Principle & The Principles of Grace

I've got a few questions to clean up from last week, and then we've got a lot to cover today. I handed out a paper last week, and maybe we handed them all out, I don't know. It was a six-page paper entitled The Fundamentals of Grace, written by Lewis Barry Chafer. And that's going to be the primary focus of what we're going to do today.

For those of you who are new to my class, the way that I operate the class is every week I give people questions for the following week, which Courtney's supposed to have for next week. And if the Lord would lead you, you'll spend a little time with them and look up the verses, answer the questions, that kind of thing. And then when we had to conduct the class, we conducted based off of the questions to get to the material that we're after. So as we move along, when I ask questions, I just don't pull them out of the air.

Curriculum, I don't know. For those of you who have not been here before, I don't think I've got any more from last week or this week. How many how many would need copies of the questions from that? We're going to go over this week and what we're going to end up doing the last two or three. What's that?

OK. Well, Courtney is going to copy some. OK, the name of the class is Grace. This is the fourth week we've been studying grace and we're going to try to do it in 14 weeks. I'm not sure we can. We were at the point where we have discussed things that last week we were winding down asking the question, does grace have the power to control us?

And we looked at Titus 2.12, and it instructs us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, that grace is the teacher that teaches us to live soberly, righteously, and godly. And where sin did abound, grace did much more abound.

And I've asked this next question several times in the first three weeks. and relating it to computers, computers always have a thing called an operating system, like Windows Vista, Windows XP, or if you have a Mac, it operates on a Mac system, or, what's the other one, Linux? It's the way that the computer functions. Well, in spiritual matters, there are two operating principles. One of them is law, the other one is grace.

And God now operates solely on the basis of grace and no other way. He does not function by any other means other than grace. And from a definition standpoint, we talked about grace being God's unlimited and unmerited blessings towards us based on the totally adequate work of Christ. So you cannot maneuver God, you cannot, and this we'll talk about in a few minutes, manipulate him by putting yourself under a law principle because he doesn't go there.

He's under grace all the time and he's always coming at us with blessings unlimitedly and it's our job to put ourselves under grace and stay there. Now the last couple of questions from last week, is it possible to grasp grace in salvation and not to grasp it in the Christian life? What do you think? I have one who says yes. How many think, yeah, that's probably possible, where you're saved by grace, you understand that, but you don't, you haven't quite got it in living a Christian life.

I would say this, and there's lots of information, a lot of stuff I've read lately about how polluted the gospel's gotten. I read an article this week from those people at Duluth Bible Chapel about the Free Grace Movement, which is a movement that was started 20-some years ago to combat the Lordship Salvation people who were adding things to salvation. And they catalogued themselves as the Free Grace Movement. Well, now that's evolved into, all you have to do is believe on Jesus to save you, period. Anything wrong with that?

No mention of the work of the cross. No mention of sin. No mention of the fact that he died. That they just believe that Jesus will save you. But no discussion, and there are guys and a name you'll recognize who's kind of the leading guy there is a guy named Zane Hodges. He's a free grace guy and he wrote a whole book and never mentioned the cross.

Not one time. But talked a lot about Jesus will save you. You see how subtle that is? So we are saved by grace and if you don't appreciate the fact that you're a sinner and that God in his infinite love towards us saves us by grace through faith and faith in what? The person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the attacks on salvation are everywhere and most of the time they'll come at this issue of somehow moving grace out of the way.

Either you don't need it, or if I ask you to come forward and make a commitment to Christ, is that salvation? How about receiving Jesus into your heart, is that salvation? What do you think? No, it's not. The gospel message is that Jesus died on the cross for your sin and He was buried and raised again according to the scripture.

Your belief in that fact, those facts and that person saves you. And you don't have to add anything to it. You don't have to add a thing. So if you don't start on that basis, it's difficult to grow, because you don't understand grace from the very beginning. But if you do start on that basis, it makes it a lot easier, although I must admit, the week after I was saved, or two weeks after I was saved, some guy came up and gave me a book and said, now that you're saved, here's what you do. And as I got into it, I thought, gee, this is like what I did in Catholicism. He's given me another set of rules. Same kind of dance. And I knew I was saved by grace alone. So I assumed that maybe I was supposed to live that way. One last thing.

What about the verses in the Bible that say, if you will obey me, then I will bless you? How's that square with grace? What about the verses in the Bible that say, in essence, if you will obey me, then I will bless you. How does that square with grace?

