May Abound

2 Corinthians 9.8- “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:”

In spite of me?  Yes, in spite of me.  His grace is just that— something I do not deserve and cannot ever hope to deserve.  It is as some call it, unmerited favor.  I could not earn it or be good enough to receive it.  There is no merit badge called grace.  It is a gift bestowed on those who do not deserve it.  That He would promise to “make all grace abound toward you (me)” is astounding.  That God would further make this provisional gift to me so that I would “always having all sufficiency in all things” is mind-blowing and causes my heart-rate to rise just a bit more.  That God, my Father, would do so because He wants me to “abound to every good work” is now convicting.  Let me explain how…

God gives grace in your sin and around your sin, and thank God, after you sin!  What?!  Before we leave the reservation here, remember God supplies His gift of grace to those who cannot possibly earn it or deserve it.  This was true for my salvation more than 27 years ago as Romans 5.20-21 says— “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5 rolls into chapter 6 with—“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”(1-2)

Centering in on verse 1 we should consider what “abound” means.  Abound is from the greek term ‘pleonazō’ and means: to be augmented, to exist in abundance, to increase and by extension to ‘super-abound’ as something above the ordinary.  To make sure we get this right, it is God’s desire that I be given His grace so that I can super-abound to something above the ordinary?  Amazing!  It truly is amazing grace.

This truth should immediately cause conviction due to my present condition as a nominal believer.  At least it seems nominal compared to the 1st century New Testament believer and to this promise in 2 Corinthians.  This truth causes conviction in an entirely different form and for an entirely different reason:  He gives abundant grace while I am in sin!  The issue of Romans 5-6 is continuing to sin, depending on grace to rescue you.  It will, but why would you willingly do that?  This is the point made continuing until verse 14 in Romans 6.

Personally I know.  I know that I have willingly sinned while the Holy Spirit is convicting me.  I have plainly felt His presence and heard His voice telling me not to do it.  I have been urged by Him to not act or think or dwell in the thing I was in.  That same day a person gave me an amazing gift that only God could have placed on their heart.  A gift of significant portion.  Immediately I felt unworthy and humbled.  I also felt the keen sense of brokenness and conviction for my sin.  I had been corrected severely by the Lord through a grace gift.  This is the moment verse 6 speaks to me— “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (6.4)   This brokenness, this conviction, was a reminder of how dead I was acting and how life giving His grace and Spirit is in me.  What an offense!  That as His child, I would linger in sin.  What a declaration of my dependence on His grace too!  You see, His grace is what conquered the spiral I was heading down when I was saved and that same grace conquered my spiral into sin by confronting me with how truly good He is even when I am at odds against Him.

Humanity wants there to be justification on our terms, God provides justification on His terms.  It makes no sense to me that He would give to me through another while I am at odds against myself and His Spirit.  It makes perfect sense to Him, because that is how He works.

We should be abounding to every good work! Isn’t that difficult to do when we are so caught up in ourselves, this world and the sin it tempts us toward?  Yes!  This is why 2 Corinthians 9.8 stated- “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you…may abound to every good work:”  He gets me on my right track, not by binging me on the head, but by supplying grace.

I think this is a good time to bring some balance to this discussion.  Does this mean that we can get away with just about anything and He will simply gift us out of it?  No.  Hebrews 12.7-9 says—“If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?”  Every one of His children will get corrected.  I say every, because every believer fails.

Why is our immediate definition of chastening corporal punishment though?  It was true in my younger life and is at times with my children.  The scripture is pretty clear, in more places than I care to mention now, when corporal punishment (a whoopin’) is called for.  The scripture specifies for disrespect and defiant disobedience.  In my illustration, if I were continuing to sin and force grace to abound, after my confrontation from the Spirit, then I would be disobedient.  This is a violation as a child of the Father and He would strengthen His correction upon me.  In fact, Hebrews 12.11 explains— “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.”  I did feel the sting of conviction, it did correct me, it did make me recognize what the Spirit was pointing out, and I was refocused upon His lordship in my life.  It was terribly unpleasant.  It did though, as this verse points out, bring about a renewed fellowship and reset my path.

It was direct confrontation of chastening via a grace gift!  Isn’t that exactly what Romans 2.4 states—“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”  His goodness stopped me dead in my tracks just as it did when I was saved.  He has not changed His way of correction.  He is manifold in how He choses to deal with me, but it was not reactionary.  The person who gave me the substantial gift did so after prayer weeks before.  This is also weeks before I began to slip and weeks before I was ignoring His Spirit and holding His truth at arms distance.  He made an intersection for me to meet His grace-gift and thereby meeting His correcting goodness, weeks before I even began to wander away.

The view taken by many is, when we sin, when we then ignore the Spirit and arrogantly sin, that God will bring the “hammer” of His wrath upon us.  It can be, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen and I feel as if I have felt that kind of correction before.  Frankly, that is not the case here and usually isn’t.  For the child of God, we want to obey, we want to believe, we want to follow.  For the child of God, we want to please Him who loved us first.  For the child of God, we should want to stop and allow His Spirit to work on us long before we get to the point of our text Romans 6.6— “…Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid…”

He reminded me that He is good no matter what I do.  He is infinitely holy, and infinitely grace.  His graceful act upon me caused more of a stop than anything else before.  The immediate reminder of condemnation and judgement was potent, but not as much as knowing He still loved me.  His grace propelled a deeper desire to follow than the fear of being crushed.

God gives us grace to keep going, growing, loving, leading, and sharing in His grace.  Should we sin that grace may abound?  No.  But His grace will abound toward His child for a purpose… “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:” (2 Corinthians 9.8)  He expects me to take the gift thereby feeling the sting of his conviction brought about by His loving grace, and to launch out with newly found joy in my heart.  Thank God for His boundless love, His grace-filled gifts, and His desire to see me move forward for Him.