Letters to the Family of God
by Joe Franzone | May 2, 2024 | Pastor's Blog


May 2, 2024
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!
Dear friends.
Some Christians wrestle with a monumental struggle, and the struggle is real. It is the struggle of praying right after or soon after sinning. Our thinking might be something like, what right do we have to go to God in prayer after we have just done ___________? (Write sin committed in the space.)
It is a telling and essential question since all of us sin. Once, Martin Luther was asked the same question, and here was his answer.
Do you doubt whether God has heard you because you are a sinner? Then cling to the word and say: Though I am a sinner and unworthy, yet I have the command of God that tells me to pray, and His promise that He will graciously hear me, not because of my worthiness, but for the sake of the Lord Christ.
By this means, you can drive away the thoughts and doubts and cheerfully kneel down and pray, not regarding your worthiness or unworthiness, but your need and His word upon which He tells you to build, especially since He has placed before you and put into your mouth the words how and what you are to pray for, (The Lord’s Prayer) so that you joyously send up these prayers through Him, and can lay them in His bosom, that He may lay them by His own worthiness before the Father.
The last line of Luther’s quote is what makes Christianity different from every other religion: He (Christ) may lay them (our request) by His own worthiness before the Father.
Some people might read this and say, I never knew such a God like this existed! But He does! Others might say, wait a minute, you just sinned! You need to do something to make yourself right before God before you go to God. However, Luther did not hold a relaxed view of sin; he simply magnified God’s grace. Grace qualifies the non-deserving—it is grace!
Consequently, we can never set aside the grace of God. As the great hymn says, Grace, Grace, God’s grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin!
Only the grace of God in Christ's finished work on the cross can truly change a person. The law cannot. Works cannot. Only the grace of God in Christ's finished work on the cross gives us access to God's throne so that we might pray. Grace changes everything.
With all my love in the Lord Jesus Christ,
Pastor Joe
P.S. Don’t forget Jesus is in heaven, gladly interceding for you now. (Romans 8:34)