Pastor, here’s how to answer “My actions don’t have consequences.”

You’ve heard it in a discipleship meeting, in a confrontation you didn’t want to have, maybe from a leader who used to be on fire: “I’m forgiven. My actions don’t have consequences.” Or its companion: “I just have more freedom in Christ than you do.” It sounds like grace. It’s a sermon of the serpent. Here’s how to hear what’s underneath it, and how I answer it as a pastor.

What licentiousness is

Licentiousness is treating grace as license. Since I’m forgiven, the thinking goes, my actions carry no consequence, and freedom in Christ gets redefined as freedom to do whatever I want.

Tim Keller framed the gospel as a road with a ditch on either side: licentiousness on one side, works-righteousness on the other. This is the first ditch. Taken to its end, it becomes hedonism. It misunderstands both the grace of God and the justice of God.

The serpent’s question

This saying echoes the third lie in the garden: “You will not certainly die” (Genesis 3:4). No consequences. Its version of the question is “Did God really say you’d reap what you sow?”

He did: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). Licentiousness rejects not only the everyday consequences of our actions, but eternal judgment and reward as well.

Step 1 — Don’t muddy justification and sanctification

Here’s the pushback you’ll hear: “Holiness doesn’t save you.” Correct. You are justified by Jesus Christ the Lord. Grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone. That’s our soteriology, and we don’t move an inch on it.

But then we move into sanctification, and we cannot muddy the two. Paul asks the obvious question: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” (Romans 6:1–2). God says, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). And Hebrews says that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Are we going to reject every verse about being pure and set apart for God? Preach both halves: justified by grace alone, called to be holy.

Step 2 — Turn freedom right side up

When you hear “I have more freedom than you,” ask kindly: freedom from what, and for what? We don’t have freedom for freedom’s sake. Freedom in Christ is freedom from sin, wickedness, and addiction. It’s freedom to be holy as He is holy, to no longer be a slave to sin, and to do what God has called us to do. Paul said it directly: don’t use your freedom to indulge the flesh (Galatians 5:13).

Even in the founding of our nation, I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said something like this: this whole experiment in freedom only works if we have a moral people. Freedom isn’t a license to be less moral. If you’ve used your freedom to sin, you’ve misunderstood the cross itself.

Step 3 — Order your house

Paul uses the picture of a large house. Some things in it are made of gold and silver, and some of wood and clay. Whoever cleanses himself becomes an instrument for special purposes, “useful to the Master” (2 Timothy 2:20–21). He’s saying, order your house. Order your life. What are the things in your world you need to stop using, and what are the things that are good?

That’s the practical work of sanctification: take off the old self and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24). Reject sin. Do the right things. Pursue being pure before God.

Step 4 — Teach holiness as fruit, not payment

Why pursue holiness? Not to save us. We’re already saved and already forgiven. We do it because we want to honor the Lord, serve Him, and be used as a vessel for Him. The way we live reflects what has happened to us. It isn’t an attempt to grab a salvation Christ already gave freely.

That distinction matters, because the ditch on the other side of the road is legalism. Holiness is the fruit of grace, never a substitute for it.

Don’t listen to the serpent that says you can do whatever you want and it won’t matter. It does matter. There is reward and there is judgment. Grace alone saves, sin still has consequences, and in Christ we’re finally free to pursue holiness.