Distinction Between Law and Grace

the law condemns and exposes all these things and it's not for the righteous who are the righteous the righteous are not those who are upright according to the law but those who have taken refuge in Jesus Christ and who work not but believe on him who justifies the ungodly and their faith has been counted to them as righteousness that's the righteous in contrast there's all these evil things that exist for those who are under the law which is those who are not justified by faith and here's what's interesting all these things that are defined by the law he says they're not according to sound doctrine according to my glorious gospel of the blessed God which has been committed to my trust so the gospel automatically deals with these things when you have the gospel you've been washed when you believe the gospel you've been washed you've been justified you've been sanctified in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of God you have been washed from all those things you are not any of those things anymore and by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit especially if you are under the New Testament ministry which ministers faith and produces the good conscience and and roots you in the love of God and causes Christ to dwell in your heart you will be washed you will experientially those things will come off you the reason they don't come off people is because instead of ministering New Testament economy people have miss aimed desiring to be teachers of the law and have swerved aside to vain jangling and instead of ministering faith they minister questions and this is a fundamental difference in ministry and the kind of fellowship it produces you are either ministering according to God's economy by dispensing Christ by revealing his person and work and it's being received by faith in the hearers or rejected and if they reject it then they're under the law and they're condemned but if they accept it then it produces its fruit the Word of God bears fruit and grows we don't have to tell people what to do all we have to do is lift up Jesus and he will draw all men to him and that's the difference is because the law teacher wants to tell you what to do

grace mixed with law is no grace at all. And I don't know if that's something that people have said before. It sounds like John MacArthur's phrase, if he's not Lord of all, he's not Lord at all. It's kind of like the opposite of that. If grace is mixed with law, it's not grace at all. And that's why Galatians was written. I remember pastors telling me that Paul was not very mature in the book of Galatians. That was one of his first letters. How do you know he wasn't mature? Well, he was so mad. He's just so mad, and that's not love. And they didn't understand, actually, what the book was about, which was that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. It's funny when Paul in Romans 6 talks about, or Romans 5, where sin abounds, grace does more superabound. Superabound is the word it uses, where we get the word hypergrace, actually. So that as sin reigned in death, grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life and make us reign in life. Sin used to be our lord, but grace makes us lords, in the sense that we have the upper hand in that situation. Because sin cannot lord it over us, because we're no longer under law, but under grace. But Galatians reveals that law is really subtle, whereas where sin abounded, which is a big word, grace superabounded, in other words, sin is just all over the place, and even more, God's grace has been poured out to meet it. But when it comes to law, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. It's almost like law is even more of a threat. You know, just a little leaven leavens the whole lump, every part of it. And if you remember, in Jesus' parables in Matthew 13, one of the negative parables is that the outward appearance of the kingdom is like a woman who hid leaven in three measures of meal until the whole of it became leavened. So some people, a lot of commentaries have said, well that's how the kingdom grows, it's like leaven filling the whole earth, you know, well that's a dominionistic interpretation. No, it's negative, leaven is negative. And there's different kinds of leaven, you know, there's hypocrisy, there's malice, but in Galatians, leaven really signifies mixing the law with grace. See, Galatians has two parts. There's the people who say you can't be justified unless you're circumcised. Well they are talking about justification, and they're not mixing law with grace, they're shutting grace out and putting it all on law. But then there's a more subtle error, which is, you've begun in the spirit, but now you think you're going to be perfected in the flesh. You received the spirit initially by the hearing of faith, but now you're trying to be under the law for a rule of life. You're trying to be under law with grace. So that's where you see in Galatians 3, you know, did he who supply you with the spirit and do miracles among you, do so by the works of the law or the hearing of faith?

