For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. Eph. 5:8-11
The good news of the gospel is that God’s grace is available on our worst days. That’s true because Christ fully satisfied the claims of God’s justice and fully paid the penalty of a broken law when He died on the cross in our place. Because of that, Paul could write, “He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses” Col. 2:13. Does this mean God no longer cares whether we obey or disobey? Not at all. The Scripture speaks of our grieving the Holy Spirit through our sins (Eph. 4:30). And Paul prayed that we “may please [God] to please Him in all respects, (Col. 1:10). Clearly, He cares about our conduct and will discipline us when we refuse to repent of conscious sin. But God is no longer our Judge. Through Christ He is now our heavenly Father who disciplines us only out of love and only for our good.
If God’s blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin—with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance. We’re always, to some degree, looking out for ourselves, guarding our flanks, protecting our egos. It’s because we don’t realize the utter depravity of the principle of sin remaining in us and staining everything we do that we entertain any notion of earning God’s blessings through our obedience. And because we don’t fully grasp that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins, we despair of God’s blessing when we’ve failed to live up to even our own desires to please God.
Your worst days are never so bad that you’re beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you’re beyond the need of God’s grace.