Can you imagine if you came home and said to your spouse, “I have a list of demands for you. My love for you is dependent on you keeping this list exactly. If these demands are not kept perfectly every time, then it will be as if we never got married.” Your spouse would definitely not be happy.

What works in marriage is grace. What works in the Christian life is grace. Grace works.

In Romans 5:2, grace provides security. In Ephesians 4:7, we have spiritual gifts given by His grace. In Titus 2:12, grace gives instruction on how to live for the Lord in light of salvation. When we move away from grace, we put ourselves back under a yoke that is too heavy to bear.

John Newton said this: “I am not what I ought to be; how imperfect and deficient I am. I am not what I wish to be. Though I am not what I ought to be, I can truly say I am not what I once was – a slave to sin and to Satan. I can heartily say like the Apostle Paul, I am what I am.”

If you want to know for sure that you are saved, then know grace. Understand it, live in it, rejoice in it. Don’t use it as an excuse to sin. The longer you are saved and the more you understand grace, the less likely you are to want to sin because you are so in love with the Lord and His grace. That is what transforms and makes your life successful for Him.