love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And what he's saying, without saying it, is if you keep the law, you'll be blessed. But if you don't, you'll be punished. If God is not first in your life, you'll be punished. And the way he said it sounded perfectly reasonable. In fact, I talked to my wife later. I was like, you know, I told her the whole thing, that I was really struggling in it, in the service, just to figure out why was I having a problem. And you go, what's wrong with me? You know, because everything looks so healthy. All the people look so normal. They're not on the internet having people, you know, call them false prophets, and all the crazy stuff we go through, you know. They have normal lives, and their kids are there, and they're all well-dressed, and they all seem happy. Actually, at the end of the message, though, there was no life. All the life that had gotten injected into there through the worship was gone. You could feel it. It drained out through the law, because the law is a mystery of condemnation and death. And at the end, they tried to do songs. They did do some songs, you know, because you do the Christmas Eve service where everybody lights a candle, and you sit there and sing Silent Night. There was nothing. It was hard. Why? Because everybody's sitting there thinking, yeah, I need to put God first. I really need to put God first. And what does that mean? It means a million things to each person. Well, I need to pray more. I need to read my Bible more. I need to, you know, I love my job too much. I love the world too much. I love my kids too much. I love this too much. You know, all of us have idols. He did the whole thing. You know, we all have idols. We might not be worshiping gold and silver, but, you know, if you're worshiping idols, or if you have idols, you know, that's not, now, he didn't do it like the pastors we see are in here where God's gonna kill you if you're not bringing your tithes in, and he'll punish you, and take you out to the woodshed, and he'll take you home early. And, you know, no, it was a real soft, God wants your good. And he knows that he's the best good for you. And he knows that it's only when you have him first that you're gonna be happy and full of joy. And he wants you to be happy. He doesn't want to have to come in and discipline you. Okay, very soft, very sweet. There was nothing, you wouldn't get the sense that this guy was saying anything abusive. And in his mind, he wasn't. But he's mixing law with gospel. And there was enough in the gospel. Like I told my wife, well, this is what he said, you know. And she's like, yeah, but he also said this and that. There was grace in there. You know, of course there's grace. He said, you know, Christ is our righteousness and all that stuff. But it's negated by the law. You can't mix them. If you mix law and grace, it's not grace at all. What is it? Grace mixed with law is no grace at all. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. And think about that. That was one Sunday, or one, I'm sorry, service. They go to this every Sunday and go through this every Sunday. And I remember now, it's been years since I've been regularly in the institutional church. I remember why. You just always felt like something was wrong. You couldn't put your finger on what it is because each time you would go and they would confront you with so many things. And you'd know something's wrong, but you'd have to sit there and weigh out, well, is it this? No, that's not wrong. No, that's not wrong. No, that's not wrong. Because there's a lot of things they present that are right. And then when you get to the thing that is wrong, you go, well, if all those other things are right, am I just making too big of a deal about the one thing that's wrong? Maybe there's something wrong with me. And meanwhile, your spiritual strength is gone and you're left with no way to enjoy God, no way to enter the holiest with boldness. Because the fear of God, like it says in Romans 3, there is none that fears him. None. That's the flesh. And guess what? Mary was in the flesh. She wasn't regenerated. Without God coming through for you, you don't have a way to fear him. That's law-keeping. Fear has to, when you look at what fear really is, fearing the Lord means believing the word. You believe what the law says, which is that you judge your flesh. And Mary did. She knew she needed a savior from her sins. When you don't say, well, I can put God first. You say, I can't put God first. We like sheep have gone astray. We have iniquity. We are carnally minded. The carnal mind is death. It's enmity against God. We are alienated in our mind through wicked works. Our tendency in the flesh is to not seek God. There is none who seeks God. There's none who does righteous, not even one. The way of peace we have not known. That's the judgment. And that's God's assessment of us. We don't fear God. And there's no reward for being afraid of God. If you just say, well, it's reverential awe or fear. There's no reward for that because Adam and Eve were afraid of God after they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil when they shouldn't have been. Before that, they weren't. Fear, with that kind of fear, it's mixed with shame and corruptibility where you can't stand in the presence of God because you are flesh. You know you're judged. There's no reward for knowing you're judged. There's a recompense of reward for faith. So fearing God doesn't mean putting God first because you can't. It means agreeing with his assessment, which is I can do nothing. My flesh doesn't have it in me. I know if it's up to me, I'll never put him first. But we all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord has placed on him the iniquity of us all, the shepherd of the sheep. We look away from ourselves to Jesus Christ, our sin bearer. And this is the gospel. The gospel does what the law can't do because it's weak through sinful flesh. The law says, yeah, you should put God first. