How to Tell Who Is Under Grace

Whoever, then, strives to reach the perfection of the gospel’s teaching lives under grace and is not oppressed by the dominion of sin, for to be under grace is to do what grace commands. But whoever will not submit himself to the full requirements of the gospel’s perfection must not be unaware that, although he seems to be baptized and to be a monk, he is not under grace. He is still shackled by the chains of the law and weighed down by the burden of sin. For the aim of him who, by the grace of adoption, accepts all who have received him, is not to destroy but to build on the requirements of Moses, not to abolish them but to fulfill them. But some, knowing nothing of this, and disregarding the splendid counsels and exhortations of Christ, are so let loose by the carelessness of a freedom too hastily assumed that they not only fail to carry out Christ’s commands, as if they were too hard, but even scorn as out of date the commands that the law of Moses gave them as beginners and children. In this dangerous freedom of theirs they say what the apostle condemns: “We have sinned, because we are not under the law but under grace.” [a]

So the one who is neither under grace, because he has never climbed the heights of the Lord’s teaching, nor under the law, because he has not accepted even those small commands of the law, is ground down beneath a double rule of sin. He imagines that he has received the grace of Christ simply and solely so that by this dangerous liberty of his he may make himself no longer Christ’s own. And he falls into the state the apostle Peter warns us to avoid, when he says: “Act as free people, and do not use your liberty as a cloak for wickedness.” The blessed apostle Paul also says: “For you, brothers and sisters, were called to liberty,” that is, to be free from the dominion of sin; “only do not use your liberty as an opportunity for the flesh,” that is, by believing that the doing away with the law’s commands is a license to sin. But the apostle Paul teaches us that this liberty is found nowhere except where the Lord dwells, for he says: “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” So I do not know whether I could express and explain the meaning of the blessed apostle as those who have experience know how to. One thing I do know: it is very clearly revealed, even without anyone’s explanation, to all who have perfectly acquired practical training. They will need no effort to understand in discussion what they have already learned by practice.