Pardoned Criminal and the Law

I want you to imagine, let’s use this as an illustration. Sadly This week I was looking in the newspaper and a man was executed for his crime. He was tried and was executed. But you know in this country we have kind of an interesting tradition that when a president is leaving, before he leaves office, he pardons somebody who’s on death row.

And so imagine, if you will, this man who has committed awful crimes against society, took the lives of people, and then the president is about to leave office and so pardons him. So this person now is free, but are they free to continue to break the law and to do what got them on death row in the first place?

You would hope, one would hope that in a heart welled up with gratitude, recognizing that they should have died and instead have been given a second chance, that now they will live a life in harmony with the law. Does that make sense? And that’s what Paul is saying. How can we now, after we’ve been saved by grace, now go back and break the law?

That is what Paul is saying. Grace is not an excuse for sinning. It is not an excuse for rebelling. Grace does not abolish law.