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. If you want blessing to see long life, you need to do everything in the book of the law. You need to observe it. You need to put God first. But the judgment of the law is that if you break it at one point, you've broken the whole thing. And honestly, you haven't done even the first thing. You haven't done any of it, not even close. Because the standard is Jesus Christ. But the law is preparatory for the gospel. And once you're willing to accept the judgment on the flesh, the gospel tells you, yeah, you never put God first and you won't. But Jesus Christ is your burnt offering. Behold, I come in the volume of the book that is written to me to do your will, oh God. That's Jesus Christ. He came and he is the one who always is into the bosom of the father. He always does that which is pleasing to God. And everything he does, he seeks God's glory, not his own. And he's our representative man and he's our righteousness, okay? And he bore our iniquities. He bore our wandering. He bore all of that sin on himself and took the penalty and took the judgment, okay? And then he rose from the dead to become our life. And the gospel supplies Christ as our life through faith. So the requirement on me is not fear God. The requirement on me is believe the gospel. What is the gospel? Christ died for my sin, which is I don't fear God. I'm godless. I am ungodly. It is to him who works not, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is God and his righteousness. I don't have any godliness and I'm not gonna be able to put God first. And I haven't put God first. And I can't look at that as the source of blessing or peace with God or anything like that. It will always lead me to a sense of condemnation if I'm honest, you know? And even that pastor was honest. You know, he couldn't give that message without saying himself, you know, we all go through seasons and even I, you know, I'm not, you know, they don't know how to come into the presence of God. He started the message with, we all go through seasons in the Christian life and sometimes it just seems like God is so far away. I think that that might be where he is. And he may be speaking to himself, like he feels like he needs to put God first. A lot of pastors are like this. In their personal life, they can't live up to the standard of their preaching and they condemn themselves about it because then God does feel sorry, far away from them, you know, and they don't know that believing the gospel is what brings us near. Everything that the gospel, everything that the law demands is supplied to us in the gospel. It's Christ himself. He is the one that fulfills, right? He came to fulfill the law and he is the righteousness that the law points to. Now, the way he fulfilled the law is not that he's a law keeper. No, his righteousness is the reality. The law is the shadow. He's the light that is cast and then the law is a shadow of the hindsight of his glory. The law just bears witness, but the law doesn't even describe the lengths to which his love and righteousness goes, you know, because the law never told God or anybody that they have to lay down their life for their enemies and die for the ungodly and pay for their sins. That's not just, but it's righteous. The righteousness of God exhibited in Christ is far beyond what the law describes, but the law is a shadow. And Christ is the manifestation of the righteousness of God, apart from the law, the witness by the law, and he did fulfill the law in this. He condemned sin in his flesh, which means the law says the wages of sin is death and the law is there to condemn sin, but it couldn't. It couldn't actually even condemn it because it had no power to the weakness of the sin of the flesh. It could say, don't sin, but it couldn't actually condemn it and stop it. But the cross of Christ did. Christ on the cross actually condemned sin in his flesh. He did what the law could not do. Romans eight says, what the law could not do in that it was weak through sinful flesh, God did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Now, when you get into what all that means, it means that the law condemns sin and yet it can't put an end to it, but Christ did. And the law said we had to die, but it couldn't bring us to death, but Christ did. And in his death, we died. We were baptized into his death. We were buried with him in baptism and in God's reckoning, we are dead, meaning there's no more demand on us. He's not expecting a dead man to fear him. He's not expecting a dead man to love him. He's not expecting a dead man to love his neighbor. A dead man is dead. So Romans six says we died to sin. Romans seven says we died to the law. We are buried with Christ that we may be joined to another, even him who's raised from the dead that bear fruit to God. And now there's another life, which is Christ himself. Supplied in the gospel by the hearing of faith. So the way this Christian life works is not by me hearing that I need to be devoting myself more to God. The way it works is to hear about who Jesus Christ is and what he's accomplished and to believe it. And as I believe it, all the blessings are open to me. The peace with God, entrance into his presence. You don't have to fear God is far away from me and I don't know how to get him back. Preach the gospel to yourself and you'll find yourself enjoying the witness of the spirit. We've received not the spirit of bondage to get into fear, but a spirit of sonship in which we cry, Abba father. The spirit himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God and heirs. Heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. The spirit bears witness with the truth of when we say Abba father. What are we doing when we say Abba father? We are recognizing that we are the sons of God and that we have the life. He who has the son has the life. We're recognizing that we are sons and heirs because of righteousness. We're recognizing that Christ is our position before God and he is our merit. He is our righteousness.

