Principle and Principles of Grace
Mike Doyle · Dec 30, 2007
Principles of Grace, No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926048551532

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, I thought about this actually a long time ago, but I thought one of the interesting things about this class on grace is we talked a lot about the principles position. We even have gone and talked some about application, which is difficult. What's great about this? This is a fairly subjective. I'll use the word review of kind of how grace works practically. So what I'm going to do is go through them, and I have questions on each of them.

The first one, which is under the heading of the nature of grace, really is Newell's definition of grace. And I think our definition is better than this one, but we'll set it. Grace is God acting freely according to his own nature as love. with no promises or obligations to fulfill, and acting, of course, righteously in view of the cross. I guess that's kind of another way of saying that grace is the unlimited, unmerited blessings from God based on the attitude of Christ. Anybody else have a definition of grace that maybe has formulated in your mind over the last eight or nine months? Well, not months, but more like years. It was there before I even came to Holly Hills. It's familiar across deep gods, riches that Christ expands.

That's good. So, grace is a very interesting thing because few of us have, including myself, have much of a handle on it. actually what it is, and that it's a thing which you can translate into blessings, and that it's totally opposite of how we function in the world system that we're in. It's totally opposite of that. So, the next one is, Grace therefore, is uncaused in the recipient, its cause lies wholly in the giver, God." You okay with that? It's tough for you Americans to assent to that kind of a statement.

Grace is also sovereign. Not having debts to pay or fulfilled conditions on man's part to wait for, it can act towards whom and how it pleases. It can and does often place the worst deservers in the highest favors. When I look at this and I want to know, tell me what sovereign means. What's that word mean? Self-ruling? Sovereign. Yeah, see it's a word Americans don't know. Again? What else? An entity unto itself.

If you lived in a European country in the last four or five hundred years and you had a king, he was known as the sovereign. In other words, whatever he said, he had absolute authority. So when you say that grace also is sovereign, it means that grace has absolute authority and it doesn't have any debts to pay to function. It acts when it wants, where it wants, because it has no conditions to be fulfilled. Isn't that interesting? Does that not go against the way we think? Aren't we conditional people? We live under a law system, if you obey me, then I will bless you, right? If you don't obey me, you get hammered.

But grace isn't like that, it's totally opposite of that. It functions on its own, it's sovereign, it can do what it wants, and it's interesting that it places the worst deservers in the highest favor. That's one of the reasons I like it so much. The worst deservers in the highest favor. Excuse me. Grace cannot act where there is either dessert or ability. Grace does not help. It's absolute. It does all.

So, what can one do to deserve grace? Nothing? Oh, come on. Put myself into the stream of grace? What do you think? I'd say to the Lord, your move. Your move? Can I think, gee, I've been living outside the realm of grace, things aren't going so well. I'm being punished for my sins. Everything I touch goes sour. I must not be living under God's grace, so I better figure out how to move in under that It's like moving in under the hot water in the shower. I need to move in under that grace. What can I do to do that? Come on chickens, answer me.

How are you not under grace? That's the point. Yeah, it's unmerited what you said. Unmerited? Unlimited? It's full on all the time. So what happens when you don't feel it? Or you don't think you're... Boy, none of my experiences have told me in the last three minutes that I'm living under grace. Something's wrong. Do we have to feel it? Do we have to feel it? No. Grace is not a feeling. What's that? Grace is not a feeling. That's right, it's not.

I think that's my point. So blessing, but don't you look at blessings like, gee, well I should know what those are. I should be able to experience the blessings. But you have to believe. I have to believe so then there is something I do. So if I believe then I can say to God I deserve the grace? No. Why is faith the thing that we do that fits under the heading of grace? Because he first loved us.

It's unmerited. Faith is unmerited. Your faith is a belief really in somebody else and what they've already done. Your faith doesn't activate anything. You know, Romans 4 says that it's by faith that it might be of grace. So faith fits under the heading or under the umbrella of grace perfectly. Perfectly. Because our faith, especially as Christians, how much of our faith is based on promise and how much of our faith is based on fact? 80-20? 50-50? What? 100%. You think our faith is based on 100% fact? 100%. How many think so? Two. Three. Four. Born to have. Yeah, it's based on fact.

Can you tell me one thing? Give me one blessing that God hasn't already blessed you with. Tell me one. What have you got as a believer in Christ that is coming in the future that you have not already been blessed with? My new body. It's a matter of hope. Give me another blessing that isn't mine. that I don't have. I'll state it another way. Tell me one thing that God says is true of you that isn't. You can't.

