Today, we continue our series entitled “Living the Grace Life,” where we will learn to embrace and walk in God’s unmerited, unearned, and often undeserved favor throughout 2025.
As part of this series, I am teaching a verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Galatians. Let’s dive deep into this foundational truth about the permanent transformation that grace produces.
Key scriptures for this year:
2 Corinthians 9:8 TPT
“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”
Galatians 5:4 TPT
“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace!”
Romans 6:14 ERV
“Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law. You now live under God’s grace.”
1 Corinthians 15:10 NIV
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Scripture(s) we will study today:
Galatians 2:18 TPT
“For if I start over and reconstruct the old religious system that I had torn down with the message of grace, I would appear to be a lawbreaker.”
Galatians 2:18 ERV
“But I would be wrong to begin teaching again those things that I gave up.”
Galatians 2:19 TPT
“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.”
Galatians 2:19 ERV
“It was the Law itself that caused me to end my life under the Law. I died to the Law so that I could live for God. I have been nailed to the cross with Christ.”
Romans 7:4 TPT
“So, my dear brothers and sisters, you also died to your relationship with the Law through the crucifixion of Christ’s body. You are now free to ‘marry’ another—to be joined to the one who was raised from the dead so that you may bear spiritual fruit for God.”
Setting the Stage:
Over the past several messages, we’ve systematically destroyed the ridiculous notion that grace is a license to sin. We’ve shown that people who ask this question have never truly experienced the transforming power of God’s grace, and that grace actually trains us away from ungodly living.
Today, Paul takes us even deeper. He shows us something powerful about the permanent nature of what grace does in our lives. Once grace has set you free from the law-based system of performance-based righteousness, you cannot go back without making yourself a transgressor. In other words, once you are free from the rules, if you try to go back, you have to do so acknowledging that you are a rulebreaker. Legalism cannot make you right. It can only prove to you that you are wrong.
So, what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. Returning to Law-Based Religion After Grace Makes You a Lawbreaker, Not a Law-Keeper.
Paul states emphatically: “For if I start over and reconstruct the old religious system that I had torn down with the message of grace, I would appear to be a lawbreaker.”
How this applies to you:
— When you try to go back to performance-based righteousness after experiencing grace, you’re not becoming more holy; you are becoming more sinful. Why? Because you have to acknowledge the fact that you cannot comply with the laws. This is why Paul says you would “appear to be a lawbreaker.“
— The very attempt to rebuild what grace tore down makes you guilty of transgression against the Law. But this is the opposite of what religious people think happens. They think going back to the rules makes them seem like they are more holy. They are only deceiving themselves.
— The religious system you try to return to is the very thing that condemned you in the first place. The Law was never designed to make you righteous. It was designed to show you that you’re not righteous and need a Savior. Going back to it after experiencing grace is like a released prisoner trying to rebuild his prison cell.
— You cannot improve on what God has done by grace by adding your own works. Grace plus works equals works. Grace plus Law equals Law. Grace mixed with anything else is no longer grace. Romans 11:6 makes this clear: “And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”
— Attempting to go back to law-based religion after grace is not humility, it’s pride. It’s saying, “What God did by grace isn’t enough. I need to add my performance to make it complete.” This is the religious arrogance disguised as spiritual maturity.
— Why would you trade the supernatural power of God’s grace for the system of human effort? The Law could never do what grace has already done.
— Trying to please God through law-keeping after grace is like trying to pay for a gift that’s already been given. You don’t honor the gift-giver by insisting on paying. You honor the gift-giver by receiving the gift with overwhelming gratitude and living worthy of it.
2. Through the Law, You Died to the Law So You Could Live to God.
Paul reveals the divine strategy: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.” This is one of the most profound statements in the New Testament about how God delivers us from performance-based religion.
How this applies to you:
— The Law itself was designed to kill your confidence in your own ability to be righteous. God never intended for the Law to make you righteous. He intended for it to show you that you can’t be righteous through your own efforts. The Law was your teacher to bring you to Christ (Galatians 3:24).
— Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the Law on your behalf. When you were joined to Christ through faith, His fulfillment of the Law became your fulfillment of the Law. This is a legal substitution. Jesus took your place on the cross, paying for all transgression against the Law, so you can now take His place on this planet, living in freedom and fulfilling the will of the Father.