But the law will always be the law, and it will always be the letter that kills. And somebody asked just now, you know, they're struggling with, they've heard that the law points us to Christ. So can't it be used to do that? Well, no, the law does not point you to Christ. The law condemns your sin. That's the only thing it can do, and that's all it's for. The law is there to expose your sin, and the law does not point to Christ. Proof? Well, the Ten Commandments don't mention Jesus Christ. None of the Ten Commandments tell you that you can be justified by faith by believing in the gospel. None of them tell you the gospel, right? The gospel tells you about Christ. The law tells you about your sin. It tells you what's required to be righteous if you're going to try to make it yourself. And it condemns you before you even try, because the commandment, thou shalt not covet, deals with the motives of your heart, the things you think before you even decided to think anything. It's what you essentially want. You lust after your heart. You've committed adultery. You hate in your heart. You've committed murder. You're a lawbreaker. No matter what you clean up on the outside, you're a lawbreaker. And the law is there to show you your need for Christ, but not directly. It doesn't tell you about Christ. We're talking about the law in the sense that we as Gentiles tend to apply it, which is the ministry of condemnation and death, the commandments written in stone. You know, a lot of people say, no, the law is just referring to the ceremonies and the feasts and the circumcision and the sacrifices. We're not under that burden. We're under the law, the 10 commandments. But Paul said that the ministry of condemnation, which was written in stones, was a ministry of death and is the letter that kills. And the tabernacle blueprints weren't written in the stones. The 10 commandments were. The 10 commandments are what all the pastors want you to try to obey. And they'll tell you that those things point you to Christ because they somehow reveal his virtues. No, they don't reveal his virtues. They reveal your sin. And there's not a single commandment that tells you that he is the remedy. Even the one that does point to the sacrifices, the one about the Sabbath is always used only to condemn you for not keeping the Sabbath. It's a condemnation for not keeping the Sabbath. You're condemned by every point. So there's a commandment to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Hey there Well, I thought we'd continue in Romans 7. I know it's been a little while Just have to bear with me on this paces I'd like to be doing more messages, but I've just got so much going on almost done with my James trouble book I have a I'm debating whether to add another chapter about something or leave it be and I just need to edit some things For grammar and stuff anyway Let's see Okay, so we talked about the sorry I got some neighbors staring at me that's kind of weird Talk about The adultery of being married to the law and to Christ you got to see your death to Christ I'm sorry, you see your death to the law in order for you to feel Comfortable in your relationship with Christ As long as you think that you're under law Under the wage under the carrot and stick and you owe it something You cannot feel good about your relationship with Christ Because the only way To relate to Christ is in grace Where there's no debt Everything is paid for and you're only on the receiving end. You've got nothing to give That's how we come to him So When you are thinking you're under law The stand in grace will always feel like a license to sin It will always feel dirty It'll always make you feel guilty And something's not right and that is because you're still married to the law and therefore Thought to be an adulteress if you marry another there's something about that in your conscience that it's just not legitimate And this is the source of a lot of condemnation for people who try to Enjoy Christ while thinking they're under law and they have a mix of law and grace They never feel good about the relationship with Christ I'm gonna turn this okay Okay, so he says we've become dead to the law By the body of Christ by his death So that we should be married to another That we should bear fruit to God Okay, so remember in Romans 6 there was fruit unto death Which is oh, no, I'm sorry in verse 5 here the sin produces fruit unto death And really the flesh Does anything we do in the flesh? And the flesh is not just your bad parts, it's the totality of who you are living independently of Christ especially under law He says we've been delivered from the law that being dead therein Where we are held that we should serve in new ways This is the second time He talks about newness in Romans 6. He said that Just as Christ is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. We should walk in newness of life and Here we serve In newness of the spirit and not oldness of the letter So he says we've been delivered from the law that we should serve in newness of the spirit In newness of the spirit Newness is related to God himself. He's the one who sits on the throne and says behold. I make all things new And out from that throne flows the river the water of life and that conveys the fresh reality of Christ himself to be our life And to be in newness is to be receiving fresh from him Not depending on our history Not paying off a debt by any means. Where's the law? There's a debt there We're not debtors The old things have been blotted out Any any transgressions any sin is gone And we have to serve in newness of spirit, which means we need to be renewed to be renewed is To be brought up to date as far as your knowledge your acknowledgement of your stand before God in Christ that you are accepted in the beloved You are his You're forgiven. You have the right and the access and the privilege Because of