to live a different life. You see, life before Jesus, we were slaves to sin. We have no ability to solve our sin problem. And it is because of that sin problem that Jesus needed to come and die FOR our sins! Our sin problem was such a big deal that the creator of the universe had to die because of it.

The gospel should change our view of sin.

God, in all his power and Glory, saw that sin was such a big deal and saw the effects of sin on our life, which is death, that he left heaven so that he could save us from our sin.

I believe that sin breaks the heart of God.

When we believe the lie, “I know God will forgive me, so why not?” I think it makes the Gospel cheap, it make grace cheap.

How do you determine the price of something? The price is determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. And the sin we have in our lives, God was willing to die to pay the price of that sin.

So WHY? Why must we not go on sinning? Because God’s grace is not a pathway to keep sinning. God’s grace is a pathway to experience God's freedom.

Paul Continues on in Romans 6: 12-14

12 Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. 13 Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.

Paul is stating here that we are no longer slaves to sin. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, we no longer have to live lives where sin is our Master.

Sin always keeps you captive. Sin entices you with promises of freedom. You can live a free life, just so whatever you want. But in reality, Sin will always lead you to captivity.

Living the lie, “God will forgive me, so why not?” Is like locking yourself in a cage while the key is in your pocket.

God's grace is the pathway to experience God's freedom for your life.

[Communicator Note: Tell a story of a time when you might have believed this lie or a time when you thought sin was actual freedom.]

I, too, once believed sin was freedom. I could do what I wanted on Saturday because on Sunday, God would forgive me. But I quickly found that the sin I was committing was taking me to places where I could not stop sinning.

:One moment of living a lie led me to bondage and captivity.

: the things in my life that no one knew about me, I thought those things were freedom, but that lead me to bondage

: the life I was living felt free and fun but the words I said, the things I watched, and the people I surrounded myself with lead me to captivity

And it was not until I realized that I needed to get serious about my sin, or as Paul would say, I needed to fight back against my sin, that I truly experienced God's freedom.

APPLICATION:

Paul shows us a way to live this out in our lives.

Romans 6: 12-14

Another way of saying this is we have to get serious about our sin. If sin is serious to God, it should be serious to us, and some of us have begun to treat our sin, like it’s not a big deal.

God tells Cain in Genesis that he MUST rule over sin.

Genesis. 4:7 – “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

1. We must take control of our sinful desire.

a. God made community so that we would be able to rule or have control over our sinful desires.

b. God gave us confession as a key to experiencing freedom from Sin. “If giving in to sin is like trapping yourself in a cage while the key is in your pocket”, Confession is that Key.

c. For some of us, we need to repent from our sin, confess our sin, so that we can experience freedom from our sin.

2. We need to identify areas where sin creeps in and set up guardrails. And for most of us in this room, it looks like this. “HOLD UP CELL PHONE.”

a. Some of us need to put limits on things that we access on our phones.

b. Some of us need to not be in places alone with our significant others. Or to be more honest, not in any relationships at all.

c. Some of us need to create distance in our unhealthy friendships, friendships that lead to sins like Gossip, bullying, or even peer pressure to vape and participate in things you know are sin.

3. We need to believe that God’s grace has given us the power to rule over sin in our lives. There is hope in Jesus, and Jesus has given us a way through the Holy Spirit to fight against sin in our lives.

So, we are now going to go to groups where we can live out these principles and rule over sin in our lives.

Let’s pray

Related Media

Related Sermons

Earn an accredited degree from Redemption Seminary with Logos.