— Dying to the Law doesn’t mean you can live any way you want. It means you can live the way God wants. The purpose of dying to the Law wasn’t to give you license to sin. It was to give you liberty to live for God without the pressure of performance-based religion/acceptance.
— Living to God is completely different from living under the Law. Under the Law, you live in fear of punishment. Living to God means you live in response to love. Under the Law, you perform to be accepted. Living to God means you live because you are already accepted.
— You cannot be spiritually alive to both the Law and to God simultaneously. Romans 7:4 explains this perfectly: “You died to your relationship with the Law through the crucifixion of Christ’s body. You are now free to ‘marry’ another, to be joined to the one who was raised from the dead.” You can’t be married to two different systems.
— Living to God means your motivation, your methods, and your measurements all change. Your motivation changes from fear to love. Your methods change from self-effort to faith. The aim is no longer compliance with external rules, but obedience to the internal Holy Spirit.
3. This Death to the Law Is Not Symbolic. It Is Both Actual and Permanent.
Paul says: “I have been nailed to the cross with Christ.” This isn’t metaphorical language. This is legal reality in the courtroom of heaven.
How this applies to you:
— Your identification with Christ’s death is as real as His death was real. When Christ died, you died. When Christ was buried, you were buried. When Christ rose from the dead, you rose from the dead as a new creation. This isn’t poetry. This is theology.
— Dead people don’t respond to the demands of the Law. The Law has no jurisdiction over dead people. Since you died with Christ, the Law can no longer make demands on your life for righteousness. You are legally free from its condemnation and requirements.
— This death is permanent, not temporary. You don’t die to the Law and then get resurrected back into it when you sin or when religious pressure comes. Once you’ve died with Christ, you stay dead to the Law. Your new life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).
— The permanence of this death means you can have permanent peace with God. You don’t have to wonder if you’re accepted based on your performance today. Your acceptance is based on Christ’s performance, which was perfect and complete. This gives you unshakeable confidence in God’s love.
— Since your death to the Law is permanent, your freedom from performance-based religion is also permanent. You don’t have to earn your way back into God’s favor when you mess up. You don’t have to prove yourself worthy when religious people question your lifestyle. Your worthiness is established through Christ’s cross.
— Understanding the permanence of your death to the Law protects you from spiritual confusion and condemnation. When guilt tries to convince you that you need to do more to be accepted, you can point to the cross and say, “It is finished!”
4. This Freedom Positions You to Bear Spiritual Fruit for God’s Glory.
Romans 7:4 tells us the purpose: “You are now free to ‘marry’ another, to be joined to the one who was raised from the dead so that you may bear spiritual fruit for God.”
How this applies to you:
— You weren’t set free from the Law just to be free; you were set free to be fruitful. The purpose of grace isn’t to make you lazy. The purpose of grace is to make you effective in producing spiritual fruit that pleases God.
— Spiritual fruit can only be produced through your connection with Christ, not through law-keeping. The Law could produce external compliance, but it could never produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These fruits grow naturally from your relationship with Jesus.
— When you try to produce spiritual fruit through law-keeping, you end up with artificial fruit. Law-based religion produces pride, judgment, condemnation, and spiritual exhaustion.
— Your spiritual fruitfulness becomes a testimony to the power of grace. When your life demonstrates love, freedom, and transformation that could only come from God, it becomes a living advertisement for the grace message. People see what grace can do and want it for themselves.
— Success in grace-based living makes the idea of returning to performance-based religion absolutely ridiculous. Why would you go back to a system that never worked when you’re experiencing a system that always works?
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You that through the Law, I died to the Law so I could live to You.
I declare that I have been crucified with Christ, and my old identity under law-based religion is dead and buried.
I will never attempt to rebuild what grace has torn down in my life.
I understand that going back to performance-based righteousness would make me a lawbreaker, not a law-keeper.
I am married to Christ, not to the Law, and I will bear spiritual fruit through this union.
My acceptance with You is permanent because Christ’s work is permanent.
I am dead to the Law’s demands and alive to Your love.
I will not allow religious pressure to put me back under the system that Christ died to free me from.
I am living from the inside out—expressing on the outside who You made me to be on the inside.
I am living #TheGraceLife, and GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!
I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper!