redemption To come forward boldly and receive from him And this is how we're supposed to live and also how we're supposed to serve Always, you know, someone cannot serve if they're under law They become ministers of law and kill others That all they can produce is debts and a sense of debt But a proper New Testament minister a minister of reconciliation Is someone who knows how to be renewed? To serve in newness of spirit now the oldness of the letter now the oldness of the letter He speaks of in 2nd Corinthians when he says the letter kills But the spirit gives life and again, he's talking about the law. Let's look at that real quick He says Okay For you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ Minister by us written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God Not in tablets of stone, but in flesh and tablets of the heart and such trust we have towards God Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as of ourselves for our sufficiency is of God Who has made us able ministers of the New Testament not of the letter? but of the spirit For the letter kills and the spirit gives life And This is many says for the if the administration of death Written and engraved in stones That's the law right Ten Commandments was glorious So that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses For the glory of his countenance for his face was shining and that glory was to be done away How shall not the ministration of the Spirit Be more glorious For if the ministration of condemnation is glorious much more does the ministry of righteousness exceed in glory Now he's talking about the letter versus the spirit the spirit that gives life Romans 8 says it this way if Christ is in you though the body is dead because of sin The spirit is life because of righteousness And what he's been talking about since Romans 5 or Romans 3 really but Romans 5 he started talking about life That grace reigns through righteousness onto eternal life to cause you to reign in life and the way it does it is to Crucified you with Christ Take all the demands off you take all the condemnation off you blot out all the accusations against you Condemn, you know because he paid the price right he condemns sin in his flesh So there's not another judgment hanging over your head for sins and then That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father now you Should walk in newness of life by what the spirit that dwells in you and In Romans 8 Talking about the same thing He says if the spirit or if the if the box if Christ is in you, sorry, I'm gonna bail. I'm out of shape I gotta get back in shape If Christ is in you Though the body is dead because of sin the spirit Is life because of righteousness and if the spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you He who raised Christ from the dead Will also give life To your mortal body through his spirit that dwells in you. This is the same thing Okay Newness of life is the glory of the Father raising Christ up That same glory Giving life to you because of righteousness So this is the ministry of righteousness and of the spirit which gives life and it's contrasted to the letter which kills Which is the law? You see how consistent this is. This is not something we're making up Even John said the law came through Moses but grace and reality comes through Jesus Christ And this is the person that God has raised from the dead Who now gives himself to us in the spirit as a flow a river of living water? proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb and God who sits on that throne says behold I make all things new This is newness of the spirit and newness of life The spirit of life the ministry of righteousness and it's much more glorious Than the law the law came with glory Sinai there was the glorious appearing of God that's called the theophany, but it was a glory unto death 3,000 people died Moses said I exceeding fear and quake They were terrified and they couldn't stand the voice of the one who spoke told him to stop speaking They didn't want to hear God's voice anymore but we Have a new speaking in the spirit Which he'll tell us in Romans 8 is the spirit of sonship In which we cry Abba Father The spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God and heirs Heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ this speaking of God with our spirit About our sonship and our acceptance in Christ because of righteousness is the present speaking of God And it is the source of newness of life, and it's the way he raises us up It's the way we walk in the spirit This all comes down to the speaking of God And it's a ministry. It's called the New Testament ministry of the spirit and life Which comes from the righteousness that's in Christ which blotted out our sins and qualified us for life Life is not just living forever Life is Christ himself This is what the free gracers don't understand They think that there's a difference between living today and living forever and they say Paul teaches justification so that you live forever as a free gift, but James teaches justification by works In order to have life today and life in their view is not Christ as your life Raising you up to walk in newness of life. It's being Preserved from not being destroyed and judged and under the wrath of God for your sins Which they still say is still hanging over the Christian like a cloud He still is angry. He still has wrath Sorry, I was just writing about that in the James book today how the free graces are using James to produce a justification by works unto what they call temporal salvation Which is not salvation in life what we're talking about but a law-bound cursing and blessing based on your performance as a debtor to the law It's disgusting But the reason they can do that is because they don't know what eternal life is They think eternal life means. Oh, yeah, I've got that. I'm going to heaven