Yeah, because it depends on you for the blessing. So, that's right, grace isn't conditional. I don't know why I haven't gotten used to doing overheads, but I've talked about the grace circle before. Work with me. Here's a circle, and on the top of the circle is the head in God's grace, in parenthesis, His love for us. And that comes from 1 John 4, 2-9.

As you go around the circle, the next step is our love for Him. Why do I love Him? Why do I love God? Because He told me to? Why do I do it? That's automatic. So the essence is I love Him because He first loved me. Right? I'm responding to the fact that He first loved me. So I love God only because He first loved me. Now when you come down to the bottom of the circle, I obey Him. Why do I obey Him? Because I love Him. And why do I love Him? Because He first loved me. When you come around to this side of the circle, God rewards me. How do I get the reward? Because I obeyed Him. Why did I obey Him? Because I love Him. Why do I love Him? Because He first loved me.

The circle has to go complete all the way around. Then it's grace. You can't take a pie out of that and say, well, I have to love God, or I'm in it for the rewards, or I'm just staying right here that God loved me, although that's not too bad. Because as I know the love of God, I can't help but respond to it. You see that? So God's going to reward me because I've obeyed him. But what was the source of my responsive obedience? The fact that I love him. And I would not love him unless he loved me first. So it's interesting.

Most of the verses, or all of the verses you're going to find that have the contents, if you obey me then I will bless you, are Old Testament. But you will find all of these imperative commands in the New Testament, but they're all based on the fact that God already loved me. I live under grace that's already motivating me, and I'm being responsive to what He's already done. It isn't marching orders, you know. If you focus on the imperatives in the New Testament without understanding grace, you make a lost system out of it immediately, because your whole focus is to get someone, mainly God, to respond to your behavior.

And your behavior is actually a response to Him. The last one is God's reward. He rewards me because I obeyed Him. And I obey Him because I love Him. And I love Him because He first loved me. There are other motives. There's not to get into trouble. I'm going to be more pleasing if I do obey him. He told me to. I'm going to avoid a lot of punishment if I, you know, and that's kind of what we're going to cover with this, what we're going to do.

But the motivating factor in a Christian life is God's grace. And hopefully by the time we finish the class, all of us will recognize that the strongest motive for conduct is grace. That you can't wait or you can't help responding to God because His grace is so wonderful and so overpowering.

You see that? And it isn't anything because He told me to, it's because I can't resist the grace. Now, hopefully those of you who were here last week read that paper. By the way, Courtney, I'm never going to get through all this. My first question was, what's Lewis Barry Schaeffer's definition of grace? Anybody want to tackle that?

He says, the meaning of the word grace, as used in the New Testament, is not unlike the meaning as employed in common speech, but for one important exception. Namely, in the Bible, the word often represents that which is limitless, since it represents realities which are infinite and eternal. It is nothing less than the unlimited love of God expressing itself in a measureless grace. Grace means pure, un-recompensed kindness and favor. What's the word un-recompensed mean?

Boy, I sound really smart when I use a word like that. What does it mean? That's right, there's no payback. No payback. So when you hear that word, un-recompensed, it means no payback. So, why isn't grace withheld in the presence of human failure and sin? In other words, alright, you're a dirty dog, you're a sinner, and because you are, God's going to withhold His grace. Why isn't it withheld because of that? It's unmerited. But track what Chafer was saying in terms of why doesn't your sin or your failure cause God to be less gracious towards you?

That's right, because the sin issue was something that God already dealt with. So your sinfulness, great or small, is irrelevant in terms of the application of grace. Schaeffer says, having taken away the sin of the world, has by his cross forever disposed of the condemnation of sin.

He has by the cross created an entirely new relation between God and man. Consequently, men are now either accepting or rejecting Christ who has borne their sin. There's no middle ground. All questions of demerit have been banished. Thus God is righteously free to exercise grace in every case. Salvation is by grace alone. Alone. Because God has taken care of the sin issue.

So why isn't more grace administered to a greater sinner then and less grace to one who sins less? I know all of you have sort of functioned on that premise. Those of you that sit on this side who are the really good guys, they don't need as much grace as you over here. How come? Why cannot God propose to do less in grace for one who is sinful than He would have done for one who is less sinful? Why wouldn't He do it that way? Say that again?

