What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
—Romans 6:1-2
I have been playing golf for five decades now. And early on, one of the things I loved most was the mulligan, that “do-over” you take when you hit a bad shot off the tee. With a mulligan, it’s like the last shot never happened; you just tee it up and try again.
Now in the golf I play, you’re really only supposed to take one mulligan every nine holes. But in the Christian life, praise God, our mulligans are endless. When you hit a bad shot, when you give in to sin, that sin, once forgiven, will never be counted against you. In Christ, the grace of God gives you a clean tee box.
But that very truth raises the exact question Paul anticipates here. If God keeps giving us do-overs, if grace covers every failure, then why not just keep on sinning? Won’t more sin simply produce more grace? Some people in Paul’s day were actually arguing that. And there’s a brand of so-called Christianity today that says much the same thing, a hyper-grace idea that since we’re forgiven, we’re free to live however we please.
Paul’s answer is the strongest negative he can muster: “By no means!” Absolutely not. And then he gives the reason, and it’s not a rule, it’s a reality. “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” The believer hasn’t just been forgiven; the believer has died to sin. Our whole relationship to sin has changed.
Let me put it back in golf terms. You don’t use your do-overs as an excuse to play sloppy. The golfer who genuinely loves the game wants to play his best, not waste shots because he can always take another. The mulligan isn’t a license for carelessness; it’s mercy for the player who’s trying.
It’s the same with God. Why obey, if grace covers everything? For the same reason you wouldn’t deliberately hit bad shots just because you could re-tee, because you love the game. And we obey God because we love Jesus. Grace doesn’t make obedience pointless; love makes obedience our delight.
Here’s the heart of it: the grace of God doesn’t leave us where it found us. Grace produces godly living. The same grace that forgives the sin also breaks the love of the sin. A heart that has truly tasted grace doesn’t go looking for reasons to keep sinning; it goes looking for ways to please the One who saved it.
So yes, thank God for the endless do-overs. Rest in a forgiveness that never runs out. But never twist that gift into an excuse. You died to sin, don’t go back and live in the grave you’ve been raised out of. Live a life of obedience, not out of fear, but out of a deep love for Jesus Christ.
GRACE GIVES YOU ENDLESS DO-OVERS, SO LIVE A LIFE OF OBEDIENCE OUT OF A DEEP LOVE FOR JESUS, NOT AN EXCUSE TO SIN.
