148. He's Out-Gracing Your Sin

Romans 5:20

I do a lot of work in a local county jail and in a local high school. You wouldn’t think those two places are very much alike, and you’d be right; but they do have one huge thing in common: Both places are filled with tons of people who will never take a step closer to God because they think it’s already over before they begin. They think it’s too late. They think they’ve crossed too many lines and sinned too badly way too often. They think Jesus is only for people who have their act together. Now, you of course know this is ridiculous. You know Jesus desperately wants to know them no matter who they’ve been or what they’ve done. The funny thing is that even though you and I both know this is true about all those people out there, we don’t always know it about ourselves. Sometimes I talk to Christians who know the Gospel but are far away from the Lord, and when you get down to why that is, it’s because they did something really bad and they’re afraid they went too far. In Romans 5, Paul says that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” In other words, Jesus’ grace super-increases. His grace mega-increases past all your sin! In Greek, it literally says that grace “hyper-overflowed.” It’s the same word used for the 12 basketfuls of left-overs after Jesus fed the five thousand, but with “hyper” in front of that! Whatever sin you do, grace goes way farther, has leftovers and then hyper-extends the leftovers! It’s like the old song, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” Any sin you can sin, Jesus forgives farther!