During our Christian walk, we’ll all make mistakes from time to time. As God’s children, we know Jesus’ body and blood provided forgiveness for all our sins—even the ones we haven’t committed yet, and we can trust in that. This is important to remember when religious mindsets threaten to move us away from depending on God toward depending on our own performance. When we trust in what we do more than in what Jesus did, we fall from grace, but that doesn’t mean we fall back into sin.

Falling from grace is actually falling back into self-effort. Misinterpreting the Scriptures could fool us into thinking we must work to be holy enough to see the Lord, when all we need to do is believe in Jesus Christ. We find peace and holiness in the grace of God, not through our own actions. Our belief that we need our Savior moves us from feebly struggling in self-effort back into resting in His grace.

We may assume we can fulfill all that’s necessary for holiness through our own merits, but there will be times when we sin by failing to do what we know is the right thing to do. There will also be instances when we act with the wrong motives, and what is not done by faith is sin. We may be able to fool others by acting righteous while still committing sins of the heart. God knows our hearts, yet He still calls us saints.

It’s impossible to live a Christian life without Christ. We can work until we’re all stressed out and overcome by anxiety and frustration, but we don’t have to. God is good to us not because we deserve it, but because it’s His nature. His grace is all we need.

Prayer:

Lord, You sent us Your love and grace in human form when Jesus came to earth. He chose to die to cleanse us from all of our sins before we were even born. There is nothing else that needs to be done, because He did it all! In Jesus’ name, thank You. Amen.

Scriptures:

• Hebrews 12:14, 15
• Romans 5:20
• James 4:17
• Romans 8:27
• 2 Corinthians 12:9