The Word of God warns us plainly in Jude verse 4:
“For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This raises an important and often emotionally charged question:
Does my teaching turn the grace of God into lasciviousness?
In other words, am I portraying grace as a “license to sin” when I proclaim salvation through faith alone and the security of our sonship in Christ?
Though I emphatically reject the claim that “works don’t matter” or that believers may live however they please without consequence, this accusation is routinely leveled against my soteriological framework. Yet I take great assurance in the fact that the Apostle Paul, a champion of God’s grace, was subjected to the very same slander.
Paul writes in Romans 3:8:
“And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.”
It is worth asking: have proponents of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or Lordship Salvation ever been accused of teaching, “Let us do evil, that good may come”? In what universe do such systems provoke this kind of charge?
Paul explains in Titus 2:11–15:
“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.”
The same grace that saves us is the same grace that teaches us. It instructs believers to deny ungodliness and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. This is precisely why Paul can ask, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”—and answer emphatically, “God forbid.”
Any teacher who truly turns the grace of God into lasciviousness—by asserting that the believer’s conduct does not matter, or that those who have believed in God should not be careful to maintain good works—ought to be marked and avoided.
God’s grace is not a license to sin; it is a motivation to serve. Let me be abundantly clear: I am not promoting legalism. I am not promoting licentiousness. I am proclaiming liberty—the liberty “wherewith Christ hath made us free.”