So it's primarily based on facts. If you're an Old Testament Jew, your faith was based on the future. It was what the Messiah was going to come and do. Our faith is based on what he's already done. already finished, except for a few things, like we'll be revealed in glory, we'll have new bodies, you know, that kind of thing. But, the Word of God tells us we're already positioned in Christ in the heavenlies, right?

Is that true or not? Absolutely it's true. It's of grace. So, what do you think he means that grace does not help? I mean, it's a very interesting statement. Grace cannot act where there's either desert or ability. OK. Grace does not help. It's absolute, it does all.

You mean I can't go to God and say help? If I go to God and say help, what am I really asking him to do? To help. To help me. Help me get someplace, do something. Is that appropriate under grace? That's right. God, see things my way and then you'll know I need help. But God wants you to pray. Uh-huh.

But can you find in the Word of God where it says, you know, you go to the throne of grace in a time of need? Is it a time of need that I'm doing pretty good but I need a little help? Well, you give him the power because you're not able to do his thing.

How about the fact that grace is absolute, it does all? It doesn't have any debts to fulfill. It doesn't have... Grace does not operate because you deserve it. Right? Grace doesn't operate because you have ability. Right? Or do you really think you do? You know, I've been at this Christian thing a couple of weeks and I've got some ability here. Grace may do all, but it's oftentimes unrecognized by us. That's true. I think we have to come to the realization that grace does everything. It does everything.

And we've got to, and we'll see in a minute, we've got to be brought off this mentality of working really hard to get God to bless us more, because we're more deserving. Yeah, that old adage, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Yeah. Or the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

So then why do we pray? Why do we pray? That's a great... I'm not saying that. Why do we pray? Well, I mean the Lord said, you know, with prayer and supplication make all your requests known unto Him. It's also some way of saying thank you. Thank you. It's also a way of acknowledging that there is an ongoing moment by moment relationship and that's worth maintaining. Sure. Prayer is the maintenance of a relationship between you and God.

If you look at the two prayers that are in Ephesians, what does Paul ask God to do for the Ephesians? What does he want God to do? Make them really good Christians, right? World famous Christians. All stars. No, what does he ask the Spirit of God to do for them? That the eyes of their understanding might be opened. that they might know what has been freely given to them of God. See that? Is that a good prayer? Absolutely.

What's our problem? Ignorance. We don't know. And even if we do know, we're not sure we buy it. God is not that gracious. Yeah, he is. Yeah, he is. There's two elements here. One, spiritual growth is actually learning my undeservedness and at the same time expecting God to continue to bless me more and more than he has done today.

Now that goes totally against the world system. Totally against it. Nobody, especially no man in this room that's ever worked for a living has ever worked under grace. We don't work under grace. We go out there and we work as hard as we can and we have incurred debts with other people and they owe us.

Grace is the total opposite of that. You cannot incur a debt where you can go to God and say, look, I did 700 spiritual push-ups this month, you owe me more grace. You can't because where sin did abound, grace super abounds. If you have a need, grace never just meets the need. It's way more than you need. See that? Because that's the nature of it. It's the way it functions. Questions? Haven't offended anybody yet? So grace doesn't help you, it does everything. Okay with that? Grace does everything.

It isn't the 10% you need to get to 100. There being no cause in the creature, why grace should be shown, the creature must be brought off from trying to give cause to God for God's grace. But you've got to ask yourself, does my obedience to God's word cause God to act graciously towards me?

I mean, we went through, in the identification class, we talked one day about the imperatives in the New Testament. You know, there's, I don't know, six, seven hundred of them. You know, the refrigerator list of all the commands in the New Testament that were to do. And we talked about, in this class, about the fact that there aren't enough rules in the New Testament to live under grace.

Not only do you have to know the rules, but you've got to know the principles under which to make decisions about what to do, right? So, I have to think, does my obedience to God's imperatives cause him to act graciously to me? What do you think? No, he's already acting graciously. Yeah, he's already acting graciously. Well, if I obey him, maybe he'll act more graciously. So, how do you balance obedience with grace? How do you balance those two? I don't have to obey, I'm just living under grace, so don't bug me about obeying. Well, we don't. We don't obey? No, we don't. Well, maybe you don't. We don't do the balancing. Yeah, we don't do a balancing act? We don't do the balancing.

