Let the revolution begin

My friend, a grace revolution is sweeping across the world today and it’s transforming precious lives, restoring broken marriages, healing the sick, and freeing many from their long-term conditions, addictions, and the bondage of legalism. There is one common denominator that tipped these people over from defeat into victory, from breakdowns into breakthroughs: they all had an encounter with Jesus. They all caught a revelation of His grace.

Grace is not a subject and the grace revolution is not a movement. Grace is a person and His name is Jesus. No matter where you are at or what challenges you face, the positive changes you want to see begin to happen when you know and believe in the person of Jesus and the perfection of His finished work. When your heart and mind are anchored on His grace and the power of His finished work in your life, He will transform you from the inside out. When you personally encounter Him and allow your mind to be renewed with right beliefs about your true identity in Him, you will walk in freedom and live life to the fullest!

The grace revolution is about your life transformed from the inside out. It is about a life that reigns triumphant over defeat, failure, and frustration. When you encounter Jesus, the person of grace, see His heart of love for you, and when the veil of Christian religion is removed, you begin to step away from defeat and take a massive leap toward your victory!

Read Dean’s amazing testimony (page 4 of Grace Revolution). In it, he describes how feelings of rejection, inadequacy, loneliness, and fear launched him into a life of addictions and bondage, how his beliefs about God kept him trapped in defeat for over thirty years as he struggled with his addictions, and how his turnaround happened only when he began to hear about God’s grace.

The last paragraph of Dean’s praise report shows us that no matter how defeated or hopeless we feel, a growing revelation of God’s grace can turn that situation around and bring true deliverance.

As was the case with Dean, many believers are still living in confusion. They believe God will bless them when they obey Him, and then curse them when they fall short and fail. They get law and grace all mixed up by holding on to some aspects of the law and some aspects of grace in their Christian walk. Jesus said you cannot put new wine into old wineskins. The new wine will ferment and break the wineskins, and you will lose both (see Matt. 9:17). In the same way, you cannot put the new wine of grace into the old wineskin of the law. The result, as Dean shared about his life, is one of guilt, shame, bone-crushing condemnation, and depression because of fear, failure, and punishment.

Confusing law and grace is dangerous because it nullifies the finished work of Jesus . . . The law is man-centered whereas grace is Jesus-centered. The law focuses on what you must accomplish; grace focuses entirely on what Jesus has accomplished. Under the law, you are disqualified by your disobedience; under grace, you are qualified by Jesus’ obedience. Under the law you are made righteous when you do right; under grace you are made righteous when you believe right.

Read pages 10 and 11 which sum up the differences between living under the law and living under grace. Now consider the table below and fill out the column under grace.

The truth is, through the cross at Calvary, all who believe in Jesus and acknowledge Him as their Lord and Savior are under the new covenant of grace. This is what Jesus’ finished work has accomplished for you. He died for you so that you can now come completely under God’s grace and experience the breakthroughs you need.

When Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, He brought the law back to its pristine standard, as the Pharisees had brought it down to where it was humanly possible to keep. He did this to show that it was impossible for man to be justified by the law. Jesus was using God’s law to bring man to the end of himself so that he will see his need for the Savior.

The good news is that Jesus preached God’s holy standards in the Sermon of the Mount, and then He came down the mountain to meet the needs of suffering, crying, and dying humanity. If Jesus had stayed high up in heaven and decreed God’s holy standards from there, there would have been no hope and no redemption for us. But He came down the mountain and met a man with leprosy, a picture of you and me before we were washed clean by His precious blood. Imagine: an unclean sinner, standing before the King of kings. There was no way the pristine and perfect standards of the Sermon on the Mount or of God’s holy commandments could have saved him or us. The King knew that and that’s why He came down to where we were.

So here the man with leprosy was before the King saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean” (Matt. 8:2). Our Lord Jesus reached out and touched the defiled man, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed (see Matt. 8:3). Now watch this: under the law those with leprosy—the unclean—make the clean unclean. But under grace Jesus makes the unclean clean!

There are people who twist God’s Word, saying that when people are under grace, it will cause them to sin without restraint. Many have been hoodwinked by this false teaching that makes people fearful of God’s grace. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is being under grace that gives you the power to live a victorious life. Romans 6:14 clearly states: “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” The word “sin” here means “a failing to hit the mark.” So you can say it this way: sicknesses, diseases, eating disorders, addictions, and any form of oppression or bondage (all examples of our missing God’s mark or standard for a glorious life) shall not have dominion over you. When? When you are not under the law but under grace!

Toward the end of her testimony, Anna said, “Even right now, thinking about this great freedom, I have to cry, and cry out, ‘My Father is SO faithful!’ . . . I am so grateful that Christ has set me free!”

What willpower and self-effort couldn’t do, God did by the power of His amazing grace. His living and eternal Word proclaims, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Grace is the power over every addiction that is destroying you. Only grace can give you lasting freedom.