Like anything else, such truths concerning finding God’s will that we live by faith can be abused. But so could Paul’s emphasis on justification by faith.
But Paul despite this “dangerous possibility”, did not pull back from stating the truth and that too emphatically
Romans 5:20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Paul, having said that the more sin abounds, the more God’s grace abounds, feels compelled to deal with a question some might ask. “Are you telling us that we can feel free to sin so we can experience the more abundant grace of God?” Notice that Paul says, “Certainly not!” But not for one instant does he pull back from his doctrine. He adds no qualifiers to his point on the boundlessness of grace. He doesn’t say, “Grace goes thus far and no further.”.Instead he appeals to another motive. Once we realize the greatness of God’s grace, how can we go on unabashedly doing things that we know will displease this wonderfully loving God??
He knew that there were a few who would turn the grace of God into lasciviousness (Jude 4), misinterpreting liberty as license, there were multitudes of others who would revel in and rightly use the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Romans 8:21)
So it is with the truth of the power of faith to draw upon God’s endless resources of God, the fact that faith can be exercised to supply the every-day desires of everyday life. Some will seek the quails and get them with leanness to their souls (Numbers 11; Psalm 106:15).
There are those who will ask for things that are not in God’s will (for example a married man aking God to help him divorce his wife so he can marry another woman whom he lusts for). He may think he is praying “in faith”, and indeed he may be doing just tha, but that will be a Satanic faith not a God-centred, Spirit-guided faith, there is a faith that can remove mountains but which is not motivated by God’s love (1 Corinthians 13:2). There is a sense in which faith is a law of nature, which can be operated on another level under the control of another spirit, motivated by self-will and self-love with purely selfish ends. If such a faith opertes to bring you what you want, you are in spiritual danger!
After all, there is a god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) as well as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:31)
There is an evil spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2;2), as well as the Holy Spirit. There is a prince of this world (John 14:30) who has resources at his disposal, indeed all the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof which he offered Jesus, and which he said that he would give to whom he would (Luke 4:6).
There is also a faith which operates at a natural level. All forms of achievement by any man, believer or not, can be the result of such a faith (which the world calls a “positive mental attitude”), . The building of a business, the carrying through to success of an enterprise, great or small, the acquirement of knowledge, self development in music, the arts, developing skill in sports, etc., all require faith in varying degrees and on differing levels. There are even “spiritual sciences” which are built on thisconcept. They have their followers (“Christian Science, which is neither Christian nor science, New Thought, Unity, etc.) and their large measure of success; indeed, they could teach us some lessons in overcoming challenges through faith. But their foundations are devilish, not divine, for few of them will confess that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” and that “Jesus is the Son of God,” the tests given by John by which we are to “try the spirits whether they are of God.”
Sorcery, witchcraft, black magic, and such practices work on the same principle, exceptthat they acknowledge the direct intercourse of faith with “wicked spirits in heavenly places,” and openly draw their power from them; whereas the teachers of “white magic”, “spiritual science” are much more subtle, in that they center their doctrine on one aspect of God, such as His power and providence, which they invoke for business success turning a deaf ear to the counter-balancing aspects of sin, the Atonement, etc., Gos’a warnings, etc., (so important in these last days) which are equally stressed in the Scriptures. They are an example of the pitfalls, which yawn before those who do not open their hearts to every aspect of truth revealed in God’s Word.
They delight in aspects of truth which appeal to them, and explore and develop it until they seem to see it on every page of Scripture, to the exclusion of anything which even seems to present an opposite point of view; and so that one-sided truth becomes deadly poisonous error. Thus these teachers, who have something real to say to us on the immanence of God, could be a healthy counterbalance to an overemphasis on His transcendence (which leaves so many Christians with a sense of distance from I Am, and consequent weakness, diffidence, joylessness) They rightly see God as the One Mind behind all creation, the I AM who is in and through everything (Acts 17:28), the Life of all lives; but, in thus concentrating upon His immanence, they neglect the equally necessary truth of His transcendence, His separate being, His dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto (1 Timothy 6:16), the existence of God as a separate living Person, “The high and holy One who inhabiteth eternity,” (Isaiah 57:15). The disobedience of man, the existence of the devil, sin as a reality, man’s responsibility before God, God’s wrath and judgment, the reality of hell as well as heaven; God’s love revealed in sending His only begotten Son into the world, Christ’s essential sonship and deity, His blood atonement and physical resurrection, His all-sufficient Saviorhood; man’s need of repentance, justification, sonship, and sanctification in Christ; and, finally, Christ’s second coming; all these cease to be truths through the neglect and denial of the one great basic truth of the transcendence of God as well as His immanence.
Bibloscope 