How do you fit obedience and grace? If I tell John, you need to obey me, and if you don't, there's a consequence. If you do, there's a reward. Is that grace? That's law, right? So if he obeys me, oh gee, dad is going to be more gracious towards me. No he's not. But if I go to God and say, now look, I'm studying your imperatives here, your commands, and I'm going to do them. Because that's what you had me do. I want to be pleasing to you and therefore I recognize that There's a reward for doing that, and that's to live under your grace more. I'm going to experience your grace more if I obey. What do you think? No? Yes? How many of you think maybe? So then, because when you're saying that, that means you only get half a grace on Tuesday, and if you do such and such on Thursday, you may get more? Sure. So that's ridiculous, isn't it? Yeah, it is ridiculous.

See, by definition, if grace is unlimited, there's no limit to it because it's sovereign. That means there's no limit to the blessings. And if it's unmerited, which means it's all because of what God has designed that he's going to do, then is there anything I can contribute to grace?

By the way, I'm personally interested in this grace. I don't care about your grace, I'm interested in my grace. Is there anything I can do? So what do I do with the commands? You know, in a way, God can fulfill those commands through his grace. Okay. How about rather than grace and obedience, it's dependency and obedience. Dependency and obedience. Yeah. Remember the grace circle?

Why do you love God? Because he told you to. Why do you love him? Because he first loved us. Why do we respond to him? Because of his grace. Macaulay says grace is the greatest motivator there is. If you put yourself mentally in a position, and just think about this for a minute, if you're standing before a holy God, and he is by the way God, and his whole energies are directed towards blessing you unlimitedly and unmeritedly. And he says, here you are in this stream of blessing, like I described it, it's like standing on the launch pad of the shuttle when it goes off and when they light the tail of that sucker, you're right in the middle of all of that energy.

That's like living in grace. So what do you do? You say thank you, and you receive it, and you take it. You have no problems living under grace, wondering if you're going to obey or not. Because it's the nature of the new life that we receive by grace to be pleasing to the Father all the time. And the Lord Jesus never struggles with whether he's going to comply with what the Father would like to be done today. because they share the same nature, the same principles and the same value system operates in both of them.

Where are you? We are in Christ, same life, same principles, same life system. We live in grace. So if there's resistance on your part, where's it coming from? Me, the old man. If there's doing this on your chest because you were able to obey. Where's that coming from? Me. Same source. Old man. Okay. All right. Six.

The discovery by the creature that he is truly the object of divine grace works the utmost humility. For the receiver of grace is brought to know his own absolute unworthiness and his complete inability to attain worthiness, yet he finds himself blessed on another principle outside of himself. What's the other principle that he's blessed by outside of himself? It starts with a G. What is the principle he's blessed with outside of himself?

It's grace. It's the grace of God. Now, understand something here. Part of our spiritual growth from an experiential standpoint, we're growing and are to continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. We're not growing into grace. We're already in grace and we grow in it. You understand that? See the difference?

As we grow in grace, one of the experiences you're going to have is to be brought to know your absolute unworthiness. Now for those who love to talk about self-esteem, that's a tough one to handle. The unworthiness that what God is doing and has done, you are not worthy at all. There's nothing about us that's worthy. Nothing.

And that's what Paul said. You know, I screw up, I believe in God, and I make the same mistakes over and over again, and I do, but I'm so unworthy, and he did so many wonderful things, and yet you thought he was unworthy. So isn't that a wonderful thing? It is a wonderful thing. Because it takes the mentality of trying to earn grace away. If I'm unworthy, and I know I'm unworthy, yet I'm still blessed, it changes the way I look at things. So I just want you to understand that. And that's a difficult time as the Spirit of God puts in you.

Now that doesn't mean you're going to walk around under a cloud thinking, oh, I'm just like David Brainerd, you know, I'm so sinful. No, no. The issue is that the blessings and the grace of God is so overwhelming there's nothing you come to realize that I've ever done to deserve it. And not only that, everything I ever have done has been to not deserve it. Therefore, flesh has no place in the plan of God.

This is the great reason why grace is hated by the proud, natural-minded man. How many think that grace is hated? Put up your hands. Now, is it a little bit or a lot? A lot. Lewis Barry Chaffer said, Grace is the most hated thing there is. But for this very reason, the true believer rejoices, for he knows that in him, that is, in his flesh, is no good thing. And yet he finds God glad to bless him just as he is. But why is grace a hated thing? Why is grace outside of myself? Did everybody hear what Bruce said? The reason that grace is hated is because it puts the control outside of me.