Sin is equal. That's right. Sin is equally You know, we love this. You know, well, this is, you know, we all are on the stepladder and we recognize that there's just a few guys ahead of us. But boy, there's legions of people below us in terms of the evilness of sin. The problem with the crosses is that it leveled the ladder right to the ground. And sin is sin. What does sin mean, by the way? What's the definition of hamartia, which is a Greek word for sin? What's it mean? It means to fall short of the mark. What's the mark?

It's the very righteousness of God himself. Now, grace is never exercised by God in making up what may be lacking in the life or the character of the sinner. So he's not making up the difference. In such a case, much sinfulness would call for much grace, and little sinfulness would call for little grace. The sin question has been set aside forever, and equal exercise of grace is extended to all who believe. You know why it's equal? because you get the full on all the time.

It's never measured. If it's unlimited, then how do you measure it? You can't. It never falls short of being the measure of the saving grace of God. Thus, you cannot increase grace at any time. Now, that's a shock to you, I know, but it's just... God's expression of infinite love couldn't be diminished, nor can it be increased, because it's infinite. then why does the thought of repaying God for His grace utterly out of harmony with grace?

Why is that thought doesn't fit? It just doesn't fit. So, here's that word again, un-recompensed as to obligations which are past, are those taken care of? How about un-recompensed as to obligations which are present right now? How about your requirements in the future? All of that handled?

So grace has to remain unaltered in its generosity and benefit. Are you getting the picture now that grace doesn't have a whole lot to do with your behavior? Whether you're good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, it doesn't affect grace at all, because grace is something that the giver does, and he does it based on his set of principles, his rules.

So, if it's unlimited and unmerited, then you cannot alter it up or down. You cannot repay God for what He's doing or has done or will do for you in grace. It's impossible. How could you ever measure up? How emphatically this is true of the grace of God towards sinners, yet how often this aspect of divine salvation is perverted. Infinite and eternal transformations are wrought by the power of God when He exercises His grace. He is therefore glorified and sinners are saved. God will never ever be paid back for the grace He extends. Never. Why not? Because he's a giver, kind of the way he is.

And not only that, when it comes to sin, the sin issue has been resolved by the Lord Jesus Christ. So what did that do? What did that allow God to do in His grace? It allowed Him to come forward in grace way beyond what was required by sin. So there's never going to be a time that you'd ever even think about repaying God for what He's done.

Because the minute you start thinking about that, the grace that he's extending to you is already way beyond that. You see that? That's why we've talked about before, the best thing you can do with grace is just pick it up and use it. Take it. Recognizing that you're never in a position to ever pay back, you just want to take it. And that's what God intends us to do. So if we can't pay him back, then what's the motive for serving him? to give Him glory.

So, repaying God, any attempt to compensate God for His gift is an act that's utterly out of harmony with the revealed truth of grace and exhibits such a lack of appreciation of His loving bounty that it cannot be other than distressing to the giver. Does that make sense to you? That if I were able to extend this kind of grace to everybody in this room, and one of you tried to pay me back for it, it would be really distressing to me.

Do you see that? Because if God extends His grace to us, which is way over the top, way more than we understand or deserve or ever need, the paltry attempt to try to show Him payback would be an insult to Him. You see that? I love it. Yeah, he didn't realize that not being able to walk was the grace of God. Yeah. Yeah, sure is.

Well, when when Lisa Strong called yesterday morning to say that Bob went home, what a gift. Bob Strong went home yesterday morning. What a gift. I mean, I've been thinking all day yesterday. I kept thinking there's just it can't what he did yesterday morning at six o'clock. All day yesterday was the thing that he's desired the whole time I've known him. And I knew him 30 years. But I can't even begin to grasp what he's doing right now.

He's in the fullness of the glory of God and totally fitted out to receive it all. Isn't that neat? So what a blessing. Oh, every moment. And I'm laughing because he knew He said, you know, a month ago, he said, I never was any good for this world anyway. I said, I agree with you. You weren't.

So attempts to repay the gift serve to only frustrate His grace and to lower the marvelous kindness of God to a sordid level of barter and trade. How would you like to be in a situation where you're bartering and trading with God for His grace? Wouldn't be grace then, would it? Boy, that's awful, isn't it? What can I do about that? I could turn it off if they get mad. Is that better down there? So how faithfully we should serve him, but never to repay him.

