‘Behold, the Lamb
of God’
ide
o amnos tou theou
College Study
54th teaching
11.11.2013
“God’s Grace,
part III: the Time/Grace Continuum”
Review:
Last week we looked at the “opposition”,
in a sense, of Grace: that is, the Law of God. What is the Law? What are some differences between the giving of the Law
and the coming of the Son of God, through whom we have access to grace? What are
some other names for the Law? What is in
the Law (Looking for three things)? Of the three, which one serves no further
purpose? What did the Law accomplish; what was its purpose? What does it mean
to say that the Law was a tutor or schoolmaster? What does it mean to suggest
that the schoolmaster has retired?
End
Review
So picking up from where we left off last week, we have an
important question left to address: What is the current place of the Law in the
Christian life?
To answer that, let’s begin by turning to the book of Galatians. This is a book which I think
readily addresses the place of the Law in the Christian life. In fact, Paul in
this book poses the question: “What purpose then does the Law serve?” So Galatians is going to serve as a
structure for our study tonight.
By the way, tonight’s study is entitled: “the Time/Grace
Continuum”.
As we live out this Christian life, as we pass through
time, we want to learn to continue on in grace. As we shall see, the Galatian
church missed this point. In fact, many Christians, if not careful, may miss
this point. The Law is not only insufficient for the Christian’s birth, but it
is insufficient for the Christian’s life. So too, Grace is not only sufficient
for the Christian’s birth, but it is also sufficient for the Christian’s life.
We are saved through grace and we must continue through grace.
In order to learn what that means, let’s turn to the book
of Galatians, chapter one. This will
also be our first of several points tonight:
1.
The Anti-gospel
Gal 1:1-4
Paul gives his famous greeting of grace and peace,
but notice that right from the very start of the book, the focus and the
context is upon the now of the Christian
life.
The apostle writes that our Lord gave Himself for our sins…
why? “…that He might deliver us from THIS
PRESENT evil age…”
Galatians is not
so much concerned with the future of the Christian and with heaven, although
these things are important. Rather, it is concerned with the present of the
Christian life, the current world that we live in and how we live in it now. The focus is living as a Christian in
this present evil age.
On a side note, there’s an often neglected aspect of
salvation right there. If you’ve put your trust in Jesus Christ, you will be
saved from the penalty of sin in the future; but salvation also includes being
saved from the power of sin. We’re saved from both the penalty of sin in Hell
and from the power of sin, the sway of sin over us now, currently, presently,
in this evil age.
The preacher Leonard Ravenhill once asked: “Are you saved?
What are you saved from? Hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved
from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved
from bad manners? Are you saved from rebellion against your parents? Come on,
what are you saved from?”
There is a very present and real aspect of salvation for the
now. Being saved isn’t just some
distant and future thing. Sin no longer has dominion, rulership, mastery over
the Christian (Romans 6:14). So, as
with grace, salvation is also concerned with the now of the Christian life, the present.
Back to our text: Galatians
1:5-6
So here is the background and basis for the book of Galatians. Paul writes to the churches
in the region of Galatia, because the Galatian churches had a problem: they
were turning away from the God who called them in grace to a different gospel. The
Galatians had been taught that they could receive salvation by faith through the
grace of God. They had been taught that salvation was a free gift and that the
favor of God and being made right with God, justified, were things they did not
earn but which God gave them freely. Paul had taught them that righteousness
came through accepting Jesus Christ by faith and receiving His righteousness,
not generating their own.
However, the Galatians were turning from that gospel, that
good news of a free gift, to a perversion, Paul calls it there in v.6. He says they were turning to a
different gospel, another gospel which was really no good news at all. Now what
was the nature of this perversion of the gospel? What were they turning to?
Look at Galatians
3:1-5
Paul later asks addresses the audience of his writings here
as “you who desire to be under the law.”
That was the problem. Clearly, the perversion of the Galatian churches was in
turning from the gospel of grace to a gospel under the law, which is really no
gospel, not good news at all. It is not good news to say “hey, Jesus saved you
in His grace so that you could live under this condemning structure of laws,
which by the way you can’t keep in the first place… isn’t that just great news?”
No, it ain’t!