See that? My sin nature functions on the basis of the hope for reward and the fear of punishment. And if I can do something that would cause God to take note of me or put him in a debt position, then I have created a reason for my old man's existence. Contrary to that, if God in his grace comes at me from the position of blessing me unlimitedly and unmeritedly, what reason is there for the existence of the old man?

None. The old man, the thing that he fights against the most is irrelevancy. How do you understand Romans 6? You'll never understand it, right? Because the old man is still fighting, still trying, still, you know what I'm saying, still trying to understand the Code of Crucifixion. I don't see how you can understand it.

I think they come together, don't you? In terms of our understanding. They come down the road like this. It's not just, I want to learn this one principle. Because the identification truths are interesting in the fact that the first time they're presented, that are presented on the basis of sin, the sin nature. But as you grow, you begin to realize that it's not the bad stuff I've done or attempted to do that really is the power of the old man. The power of the old man is to make me relevant. Which means, back in Genesis, there was this tree in the garden. It's called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right?

What happens is, I think, is when most people become believers, what they really think has happened is that they've left the evil branches and moved across to the good ones. So, a friend of Steve and mine used to say all the time, the problem with Christians is that they're too good. The issue is, there's another tree in the garden, and that other tree is called the tree of life. And that tree is the Lord Jesus Christ. So the issue is to come down the tree, walk down the garden, and get up in the tree of life, where the contrast between good and evil isn't there. This is the tree of grace.

So the identification truths really say, look, I, God, separated you from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And yeah, we both understand about your evil. But trust me, your goodness is as big a barrier as your evil is, even more. Because the old man will focus you on being good. And if he can do that, he's relevant. Yeah?

Well, does a good man need grace? A good man doesn't need... What does a good man need grace for? He doesn't need it. It just gets in the way. That's right. So, as Corning was saying, the identification truths are at the core of understanding grace. Because the grace is showered upon the new man in Christ, not Adam. Does that make sense? Well, I'm doing good. Nobody is challenging me. Okay, so that's the first section. The second section is the place of man under grace.

He's been accepted in Christ who is his standing. What does it mean that Christ is my standing? What does it mean that Christ is my standing? What does it mean to have a standing anyway? Who cares? It's the reason that I am, as Paul would say, to live as Christ. Every single creature, because you are a creature, have a relationship with the Creator. And that relationship is called standing. You either got one, a good one, or you don't have any at all. You and I as individuals have no standing before God in ourselves at all. We have none. All we have before God in ourselves is condemnation, period.

So if you lived under the law system 3,000 years ago and you were humping down the road doing the best you can, like the Apostle Paul says he was righteous under the law once, Where's his standing if he can keep the law? His standing is in himself. Does that make him acceptable before a holy God?

Absolutely not. Here's one of my favorite trick questions. And those of you who have heard it before don't get the answer. If the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, the only thing that happened on the cross, and we've learned that at least 34 things happened in our last class, but just one thing happened and this is the thing that happened. The Lord Jesus paid the penalty for my sins, all of them. That's the only thing that happened on the cross. Do I have a standing before God if that's true of me? How many think, yes, I probably do? Come on you cowards, get your hands up. How many think, no way, you have no standing at all? And how many aren't sure? You have no standing.

Because you're what we would call a forgiven sinner. The problem is you're still a sinner. And sinners don't have standing. That's why identification is so important. To be included in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. You're a new creature in Christ. He's your standing. You're in Him.

You see that? As a matter of fact, the Schofield Bible, when I first got my first Schofield Bible and we were studying it, in there Schofield says that Christians are forgiven sinners. And I remember Miles Stanford saying, no way. Your standing before Christ is not as a forgiven sinner. Your standing before Christ is in Christ. And everything that he is, is what you are before God. Stan? Let me ask you a question in conscription.

Is 1 John 1.6 before identification and 1.7 after identification? Let's read them, let's take a look at them.

First John 1.6 and 7. 1.6 says, If you say then we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

That's basically your translation. These are verses that have, I would say, conditions of fellowship. Are you with me on that? I don't know if you've ever been here, Stan, when we've talked about position and condition. We have a position in Christ before the Father that's perfect, that can't be altered at all, because of our position of being united to Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. But we also have a condition, which is our daily walking around experience, which can be sinful, can be faithless, can be whatever. And what John is talking about here is our condition. He's not talking about our position, because our position can never be If I'm going to have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ on a conditional basis, I must walk in the light. How do I do that? By faith. Isn't that how it's done? By faith in what? In the facts of my position and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, if I do that, can I go to God and say, now you owe me fellowship?