Service is the Christian's means of expressing his love and devotion to God. As God has expressed his love to those whom he saves by the gracious things he has done, Christian service for God should be equally gracious So it therefore becomes those who have received his gifts in grace to be jealous for the purity of their motives and service for him unwittingly. It's interesting. If grace is an operating system like we've discussed, and you begin to understand what God's role and part in it is, and then you sort of get into the stream, then these thoughts about repaying him and all these other things begin to go away and you start to go with the flow of grace, and you live in it, and incredibly cool things happen, all based on God's grace.

Say that louder, I can't hear you. The person who works, Are they living under grace? They're not. So when you work, what do you accumulate? You put someone else in debt, right? So then salvation, if you're working for salvation, what you're really trying to do is put God in a debtor situation so that he would owe you something. The problem with that is that isn't the way the system functions. The system functions by God administering his grace to those who will just receive it. If you work for it, you're out of the stream.

Does that make sense? And by the way, that principle holds true in Christian life, too. I know it sounds a little apathetic, but that's the way it works. If we are remembering something for each other, we naturally have a desire to repay each other, which doesn't feel good. Isn't that something? It's built into our human nature, which is from Adam, which is a law based system, sinful system, to always pay back.

If I invite you over for lunch, then in your mind you're thinking... So you see how difficult it is for God, through the work of the Spirit, to persuade a believer to live in this great system. Because he comes to the table with this payback mentality. I mean, I'm a businessman, and I'm a salesman, and I know in the sales game if I can do something for you, Then there's payback coming my way and I'm going to make sure you do what I want.

When's the last time one of you had a door-to-door person knocking on your door? If they're really good, what's the first thing they do? They give you something. They hand you a piece of paper. They hand you something. And the reason they do it is because now you owe them and they know that. So you're at least going to have to listen to what they have to say.

So you go from that scenario, or that principle, over to the grace principle, where there is no payback, and as a matter of fact, if there is even the thought of payback, it's outside the realm of grace. Isn't that something? It makes us feel like, well, boy, we're not appreciative.

I think we need to understand that the only thing we can ever bring is sin. The only thing we brought to salvation is sin. The only thing we can bring to God is sin or more debt. It's only God's grace that allows our serving Him to honor Him. If it wasn't for God's grace, whatever we did would still be counted as our right. So all we ever bring is sin. All we ever can bring is sin. And I would add to that, we bring sin and weakness. That's all we ever bring to the table. And that's why when we talked a couple of weeks ago that the man who recognizes he's sinful and weak is the man who understands he needs grace. It's the man who thinks he's got it together that isn't interested in grace. Yeah, that's a great word.

If you know you're weak, especially when it comes to this, as you study the Word of God, what do you find out? You begin to find out this incredible love God has for you and the fact that we as believers don't live on the base of promise, we live on the basis of fact, things that are already true of us. Our problem is that we are looking for ways to maybe become more worthy of some of those facts or or take them in or manipulate and use them rather than just receiving them.

In the last class, we were talking about the 34 positions and possessions that every believer has because they're saved. And then we found another list of 212. What's interesting about every one of those things, they're all based on grace. Not any of us did one thing to deserve any of those things. And you know what?

It's an insult to God that we don't live in it. that we just don't take them because they're ours. You think God really thinks you're holy if you say, oh, I'm not worthy and I'm not going there? No, I'm not worthy, but I am going there. I am going to take the grace because I need it.

So when it comes to salvation, why are all human works not taken into consideration? Why doesn't God even consider them? Grace is totally independent of human works. So if you begin your spiritual journey on the basis of grace and you realize that there is absolutely no degree of merit that you bring, you're well on the road to understanding what grace is. If you didn't get saved that way, that's okay. You got saved that way whether you knew it or not. God in his infinite wisdom will begin to teach you exactly why you need the grace and the grace is there and you will learn to take it.

My buddy Bob Strong right now in heaven, do you think he's sitting before the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ trying to figure out how to contribute? Write him a check when it's over? Pay him back? Show how much he appreciates it? He cannot help but show appreciation that's overwhelming. He can't help it. That's the way grace works.

So, why doesn't God deal with our sins on the basis of leniency or mercy or because He's big-hearted? Why doesn't He do it that way? It is probable that no point in the gospel of God's saving grace is so misunderstood and consequently so misstated as the revealed truth concerning the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the unsaved. It seems most difficult for the mind to grasp the fact that as revealed in God's word, God does not deal with any sin in mercy or leniency. He wasn't lenient with you. when it came to salvation. He never even showed mercy, did he? That's a tough one. Why wouldn't he do that?