when I die No, eternal life is God raising me up today in To stand before him confidently on the basis of his presence speaking in Christ as the spirit of the Son in me crying Abba Father and bearing witness to Who I am in him before the angels and before the law so that he declares Me without spot declares me absolved of all guilt free from all debt and declares me blessed it all comes from his speaking and we walk by faith and we're not we are to Today if you hear his voice right harden not your heart Don't be an unbelief but enter the rest today There's a rest for the people of Israel. There's a rest for the people of Israel Enter the rest today. There's a rest for the people of God that rest is our presentation of ourselves to him As a living sacrifice holy and acceptable That's our reasonable service of worship. That's how we walk in the spirit. That's how we serve him is Based on the finished work of Christ. We agree that I am dead and yet I'm alive and then we place ourselves before him and Like it said in Romans 6 we yield ourselves to righteousness We talked about that. How do we yield to righteousness? I know it's been a couple weeks It is to yield ourselves to the declaration of God's righteousness Manifested in Christ and where is that? It's in the gospel That's what he said in Romans Chapter 1 this is all unfolding from his statement in Romans 1. I'm not ashamed of the gospel Where is the power of God unto salvation? to those who believe For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faithful to faith as it is written Though the just shall live by faith What does it mean to live by faith? Well, Paul's giving us all the metaphysics that it is a matter of yielding ourselves to Christ based on his presence speaking in the gospel Declaring his righteousness as it says in Romans 3 that he may be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus And that justification is not about my righteousness. It's about his it is putting on God's righteousness In on display in Christ and vindicating God that he wants to make me a son in an heir Even though I work not and only believe in him who justifies the ungodly My faith is counted to be as righteousness and that doesn't just give me Living forever and going to heaven when I die. He gives me God in Christ now as the Spirit To be newness of life and this is how I'm to live and how I'm to serve Never graduating from justification, but always standing in it Having peace with God through my Lord Jesus Christ. I've been justified Therefore having been justified by faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ Through whom we've received the atonement and by whom we have access Through faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God Where does all that come from? standing in grace knowing I have peace with God and Rejoicing the hope of the glory of God and having the love of God cheddar brought into my heart by the Holy Spirit That comes from his gospel which declares the Son as his righteousness and dealing with me and Blessing me and bringing me into the promise Bringing me into the experience of who he is and what he has and that becomes my life I'm not doing something other than resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ based on the declaration of The gospel which has now been installed in me as something called the witness of the Spirit And John 5 1st John 5 talks about this that you know If we receive the testimony of God to test our men the testimony of God is greater This is the testimony that he has testified concerning his son And he says whoever believes the testimony has the testimony in himself Because it is the Spirit that testifies And this is how we know we have eternal life. This is how we have confidence before God This is how we assure our hearts, this is how we're perfected in the love of God and have boldness before him according to 1st John That's why he says we speak these things to you But we saw the Word of Life We beheld him We our hands have handled him our eyes have seen him and he became flesh And this is the eternal life that was manifested to us, which we now declare to you So that you may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ And we write these things to you that your joy may be full and that Why is our joyful? Because we're rejoicing the hope of the glory of God and we know that that hope does not disappoint We've seen he's faithful. We believe his testimony and Yeah, we agree with it, but we grow in the knowledge of it, we can't agree with what we don't know and Unfortunately in This so-called grace community there's such a superficial knowledge of justification where it secures that wolves are easily able to take advantage of Saints and Tell them. Oh, yeah, you're justified You're going to heaven when you die and make a big show that they're the defenders of free grace and And even for pretend to be, you know arguing against Calvinists and arguing for grace And everybody thinks grace means I'm going to heaven when I die But then they introduce another kind of justification from James by works in the principle of law with judgments and wrath blessings and cursings Based on a performance and call it justification before men yet. They say it's just by it before men not before God Before we know it they're talking about temporal salvation God's punishments on you if you don't qualify for his smile by your works How is that not? Justification before God they're lying. These are deceiving wolves and unfortunately most of the so-called Evangelists who have channels and have made themselves a reputation for being the champions of grace This is exactly what they're doing they are pretending to contend for grace to lure people with a superficial knowledge of Justification into their trap and they plan on beating them later with the law using James to And it's every bit as devastating as Calvinism or any