The point is that what he's saying to me is, look, by grace I've already put you in this position and I desire for you to enjoy this position that I've already put you in, which is, as John describes, in the light. If you walk in the light, you will. Paul says in Galatians, walk in the spirit and you can't fulfill the lust of the flesh. Well, what's happening when you're walking in the spirit? What's really going on from back here? Are you obeying laws? What are you doing? What's that?

I'm walking by faith, I'm believing. What kind of an experience am I having? You're having a transformation. I'm having this incredible gracious ability to behold the glory of the Lord. Right? I have fellowship like John described. Because I'm walking in the Spirit. In other words, I'm walking by the Spirit enabling me to behold the glory of the Lord.

It isn't that I've cleaned up my act, took a shower, and confessed all my sins. That's not it. It's that I'm walking by the Spirit of God who's making Christ real to me. That's what it is. That's what fellowship is. See, Courtney, It's a difficult concept and it's really hard to grasp. It is hard to grasp. It's hard to grasp on a 24 hour basis. Yes it is.

So what I'm saying here, it almost sounds to me like John's kind of saying, is that if we have died with Christ and identified with Him, and we have done that, but we don't live that way, then we are not walking in the light as we should be walking in the light and thereby we do not have fellowship because we are not walking in that identification. No, that's good. That's really good because young believers can walk in the light through ignorance of identification or anything else. But as you grow spiritually and you begin to learn things, you begin to recognize that The more I understand of the word of God, the more I understand of the grace that he's already bestowed on me.

The fact that he would crucify me with his son is an astounding gracious fact. What's cool about it is that he did the right thing with you and me. He did not save our old man. He crucified him. That was the right thing to do because I have to learn experientially and practically, that there is no rescue from my old sin nature.

I have to learn that. He tells me about it, but I'm like, Stan, I can read it, but what do you mean? Hence, dependency on the Spirit to teach me. Dependency on, in Ephesians, Paul says that your eyes might be opened, that you might understand what's freely...

We don't even think early on that being identified with Christ at the Barren Resurrection is a blessing. But the Spirit comes along and slowly by grace begins to show you that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells an 80% bad guy. No, no good thing. So if I come to the realization that in me there is nothing good, what's the remedy for that? Crucifixion. That's the remedy. God is not in the fix-up business. He's in the replacement business. He took me out of Adam, my essential identity with Adam, and placed me in Christ. Now my whole identity as God sees me is in Christ alone.

How do I walk in that? One, I've got to know it. Two, I've got to believe. And three, it's the power of the Spirit that enables me. And if you're an adopted member of the family, you are part of that family. Yes, you are. What I didn't understand before today, so you're saying because of the condition, which is the old man, which continues to operate in us, that's what this passage in 170 means and why it's in the present tense. Because as long as you're walking in faith and identification and as a child of God, then the blood of the head of that man your condition or your sins.

That's exactly right. That's good. It's awesome. It is awesome. I never understood that. It's under the heading of grace. Yeah. I was just going to say, you know, that identification truth, it is an ongoing process though, isn't it? Because how many times during the day do you think, yeah, but, or, but I have this right, or, you know, there's constant, it just seems like it's a constant thing. I think there's a, as Hal Malloy used to say, a peeling away of the idiosyncrasies and the, what's the word I'm looking for, the depth of the old man that you didn't even know that existed. You had no idea that you were that bad of a dog. Yeah, or that good of a dog. You were still a dog. But that I am this new creature in Christ. So I think spiritual growth is a revelation of both. Christ begins to become the sole object of my desire, but at the same time, that's why I can learn my unworthiness yet expect to be blessed.

Part of my problem is I'm looking for that key fact, that key knowledge. Oh, then I got it. Thinking about it this morning, you have Sometimes we tend to think of this knowledge as steps, leading us higher and higher. But the more I think of it, you have grace, you have identification, you have all these truths, and they're kind of parallel tracks that are leading forward.

We've spent six months studying grace. And you can think of it as we're building higher, but I think we need to think of it as we're building it wider. It's not necessarily leading us one step closer, but we have to have all these facts concurrently. And even then, it's not going to come suddenly. We've got to study identification, we've got to study grace, and Christ, and our position. As we broaden our knowledge, then Christ can lead us forward. Then the Holy Spirit can lead us forward.

Well, and I think about what Jeremy's saying, but what Miles said, keep looking down, right? Yeah, Miles Stanford had a great statement. If you've ever been to our house, if you go upstairs and you come down from upstairs, there's this wall up here that only coming down the stairs you can see it. Donna put up there, keep looking down for your life is hidden with Christ and God. Don't look up, look down. Look from your position on the circumstances.