And Paul confronted them with several questions:
Firstly, he asks:
“Who has bewitched you…?” The Greek
word used here for bewitched is the
word baskaino (bas-kah-ee-no). It means to “cast an evil spell, to wish injury
upon someone, to overpower, to fascinate, to appeal to someone’s vanity or
selfishness”. It was like someone had cast a spell over the Galatian churches,
wishing them harm enough to turn them from faith and grace to the works of the
Law and bondage to the Law all over again. This is an anti-gospel, turning the
Galatians away from grace to works, and upon inspection, you find that this is
no gospel at all.
Secondly, Paul
asks them “Did you receive the Spirit by
the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Simple question. Did you
receive the Holy Spirit at salvation, the indwelling Spirit of God, by faith or
by works? The Galatians had but to remember what Paul had preached to them and
their original salvation experience, when they received saving grace and the
Spirit by faith. None of them had earned the Spirit of God. No one of them had
worked for their salvation. It was a free gift given. Salvation was not a prize
to be earned, although they had begun to believe that it was to be worked for
to be kept.
Next question, a two-fold one: the apostle asks, thirdly, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made
perfect by the flesh?” Galatians, you did not work for your salvation’s beginning,
need you work for your salvation’s continuance? Having begun the Christian life
and having been saved through a free gift of grace, are you now living and
being sanctified by your own works? You began the Christian life through the
finished work of Christ, will you continue the Christian life through your own
unfinished works of your own flesh?
David Guzik writes in his commentary: “This lays out one of
the fundamental differences between the principle of law and the principle of
grace. Under law, we are blessed and grow spiritually by earning and deserving.
Under grace, we are blessed and grow spiritually by believing and receiving.
God deals with you under the covenant of grace; are you trying to deal with Him
on the principle of law? Do you believe God wants to bless you? Which is it: by
the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
“Are you so foolish? This is indeed foolishness. This
deception is cultivated by Satan to set our Christian life off-track. If he
cannot stop us from being saved by faith, then he will attempt to hinder our
blessing and growth and maturity by faith. And, when the works of the flesh are
substituted for faith, self-confidence and pride are the inevitable result.”
Spurgeon writes: “The reason of this contention lies in the
fact that man is not only poor, but proud; not only guilty, but conceited; so
that he will not humble himself to he saved upon terms of divine charity. He
will not consent to believe God; he prefers to believe in the proud falsehoods
of his own heart, which delude him into the flattering hope that he may merit
eternal life.”
Oh how easy it is to turn from grace and simple faith to
thinking we can begin to deserve and earn God’s blessings and somehow fuel our
own Christian walk. How like the little child who thinks they no longer need
their parents, who thinks they’re independent and strong, though it is their
parents who yet feed them, yet clothe them, yet care for them and yet hold
their hand as they cross the street.
The Galatians were being foolish, as if to say to God “thanks
for the help, but I got it from here.” No you don’t got it from here! Grace and
faith were essential for salvation at the beginning and grace and faith remain
essential for salvation all the way through life. We don’t come to God on the
basis of His grace and then turn from it to relate to Him through rules and
regulations and commandments, as if to earn His continued favor, blessings and salvation.
At least, we don’t need to do that. Sadly, I wonder how many Christians turn
from grace to works, from faith to rules, and from the free gift back to the
Law.
Pastor Chuck Smith wrote in his characteristically clear
and simple way: “The righteousness we have through Christ is complete; it
cannot be improved upon.”
Galatians itself
provides a clear example of this principle of grace in the life of the
believer.
Galatians 3:6-9
Abraham was a favorite example that Paul liked to use in
his writings. Abraham was widely known as the father of the Jewish faith, and
by faith the father of the Christian faith. Yet Abraham, the apostle points
out, was not such a good guy because of what he did but because he simply
believed. “Abraham believed God and it
was accounted to him righteousness.”
See, many would think that Abraham was righteous before God
because he obeyed God in circumcision or because he submitted to surrender his
beloved son on an altar to God or because of the many other things he did, but because of his faith.
So Abraham serves as an example for the believer that we
are in a right standing before God, righteous, because of faith, not because of
our own works.
*Last week we saw how Grace triumphs over the Law, how the Law
was ineffective to save. Let’s return to that thought and remind ourselves in
our second point:
2.
