Today’s Romans chapter causes us to think about God’s mercy and its relation to grace and to being set free from the Law. Grace is related to mercy; both are experienced by those who are freed from serving under “the law of sin and death.” Both are also dependent on what God sees in the hearts of those who seek his mercy and grace. Paul told the Athenians that in the one true God “we live and move and have our being.” [Acts 17 v.28].

Now that only happens if we really possess a genuine spiritual attitude, or to use the words we read yesterday in Romans, “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons (& daughters) of God” [8 v.14]. Those who truly possess this spirit “are more than conquerors through him who loved us ...” [v.37], they constantly sense His oversight of their lives.

Paul then pours out his heart in today’s chapter about the tragedy of his race, the Jews and their continuing blindness to the ongoing the work of God despite the fact that “to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenant, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises.” [v.4] But, notice what he then writes, “it is not as though the word of God has failed” [v.6] How come? Well, blended in with God’s word is God’s mercy, in its own way the twin brother of grace. We cannot define this in terms of the operation of law; the operation of mercy is above and beyond the Law. God’s natural children are to ultimately experience his grace.

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy” [v.15-16]. We saw this in God’s attitude to David’s great sin and there is an interesting contrast in today’s reading about David.

David would have had compassion on Absalom, his heart cried out for this. [2 Sam 18 v.33] But human emotion lacks the insight of God into the human heart and our acts of compassion are sometimes misplaced. No-one will deserve to be in God’s Kingdom, those who obtain that wondrous experience will be there because of his grace and mercy.

Today we follow on from our thoughts yesterday on Romans 6 & 7 and we read slowly and meditatively to savour the unfolding reasoning of Paul. He laments, “I do not understand my own actions ... I do the very thing I hate” [7 v.15] and then adds, “I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out” [v.18]. It was the attitude in trying to keep the original law from Moses which bred this feeling. He continues, “I delight in the Law of God in my inner being, but I see another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members (i.e. within me). Wretched man that I am!” [v.22-24]. He asks the question, “who will deliver me from this ...” and answers, “thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ ...” [v.25]

We are now back to the subject of GRACE! The questions recurs, does it matter how much I sin seeing that the “law of sin that dwells” in me? The answer at first seems to be ‘No’ when the first verse of Ch. 8 tells us, “There is therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” But the answer starts to unfold as we read on in this chapter. Jesus also experienced “sinful flesh” [v.3] and he achieved what we cannot, he remained sinless. Through him “God has done what the law (of Moses), weakened by the flesh could not do ... that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.” [v.3,4] What kind of walk is that?

Then we specially noted the next 2 verses, “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

There is no “life and peace” until we develop a spiritual relationship with our Lord. Those who do this are no longer “in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” [v.9]. This is not the power to do miracles, rather it is the strength that comes from a heartfelt relationship with our Saviour. In his final letter Paul tells Timothy, “God gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” [2 Tim.1 v,7]

This is a spirit of mind that the old law could not do. Those who “set their minds” on this new relationship are “set free” and prove the reality of the Proverb, “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” [4 v.18]

What is grace? Simple question, but the answer is not exactly simple, especially when you try to be sure you understand the means by which ‘grace’ works. The word ‘grace’ was a special word for Paul! He had been persecuting believers, he had put them in prison, had been complicit in the death of the first martyr, Stephen. But the Lord Jesus had picked him out as a ‘chosen instrument’ [Acts 9 v.15] as he told Ananias in a vision.

It is evident from the words Paul heard him speak on the Damascus Road, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” [Acts 26 v.14], that Paul had been having a battle with his conscience. Now the 4 words in our heading, “that grace may abound” taken from today’s reading in Romans 6 v.1 have to be put in their context. Sadly, in many cases, such as popular Christian songs, they are not. Twice in Chapter 5, which is also our reading today, Paul makes the point that those who sin, who follow the example of Adam (and this is everybody) can experience the “free gift” [v.15,16, 17] of grace, which means unmerited forgiveness; their sins are blotted out of God’s sight.

Wonderful! What then? Paul writes, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” [v.20]. Some read this and think it is saying that it does not matter how much you sin, grace abounds more and more! If they, or you, think that, they have completely missing Paul’s point. Yet, tragically, some do think that. There is a misleading slogan, ‘Once saved, always saved’ used in some circles, but it is a distortion of the words of Scripture.

Paul asks, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” [6 v.1,2] The statement immediately causes us to ask, how can we ‘die to sin’ when we are surrounded by it, the world has become so godless, it constantly bombards us with temptation in many different ways!?

Consider what Paul goes on to write, he says the result of having “died to sin” was “in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” [v.6] He previously knew of Christ, but what he knew he completely misunderstood. But all that changed with his conversion. He now not only put on Christ’s name through baptism, he now belonged to Christ. As he moves toward the climax of this most challenging epistle, he writes, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” [Ch. 13 v.14] But there are more texts that will challenge our thinking on this as we come to Chapters 7 and 8 tomorrow.