of the other things But everybody defends them and says no They're the evangelist. Who are you to say? well This James books gonna tear it open Because from their own writings will show you what they really believe and You know the GES all of the big Evangelical channels that you probably associate with in this community as being the grace evangelists are Heavily influenced and adhere closely to the GES doctrine, which is nothing but a bait-and-switch To bring grace believers under law call themselves free grace while Pretending to be the champions of grace and the authority on the subject Then calling those who believe in the true grace of Christ like what we're talking about hypergrace and calling us Anti-nobody and looking for a license to sin And maybe not even saved And maybe not even saved Okay, these are they and yet they are now perceived as the authority of grace So if they say that they're the one who taught me grace, they're probably right You know Dave Benjamin He's hyper grace. No, I'm not hyper grace. I'm not for you. I do consider myself free grace These guys have hijacked the term But they're teaching something other and it is not Pauline and you need to know what yours in Christ and you need to be thoroughly familiar with Paul's doctrine In order to be armed and equipped so that these people don't come and steal your crown Anyway, there's a tangent. Sorry, that's what my mind is on right now, but this is Real clear in the scripture that Paul contrasts all the way through all of his epistles Law and grace and there there can be no mixture It's not it's not grace to begin the Christian life and law to finish it The law is administration of condemnation and death It's the letter that kills and we're not to serve in the oldness of the letter But in the newness of the spirit and the newness of the spirit is based on the ministry of righteousness Which is not a declaration of your righteousness with declaration of God's righteousness Declaration of Christ as the manifestation of God's righteousness in forgiving our sins and justifying us Which positions us in Christ as heirs and gives us the spirit as the blessing of Abraham Baptizes us into Christ so that we've put them on and now we are Abraham see the heirs according the promise Not because of something in ourselves because our union with Christ who's the seed to whom all the promises are made it's his inheritance and he shares it freely with us and the spirit is here to bear witness and Tell us and and to search out the depths, you know second Corinthians 3 our first Corinthians 3 says we've received Not the spirit of the world That we may know the things that are freely given to us by God things which I have not seen Nor ear heard what has entered into the heart of men what God has repaired for those who love him but God has declared these things to us and given us the spirit that searches out the depths of God to reveal these things to us and Jesus said I'm sending you the spirit of truth. I have many things to say to you. You cannot receive them But when he comes He will testify of me. He won't speak of himself and all things that are mine He will declare to you and then he said all things that the father has are mine therefore I said He will take from me and declare to you The spirit is here to testify the riches of Christ that he has entered into as the heir Which become the content of the New Testament And the test New Testament is a minister has a ministry which declares through the gospel the righteousness of God to Make known to you. What is yours and through that speaking? Raise you up to walk in newness of life and to be Renewed in the spirit of your mind is to be saturated with the realities of what's yours in Christ and Presently possessing them with confidence to where your heart is full of Thanksgiving and joy Because of your knowledge of who Christ is and that is always present tense You don't get To say well, I already knew all that yesterday. I don't need it today Every day we need to be renewed To serve in newness of life newness of the spirit requires us to be renewed and By ourselves, we don't get renewed We stay in the old we just walk in the flesh so God gives us a high priest Christ himself who Intercedes for us to make sure that all things are working together for our good, right? even negative things and Yes He brings us into environments that challenge our self-sufficiency somebody on my wall and said I've seen it all I See that Christ is everything and that I'm nothing. It's all spirit and no flesh said no You say that now? but you're gonna need to be able to say it again tomorrow and Paul said in 2nd Corinthians We who live are always being delivered over to death for Jesus sake that the dying of Jesus May be managed in our body. We hope we care about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus So that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our body And he says he brings us into afflictions so that he as the father of mercies and the God of all comfort may comfort us and We partake of the comforts and then we comfort others with the comforts. We've received from God and that's our ministry You don't just by nature walk in newness of life And this is one of the reasons why we have trials and impossible situations and checkmates in our life To bring us into weakness So that the power of Christ and tabernacle over us and we can live not by our own sufficiency Not that we're sufficient To think anything is of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God Who raises this up and gives life to the dead and so like Romans 8 says Though if Christ is in you that the body is dead because of sin The spirit of life the spirit is life because of righteousness and if the spirit of him who raised Christ in the dead Dwells in you he also who gave Christ life from the dead raised him from the dead will also give life to your