Grace Triumphs over the Law
There are at least three ways that the Law is ineffective,
not just for getting saved but for staying saved:
A. The Law made you want to sin
Remember what we read last week? Romans 7:7-11, “…I would not
have known sin except through the Law.” That’s the purpose of the Law to
point out sin and error. “For I would not
have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet’. But
sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil
desire, For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law,
but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment,
which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the
commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”
And we discussed how laws and rules stir something up in
our rebellious natures. You’re walking down the street and see a sign that says
“do not walk on the grass”, what’s the first thing that goes through your mind?
You think “oh, that grass is so colorful, so green, oh it looks so soft, oh I want
to walk all over it”.
Proverbs 9:17
says “Stolen water is sweet, and bread
eaten in secret is pleasant.” What makes it so? It’s the act of sinning,
the act of trespassing the rule: Thou shalt not steal. Stolen water is no more
delicious than regular water, but stealing gives it a kind of irresistible
flavor.
Thus we find that sin in ourselves rebels against the Law
and that in fact the Law makes us want to sin all the more. As Romans 8:3 says, the law was powerless
because it was weakened by our flesh.
B. Animal sacrifice couldn’t take
away sins
Again, we read last week in Hebrews 10:3-4, “But in those
sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that
the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.” No matter how perfect
the lamb, there needed to come the perfect Lamb of God, a Man to take the place
of mankind, in order to take away our sins.
The blood of the animal sacrifices only succeeded in
covering the sins of the people, it did not take it away and therefore, the
Law, which included the animal sacrifices, could not make you right before God,
could not justify you, could not erase your record of sins. It only reminded
you of them.
Truly do we say that God will never bring up your past sins
to you, because the blood of Christ has taken them away. That leads up to the
third way that the Law is ineffective:
C. The Law could not make you
right before God
You see this all over the New Testament and it is quite
clear from our position in the book of Galatians.
Look at Gal 2:15-20.
Paul writes, here and elsewhere, that the works of the law
justify no one. No matter how many rules you keep, you will never erase your
previous record of wrongdoing. If you rob a bank, no amount of community
service or moral living will ever change the fact that you robbed a bank. Yet
we discussed how we died with Christ, as it says in Gal 2:20, we were crucified
with him, satisfying the demands of the Law. Therefore, in Christ our sins are
removed, we are justified and we are made right before God as if we have never
sinned at all.
Notice the final verse of Galatians chapter two: “I do
not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law,
then Christ died in vain.”
If you can be made right with God through working for it,
then Christ’s death was worthless, since He came to die that we might be made
righteous through Him. Get that clearly: if you think that you can be righteous
by doing, then you’ve nullified the
death of Jesus Christ. If you think that moral living and law-keeping will get
you into heaven, then you have made Christ’s death out to be nothing at all.
Now don’t put the cart before the horse. Many do. Faith is
seen through and manifested through good deeds and good works. James writes “Faith without works is dead” (James
2:20), but so too, works without faith are dead.
It’s not that works and
faith save you and keep you saved, it’s that a faith which leads to works saves you. Of course we can never admit that
the Christian need not do good works. The Bible is rife with encouragements to
do so. But those works stem from saving faith, not the other way round: faith
does not stem from works, but works stem from faith.
So it is by faith through grace. Period.
3.
The Status of the Law
The Schoolmaster has retired that grace and faith may
triumph. What is the current status of the Law? This shall lead us into
answering the question of the Law’s place in the Christian life.
What is the current status of the Law?
A. We are dead to the Law
Right here, Galatians
2:19, “For I through the law died to
the law that I right live to God.”
Now check this out, look over at Romans 7:1-6.
This seems to suggest that before salvation, as
unregenerate sinners, we were married to the Law, in bondage to it. But just as
a woman is released from marriage to her husband if her husband dies, “till
death do us part”, so too we were crucified with Christ and identify with Him
in death and are now able to marry another, to experience this new relationship
with God. But contrariwise, the law did not die (as in the example of the
husband of the wife dying), but rather we died and were born again that we
might marry anew.
