“If you believe you are just a Sinner Saved by Grace, then you will continue to Sin by Faith.” – Kris Vallotton.
In the Beginning, Adam and Eve were created in the Image and Likeness of God, and they had no knowledge of good and evil, and no concept of Sin.
So how do you get two perfect people to fall? You get them to question their identity. Satan’s deception got them to question who they were and who God is. Satan’s two lies were, God is holding back, and if you do something you will be Like God.
The Church holds these two lies today. We believe God is still holding back every time someone claims that God is about to release something new, or we prophesy of some coming great revival. These things, while having the appearance of spiritual wisdom, are in fact an accusation against God. These statements are essentially saying, that it is God’s fault things are the way they are, because he hasn’t given us everything we need to get the job done.
More importantly, we still believe the lie that if we do good and don’t do evil, we will be good. We still think that we are, what we do. Of course Jesus was never impressed with this sort of behaviour; as such he gave the Pharisee a hard time (John 8:44). Telling people, to Sin less and Do more good, is just the Law dressed up as Christianity and can never produce a righteous life.
No one is saying, that sin does not have consequences, but Sin will never be solved by telling people just do good and don’t do evil. Actually sin can never be solved by that method, because it utilizes the very knowledge of God and Evil that put us in all this trouble to begin with. Sin can only be solved by trusting in the redemptive act of God.
The deceptiveness of Sin is to get you to question this new Identity in Christ, and get you to link your identity with all the bad things you do. Sin tries to get you to confess, that you are an Alcoholic, You are addicted to adult material, You are a Fornicator, You Are Sinner Saved by Grace, etc. Rather than have faith in what God says about you, as being Holy, Righteous and A Saint because of His Blood.
Therein we see the Answer to Sin. If Adam and Eve fell because they questioned God and their own identity, then the answer to Sin is the reverse, to Put Faith in God and who He says we really are; New Creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Andrew Farley, the Author of The Naked Gospel, explains it like this. Imagine you have two rooms, one is a Junk room with papers and trash everywhere, and then you have another room that is spotless and clean. Now, imagine you are coming down the corridor with some garbage, which room will you through it into? Obviously the Junk Room, because what is one more piece of Garbage? Even if you are in the process of clean the Junk room, the garbage just doesn’t fit in the clean room.
By the Sacrifice of Christ, we have been made the Clean Room. The More we believe it, when the garbage (sin), comes towards us, it just does not fit in our lives anymore, and we find sin falling away effortlessly by our faith. Every other method use to try and produce Righteous living is religion and requires the use of the knowledge of good and evil to be performed, rather than drawing by faith from the Tree of Life which is Christ in us.
Kris Vallotton, talking about our identity as Sons.