mortal body We're talking about newness of spirit. How are we renewed on the one hand? We need to have our mind In agreement with the truth. I died to the law I'm alive to God I've been joined to another to bear fruit to him and it's his life in me now Okay, that's one side of it but the other side of it is he needs to raise me up and guess what I won't think those things unless he does and my natural Tendency is to live in my own strength. I don't it's not a principle that you learn go Oh, I know might your flesh is never gonna say. Oh, I know I need to be renewed No, your flesh says I've got it Now that I know who Jesus is. I'll take it from here and I'll try to live this out as a principle And we try to live on yesterday's manna yesterday's knowledge And it doesn't work that way So he's always bringing us I'm in a season of pruning and discipline And definite trial where it's just like I'm ready to walk away from the whole thing all of it everything in my life So frustrated and yet I can't I'm checkmate. I don't have anywhere to go So at some point all my anger I don't let it go because I want the strength to hold it on hold on to it anymore And I just say Lord have mercy on me And he comes in to renew I Don't know how he does it. It's always a mystery There's no principle. I can teach you of how to walk in the spirit Really? I can tell you you have to have your mind renewed but I can also know that I'm speaking to someone Who can't choose by themselves typically to renew their mind. It's not just a matter of reading the Bible To be unveiled and behold Christ is Something completely of grace That he works by giving life to you even life to the dead and this is how we learn to live and serve and There are times when you're just down and you can't do anything about it But you've known from experience and from doctrine. He'll raise me up again And I've said that to a couple people recently He's my high priest. I know he'll raise me up again And he does I Started speaking this message. I'm like man this fountains drived Trickle of dirty water coming out, you know But as I start speaking I can sense him lifting me up out of it. I knew I had to I'm almost home. I'm gonna keep this one kind of short But this is what newness of life is news of life is not just a decision to be renewed. Although that's part of it And to acknowledge your stand in Christ based on his righteousness newness of life and newness of the Spirit is God himself in Christ visiting you and Without that there is no New Testament ministry And this is the blessing of the gospel. That's actually our right yet. We don't know how to enter into it Joshua whose name is Jesus Brought the children of Israel into the promised land But before he did he saw Jesus who came as an angel captain of the Lord host and said take off the Sandals of your feet the ground you stand on is holy He knew that was the captain of the Lord's host that was Christ himself and it was Christ who brought them into the good land They couldn't take the good land Which is their inheritance? Renewal the enjoyment the milk and the honey and all the things that were promised to them the the The old generation died out Who thought they could take it themselves and then found out that they weren't sufficient because there's Nephilim in the land Then they feared and the reason they feared Was because they had gotten under the impression that God was requiring them to take the land What they needed was Joshua Jesus To take the land and they had to wait for that old man to be the old generation to be worn out and die And there's a period of time For all of us again and again Where as Paul describes it in 2nd Corinthians 3 he consumes the outer man To renew the inner man, and that's what happened Israel passed over the Jordan, which is where John baptized And the Jordan rolled back to a city called Adam go look at it That represents the termination of the human race God's judgment our baptism On the flesh his judgment on the flesh the death of the old and they put 12 stones with the names of the tribes on the on the Dry-ground when the river parted then they passed over and when the water passed over Rolled back it covered those stones representing the old nation of Israel So that in type it was a new nation renewed Entering into the good land and they didn't take it by their own strength. They just shouted and the walls fell down That's how we this is newness of life that by the glory of the father and as the glory of the father raised Christ In the dead we walk in newness of life And we died to the law now the law Is likened to the wilderness in Hebrews the wilderness corresponds to the holy place Where the priests continually stood? To minister it's not in the holiest where God is it's where all the dead works are all the sacrifices and ordinances that they did which were a system of futility That they did because their conscience was not perfected and Hebrews says that as long as that stood It showed that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest and their conscience wasn't perfected and they weren't able to draw near Through the law you cannot draw near and that was given to show the futility of trying to take the inheritance the rest By your own efforts okay, so the inheritance being the good land was Preceded by the wilderness with Sinai and the law and the wandering around and the groaning and the murmuring and the complaining and the hostility and the carnal mind And the fear and the trembling and the unbelief that's law and The only way they could pass into the good land was through death You have to die to the law you had to die to the wilderness you had to die to what Sinai represented What Sinai represented the law couldn't just stay up on the mountain had to be put in the tabernacle with them with the propitiation In the ark which represents Christ as the manifestation of God's righteousness