It’s an astonishing thought to think of the Law as being
our wedded husband prior to salvation, but that we died and are now the Bride
of Christ in the church.
So status #1: we are dead to the Law.
B. The Law is fulfilled in Christ
Quite profoundly, our Lord says in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets, I did not
come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and
earth pass away, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by
any means pass from the law until everything is accomplished.”
Simply, Jesus Christ did not come to destroy the Law. That
tells us it still has some place. Rather, Jesus fulfilled the prophecies
contained in the law. And what’s more, he summarized the law in summarized
commandments: love God and love your neighbor. “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:40).
So the love of Jesus Christ and the Christian’s duty and
responsibility to love God and fellow man are fulfillments of the law in a
present sense in the Christian’s life.
And what’s more, Jesus kept the law. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was tempted in every respect as we
are, yet He was without sin. II
Corinthians 5:21 says famously: “God
made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that in Him we might become the
righteousness of God.” Jesus fulfilled the Law by keeping it.
So status #2: the Law has already been fulfilled in Christ.
Given the status of the law then, we have our question at
hand:
4.
The Place of the Law
Do you need to keep the law for
salvation? No. We are dead to the law, freed from the law and Christ has
fulfilled the law. The law was insufficient to get you saved and it is
insufficient in keeping you saved. God has already made you righteous through
His Son.
The Law isn’t here to be a method through which we relate
to God or earn His favor or blessing. Do
you know what we might call trying to earn God’s favor through the Law?
Legalism.
Legalism isn’t just an over-emphasis on discipline and
conduct. Legalism isn’t just trying to make others live up to your own
standards. Though legalism includes these things, legalism stems from a heart
problem: believing in yourself that you’re better off with God because of the
works you do, that God loves you more than so and so because of what you do.
That’s legalism. And that is pride. And both concepts are rejected by the New
Testament.
Legalism is pride, and pride is the worship of yourself. As
we quoted Spurgeon earlier, we are guilty, but we are proud. We want to feel
like we’ve earned salvation and blessing. Legalism provides that. Strict
adherence to the Law allows that, this sense of accomplishment and pompous
religiosity.
But grace, on the other hand, allows no such thing. Grace
makes all men equal. Ephesians 2:8-9
says “For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works,
lest anyone should boast…” You can’t boast of grace. You can’t brag about
something you didn’t earn, but that someone gave to you freely. You can only be
thankful for it.
Grace blocks bragging.
Do not miss the life-changing words of Scripture “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17). We relate to God on the basis
of His grace, through a faith which produces works. Encourage each other to
stir up good works. Yes, do good deeds. But do not for a moment believe that
you’ve earned anything from God because of them. You do good because of what
God has done for you, not because you want to get God to do something for you.
God will not be obligated.
Christianity and the gospel are God’s method of saving you.
Legalistic religion is man’s method of trying to save himself. And let me tell
you, only one of the two actually works.
But let’s consider three places that the Law has in the
Christian life:
A. The Law provides structure
This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the
Veritas Evangelical Seminary Apologetics Conference down in Costa Mesa. One of
the speakers was an Oxford professor named Os Guinness. In discussing his topic
of preserving freedom, in the context of American freedom, he said something
along the lines of: “To sustain freedom, you need both the structure and the
spirit of freedom. You (Americans) have the structure of freedom in our
Constitution and Declaration. But we need the spirit of freedom too. Freedom is
protected by the law and the habits of the heart. Self-restraint is appropriate
to freedom.” Now that’s a rough paraphrase based on the notes I took.
But in thinking about it, it all suddenly clicked. In order
to be free Christians, free from slavery to law or to sin, we need both the
structure of freedom and the spirit of freedom. We need, the Spirit of God to
make us free by working in us and producing His fruit in us (Gal 5:22). But we also need a structure
of freedom, and that is clearly the law.
While the law doesn’t make you free, it provides a
structure to live the Christian life in. People worry about teaching on grace
and on Christian freedom so much that the church will think it has the liberty
to do all kinds of craziness and even sinfulness. Not so.
For though the Law is our retired schoolmaster, what we
learned of holiness through its teachings remains. We still know that lying is
wrong, though the Law no longer imprisons us. We still know that cheating is
wrong, though we are dead to the Law. Do you see? The Law provides a moral
structure for living.
