Behind the question “Are we saved by grace or by works?” I often hear a different question:
How much can I sin and still be saved?
Those questions aren’t quite the same. Someone struggling with sin and afraid they’ve gone too far is in a very different place from someone looking for the maximum amount of sin they can get away with.
My honest response to the second question is: don’t test it!
Not because I think every failure means someone has lost their salvation. I don’t. But deliberately treating sin like a boundary to probe misses the point of grace—and assumes we’ll have time to learn where the boundary is.
Why take that risk?