The sinner is never forgiven because God is big-hearted enough to remit the penalty or to waive the righteous judgment. Any presentation of divine forgiveness which represents God as a directly exercising clemency towards a sinner is a fatal distraction from the meaning of the cross of Christ and is a disastrous misrepresentation of the truth contained in the gospel. The Lamb of God has already taken away the sins of the world. Did the Son coming in the eternal covenant to die on the cross for the sins of the world.

Was that a gracious transaction? How many think it might have been? How many think it isn't? Would either one of those, the father or the son exhibiting grace when they did that? Answer, no, they weren't. No, they weren't. This was a judicial act. carried out by the Son of God to pay the penalty for sin. There's no grace in that deal. It cost God the Father the most precious and prized thing that he had, and that was his Son. There's no grace in that. The Father and the Son in this transaction of the cross, that was not a gracious transaction. It was a judicial one. The fact that Christ as substitute has already borne the undiminished righteous judgment of God against sin is the sole ground upon which divine forgiveness is now exercised.

Some years ago I was invited to teach the ladies down in Parker and they were kind of a mixed group and so I asked them this question. And I'll tell you, I got over half of the audience raise their hands. I said, I want to show of hands, how many of you believe that God forgives you your sins quicker if you're really sorry for them than if you just confess them and you're not so sorry? Half the hands went up in the room. I said, God doesn't give a wit how sorry you are. He does not care. Because he doesn't forgive you based on that premise. He forgives you based on the sole premise that Christ paid the penalty for that sin.

Oh, there was. I mean, I had more fun with those ladies. They were they were wonderful. They're just terrific. It's important for us to understand as believers that God only forgives us. Keep hitting that with my glasses. God only forgives us based on the work of Christ alone. No other basis. And because the work was total and adequate, there's no sin that he can't forgive or that he hasn't already taken care of. OK, I'm going to hold on that, because that's the last two or three questions we're going through. On what basis does God forgive the non-believer? And on what basis does he restore the believer?

It's different. So when God forgives sins, he's acting as what? And I said, explain. If he's not acting big hearted, and he's not acting in the basis of, that's worse than that. If he's not acting big-hearted and he's not acting on the basis of leniency, then how is he acting? What role is he taking when he forgives sins? What's he acting as?

He's acting as a judge. A judge. And it's by his judicial decree, he sets aside forever all condemnation. Why? Why doesn't he condemn you? Yeah, because Christ was condemned, and you're a place. Such judicial forgiveness, which guarantees an unchangeable standing and position in sonship, should not be confused with a father's forgiveness towards his sinning child. those which is holy within the family relationship and which restores lost fellowship and joy to the child of God. So there's a difference between forgiving sins of the saved and forgiving sins of the lost because within the family of God it's a family issue and it's a restoration to fellowship. The judicial forgiveness, Jesus or God acting as judge makes the sin issue for the non-believer go away when he believes. Sin is not the issue anymore.

I'm sorry? That's exactly right. And so they've entered into Christ who has been condemned for them. The forgiveness of God towards sinners, therefore, is not an immediate act of grace. Do you believe that? When God... What if I get way over here? It's better. You hear what I just said? That the forgiveness of God, the sins of the non-believer, is not an immediate act of grace. You thought you were saved by grace, right? Through faith? But he forgave you your sins and it's not an immediate act of grace?

Why not? Explain to me why it wouldn't be. Because it took place at the cross. That's right. It's a judicial act. It's an act in a courtroom where, guess what? The sins of the world were put on Christ. And when that happened, God looked at Christ and said, you're guilty. I'm condemning you. You're going to die. And when he did die, God said, I'm totally satisfied about the sins of the whole world.

That's not a judicial act. I'm sorry, that's not a gracious act. So when he deals with the sins of the lost, he doesn't deal with it in grace. He extends his grace because of the judicial act. You see that? But the forgiveness of sins for the non-believer is not an immediate act of grace. Does that make sense? That's right. That's right.

Oh, by the way, if he decided not to extend to us his grace, would he have been fined for doing that? I mean, was he under an obligation, now that he was satisfied about sin, to extend it to us? No way. No way. But he could act graciously now because the sin issue was resolved judicially from his side of the ledger. Let's see.

So what's the threefold sentence that every unbeliever is under? Remember reading that part? It's towards the end. An unbeliever is a sinner by practice, an unbeliever is a sinner by nature, and he's a sinner by divine decree. The condemnation is pretty thorough. By practice, no problem.