That leads to our next point:
B. The Law can help discern God’s
will
One of the best ways to discover what the will of God is
comes from reading His Word, which includes even the Law. If you need to make a
decision you’re not sure about, run it past God’s word and God’s Law. If it
doesn’t mesh, don’t do it.
Now obviously this doesn’t work for every circumstance.
Prayer and the counsel of fellow Christians remain focused ways of learning God’s
will. But the point is: no decision or choice is right unless it matches up
against the clear teaching of God’s Word, including His moral Law.
As the psalmist sang: “Thy
word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105).
And thirdly, what is the place of the Law in the Christian
life?
C. The Law is on our hearts
The Law is placed in our hearts. What? Consider Hebrews 10:16, itself quoting the
prophet Jeremiah: “This is the covenant
that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws
into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them…”
Where is the Law today? It’s written not on cold stone
tablets which can be broken, but upon the tender flesh of our living hearts.
And that inner work within us, conforming us into the image of Christ, this
sanctification, is a work in which the Spirit of God writes the Law upon our
hearts and enables us to live by it, to produce the fruit of the Spirit: Love,
which is the sum total of all of the Law, as we’ve read.
*So, does the Law yet have a place in the Christian life? I
think so. And a rather important one. We are called to love one another and to
love God, that’s the Law. And the Spirit of God is working that in us to
produce love in us. The Law provides structure and guidance. Just as you can
remember what you’ve learned in elementary school, so too we can remember what
we learned from the law (just where sin lies) and thereby live this Christian
life.
You no longer need the schoolmaster. You don’t need the Law
for salvation. In fact it is insufficient and ineffective for salvation. But,
the just shall live by faith that works, faith that loves, faith that conforms
to the structure of the Law.
We don’t keep the Law to keep ourselves saved. But the
faith we live by will produce the good works provided by the structure of the
Law, naturally by His Spirit. Don’t get the cart before the horse: it’s the faith
that works which saves, not the works themselves.
Final point:
5.
An Abusive Relationship
Romans 6:1 poses the question: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in
sin that grace may abound?” Paul thinks logically. If, as he wrote in the
previous chapter, where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, then can we not
say that if we want more grace than we should sin more?
But grace is not a license to sin. Freedom’s greatest enemy
is freedom. But we are free not to abuse grace but rather we’re free to live
for God. If we continue in sin just because there’s always grace to fall back
upon, always the forgiveness of God to run to, then we’ve made out the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ to in fact be permission to sin all the more!
You were there at the cross. Though you didn’t live 2000
years ago when the event happened, you were there. You were represented in the
nails, in the scourging, in the crown of thorns upon His brow, in the bowing of
His sacred head in death. You were at the crucifixion because it was your sin that put Him there.
Now though the scorn of his enemies was your scorn, and
though the whips were your whips, and though the agony was your agony, and though
the spit in His face was from your mouth, let me ask you: would you spit in the
face of God again?
Would you now, having received all of the miracle of
salvation and seen all the love of the Savior, turn upon Him and scorn Him as
they did that black day 2000 years ago? To abuse His grace is to do just that.
To count His grace as a license to sin, to expect God to forgive you while you
feel free to do whatever and to live however you want is to put Jesus Christ in
a place of triviality and to treat His death as if it were meaningless to you
and worthless.
My friends, let us not be guilty of such a thing as
treating the cross as a common thing. Grace is not permission to live
selfishly. Grace is not permission to sin.
So then, what is the conclusion of the whole matter? We’ve
seen the purpose and the place of the Law, and we’ve seen that Grace triumphs.
It’s grace, grace, grace. This is how we got saved, this is how we stay saved:
by His grace.
Do not become like the Galatian churches, turning aside to
a perverted gospel which is no good news at all, but a legalistic,
self-centered way of relating to God. Gal
5:4 says powerfully: “You have become
estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen
from grace.” Do you want that to describe you? Do not fall from grace. Let
us who began by grace continue in grace.
Thus as the Apostle Peter wrote so many years ago, may this
be the function and mode of our lives, really all of the Christian life and how
to live it is summarized right here: II
Peter 3:18, “…grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and
forever. Amen.”
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