Yeah, because we live under grace, God is coming at us 100% to reveal Christ and all of his glory to us for the sole purpose of manifesting his glory through each one of us. How cool is that? Each one of us And the Lord Jesus in John 17, the class starts next week, when we get to 17, the Lord specifically prays to the Father. Father, that they may have the glory that you and I have. Not 15% of it, and we'll peel a little off for each guy, Norm gets a little more. No. The exact fullness of the glory of God manifested through every one of his sons, and we're all sons. And that's because I deserve it. That's right, you deserve it. John 17. Stan.

So in other words, it looks to me like Satan would love to keep us focused on our condition when God wants us to be focused on our position. That's exactly right. Satan would keep you focused on your condition in you. The work of the Spirit is to focus you on Christ. Right along with that, Boyd Newell says that Satan keeps Christians asking God for things he's already done. That's right.

It's unbelievable when you think about that. As you begin to fill up your basket with all these blessings that are already true of you and then you walk around these other believers and they're begging God to do something he's already done. Pull out the hymnal and start going through the hymnal. and look for things in there where people are singing to God to do all this stuff. Wait a minute, my Bible says it's already done. I thought I'd get through this.

The place of man under grace. He's not on probation. As to his life past, it does not exist before God. He died at the cross and Christ is his life. Number four, grace once bestowed is not withdrawn for God knew all of the human exigencies beforehand. His action was independent of them and not dependent on them at all. So grace can't be withdrawn no matter what you think. The failure of devotion does not cause the withdrawal of bestowed grace as it would under a law system. For example, the man in 1 Corinthians 5 and also in 1 Corinthians 11 who did not judge themselves and so were judged of the Lord that they might not be condemned with the world. You know, when we do the Lord's Table, we never get down to those verses, but they're very interesting.

Paul says that you should judge yourself, you should take assessment of whether you're walking in the Spirit or not. But what happens if you don't? The Word says that God will judge you so you're not condemned with the world. Cool. That God will judge you so that you're not condemned with the world. In other words, he will make it right. He'll take it upon himself for you to get it. Maybe put it that way. Like the Spirit of God in terms of reconciliation and forgiveness. If you're just hard-hearted, the Spirit says, ah gee, you know that Mike, I just can't deal with him. I'll go deal with somebody else who's a little more compliant. No way. No way. Like I'm a hurdle for him? Give me a break.

The proper attitude of a man under grace to believe and consent to be loved while unworthy is the great secret. And this is the one that we're going to talk about, put up for tomorrow night. To refuse to make resolutions and vows, for that is to trust in the flesh. Okay, no vows tomorrow. None. To expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more the lack of worth.

See, that's what I meant when this thing gets pretty subjective. To testify of God's goodness at all times, and to be certain of God's favor. a future favor, yet to be ever more tender in conscience towards him. Isn't that interesting? To rely on God's chastening hand as a mark of his kindness. What's the word chastening mean? Discipline. Child training. So you rely on God's child training as a mark of his kindness. I've been trying to convince John of that forever.

A man under grace, if like Paul, has no burdens regarding himself, but many about others. This is a very interesting statement because as we grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we begin to discover this incredible grace we live under. And the more you understand the grace you live under, then what are you worried about yourself for? Do you understand the logic there? If I begin to enter into the fullness of the grace that God has me under, then I'm not worried about where I'm going, what I'm doing, and what God's doing.

I'm free to be serving others. It makes me happy to serve. It makes me happy to do the will of the Lord Jesus, which is to serve. That's what He does. To hope to be better is to fail to see yourself in Christ only. And this is the one I love the most. To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself. Isn't that something? To be discouraged is unbelief as to God's purpose and plan of blessing for you. To be proud is to be blind for we have no standing before God in ourselves.

The lack of divine blessing, therefore, comes from unbelief and not from failure of devotion. Real devotion to God arises not from man's will to show it, but from the discovery that blessing has been received from God while we were yet unworthy and undevoted. To preach devotion first and blessing second is to reverse God's order and to preach law not grace. The law made man's blessing depend on devotion. Grace confers undeserved, unconditional blessing. Our devotion may follow, but does not always do so in proper measure.

So hang on to those things and refer to them. Dear Father, how we thank you for the grace that we live under. And if we would ask for anything that we would continue to grow in that grace so that we might understand more and more the free gift that your son is to us. Thank you, we pray in his precious name. Amen.