Why? What was the reason – what long-term good does it do you for God to overlook your sins? Why is this a vital, NECESSARY PART of the development of EVERY BEING WHO HAS EVER LIVED – ALL of whom have received the grace of God?

Some of these questions may seem self-evident, but I’m willing to bet there is yet understanding to be gleaned by their asking.

God must do His bookkeeping. He must be strictly honest, and legal. And the wages of sin is death. If you sin, you have earned death. So God has to have a completely legal, logical way of allowing you to sin without sending you the judgment for it.

You’ll find God’s legal foundation of grace in…

Romans 5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Ignorance makes a protective cocoon, to prevent God from having to execute you on the spot. Since He has given you no law, He can’t lawfully expect you to obey the law. So He has an excuse not to kill you for your sin.

But still, you have sinned. Something must pay for that – even before you repent. God’s books won’t balance unless there is payment for your sin, right now.

John 1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

By allowing you to sin all these years, and not judging you for it, Christ was a PARTAKER of your sins. He would have been clean had He killed you immediately, but since He tolerated your sin, He wound up being charged for it. So the GRACE, the TOLERANCE of your sin, came by Christ – and this paid for your sins from the time you were born, and permitted you to live this long in ignorance of the law without paying for it yourself.

Next, let’s look at your state before you were called. God had given you no information about what He wanted from you. You didn’t know you should keep the sabbath. Therefore, Christ paid for it so you didn’t have to. You were ignorant, so He didn’t impute, or charge, the sin to you.

In other words, you were under grace. While you were in this state, you were safe from the judgment of God. Then one day, you learned a new truth. And then grace flew out the window.

Romans 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

The instant you learned that new truth, that commandment, Christ stopped picking up the tab for that sin. Now, sin revived and it became YOUR responsibility to do something. You have two choices. Remember, God’s books must balance.

You can repent (this is the right answer, incidentally) and apply the sacrifice of Christ to your sin of ignorance. God’s books balance, you are clean, all is paid for and well.

Or, you can decide that you like this sin, and God’s commandment isn’t really THAT important after all… now here comes the fascinating part. Christ’s sacrifice cannot pay for this sin now.

Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,

So now, YOU must pay for this sin. This means that you must die. Literally. And your judgment will be commensurate with how much you understood – and therefore how much you rejected, and willfully sinned against.

But notice I only said THIS sin. Of course, it only takes one to earn the death penalty.

James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

Up to this point, to recap, we have you under grace for your ignorance. Then the commandment came, and you rejected it, and you have earned death. Now what does God do? Is He yet through with you? No! Now you go BACK to being under grace!

1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned (meaning “judged”) who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Once you have rejected truth that He has shown you, and committed willful sin, He will send you a strong delusion – something you will believe in, and be deceived into again – and go back to like you were before He called you. The REASON He does this is explained in

1 Corinthians 5:1, 5 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife…. deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, THAT THE SPIRIT MAY BE SAVED in the day of the Lord Jesus.

This was a church member, someone who had the spirit, was in the church of God, and KNEW BETTER. And he committed a willful sin – and so Paul instructed the church to put him out of the church. To put him back in the world, where we know from 1 Thessalonians 2:11 that he will receive a strong delusion, and be deceived, and here we find WHY GOD DOES THAT… so that THE SPIRIT MAY BE SAVED!

The spirit can be saved because this man will go back to having no commandment – there will be no law – so Christ can give him grace for his future sins, to allow him to continue his life without being immediately struck dead.

The man will die for his willful sin – unless he repents, as actually happened to this man – and Christ can pay for his other sins through grace. So God’s books balance. But the question remains, why did this man NEED to be deceived – HOW DOES THIS HELP SAVE HIS SPIRIT when he is resurrected?

In order for you to have no excuse before God, you must stand before God, understanding Him fully, with a clear mind and no deception, KNOWING that He is right… and then spit in His face. But Satan is the only one who has ever done this.

As long as this man can point to Satan, and say “The serpent beguiled me, LORD!,” God can make His books balance. And grace can pay for his sins. But if God permits this man to continue understanding more and more, rebelling all the while, this man’s spirit may not be savable in the second resurrection.

Romans 11:32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

And so God locks this mind down, deceives it, places it back under grace to live out it’s life, and come back in the second resurrection, where there is no deception, and try again.

And so grace is essential. Necessary, CRUCIAL to God’s plan to create a family who HATES SIN. God created perfect beings before – like Lucifer, and very likely even before him – but they all sinned. Because they didn’t hate sin, they only had God’s word that sin was bad. And so God learned, that in order to hate sin, you must EXPERIENCE sin.

Romans 7:13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

This grace allowed you to experience sin, to come to hate it. So that you’d KNOW just how heinously, wretchedly evil sin is. Without this grace, this would not be possible. At your first sin, to balance His books, God would have to kill you.

So He decided it was better this way.