By nature, yeah, we understand that. The sin nature, by the way, do you think that the sin nature can, you know, sins and then has these sort of periods where the sin nature doesn't sin and it sins some more and then it kind of goes into neutral and then it sins some more and then we shift into neutral? You think the sin nature functions like that? What do you think? No, it sins all the time. I mean, it's 24-7.

Sin nature only sins by practice. But the real condemning issue is that the unbeliever is a sinner by divine decree. That sort of puts the cap on the bottle. So what's the basis of forgiveness? for the unbeliever and what's the basis for the forgiveness of the believer? Wasn't that your question?

They're similar in that the divine dealings with sin are the unsaved in one peculiar, namely what God does in either case is done on the ground of the cross of Christ. So forgiveness is only based on the work of Christ. But by the cross, all sin, whether it be saint or sinner, has been righteously judged in the ransom price paid, which satisfies every demand of infinite holiness. By his death, Christ provided the sufficient ground for both the salvation of the unsaved and the restoration of the saved."

So that's where it comes from. It comes from the cross. This is the part of God's saving grace and is wrought in the soul condition. A non-believer, what's the soul condition that is placed on him? What's the soul condition? that he believes. That's it. He stays right where he is. Let's take a look at that for a minute. Are the sins of the non-believer paid for? Yeah. Are they still attached to Him? Yeah. Here's the problem, and one of the reasons why the identification class we went through is so important.

The human being who does not believe is attached and identified with the sin nature. Now, Christ died on the cross and paid the penalty for the sins. What did He do about the sin nature? He condemned the sin nature. Romans 8, 3 or 4, what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, what did he do? He condemned sin in the flesh.

So here's the problem. Every human being on this planet that's not saved is identified with that condemned flesh. So when they leave this planet, they're going to go where that flesh goes, which has already been condemned. The trial's over. Sin's paid for, but because you're attached to a condemned sin nature, you're going to suffer the consequences of that nature.

The believer, by being identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, when he rose, he is now identified with the resurrected, glorified Christ. Because of that, when his identity is no longer with the condemned Adam. He's got that nature in him, but he's not identified with him. So, not only are our sins forgiven, but his sin nature has been condemned and he's now positioned in Christ.

You see that? So, a non-believer, even though his sins are paid for, is going to be condemned because he's associated or united to that condemned sin nature. It is part of God's saving grace and is wrought in the soul condition that a non-believer become a believer while the regenerate are forgiven and cleansed on the soul condition that they do what?

1 John 1.9.

What's the key word? They confess. What's confession mean? It means to agree with. It means to say the same thing. So if God comes to you, you believer, and you're acting as though you're not a believer because you're sinning, and God, the Spirit convicts you, and you say the same thing.

What are you going to say? What I just talked about is what you're going to say. You're going to say, wait a minute, God, I agree with you. I've been crucified, buried, resurrected, and I'm now united to your Son. I've been acting as though I wasn't one of those creatures, and I have been sinning. I confess that you're right, I'm wrong. That's what confession means. I am who you say I am. I confess that I agree with you.

God does not expect you to come to Him with a long list of sins and go through every one and say you're sorry. He doesn't forgive you based on that. He forgives you solely on the basis that Christ paid the penalty for that sin, even the sin of the believer. And the problem with the believer is that when he sins, he's out of fellowship. Confession restores him to fellowship in the family. The lost are never saved by confessing and the saved are never restored by believing.

How do you like that? That's an interesting one. So it's highly inconsistent to plead with God to be gracious or to coax him to forgive you. Do you have to coax him to do that as a believer? No. Do you have to beg him? No. How about the non-believer? Does he need to beg God to forgive him? No way. He's already forgiven. What he has to do is receive what's already true.

1 John 1.9, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. My little children, these things I write to you that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation. The word propitiation means that the cross satisfied God. God is propitiated for our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. So what are the four vital elements that enter into divine forgiving and cleansing, which constitute the restoration of the sinning saint? One is confession. is the one and only condition on the human side. Absolute forgiveness and cleansing is promised on the divine side.

The Christian, while sinning, has been safe as the divine condemnation because of his advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and divine forgiveness and cleansing is exercised towards the believer in unchallenged faithfulness and justice because Christ is the propitiation for our sins.

So it's unchallenged. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your grace, and how we thank you particularly as you deal with our sins and the sins of the whole world, that you would have us in fellowship with your Son on a continuum. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's name. Amen.