You In Christ and Christ In You

OK, we had not quite finished up some of the questions on lesson 14. I hate to tell you this, but I forgot to bring my notes on the introduction to grace. I don't know why I thought they were in here. I don't know what I did with them. You didn't steal them. No, I was going to say if you send them to me, I can put them on here. But I don't know. I should have sent someone to wing it. But anyway.

And actually, where we're going today is leads into grace because we have spent three plus months talking about identification. Now we're going to talk about grace and try to define it and then apply it. And it'll take us a couple plus months to get through all of that. And we'll intersperse position and condition as we go along. We talked some last week about position and condition, which is a critical part of it. Actually, all of these things sort of meld together. But grace is the thing that we're really going to try to focus on and become as familiar with it as we can as we go forward. So to finish up the lesson from last week, we made it to question 11, right?

There are two operating systems man lives under. What are they? Every man on this earth either lives under one system or another. And the answer isn't Republican or Democrat. One's law and one's grace. The law system is. is that all men live under a law system. Do you agree with that? Well, maybe say it this way. All non-believers live under a law system. One of two. If they're Jews, they try to live under the Mosaic system, which they don't do very well in our contemporary society.

And number two, they live under a law system that they created for themselves. Right? Romans specifically talks about that in chapter two. that men make a law unto themselves and God will judge them based on the law that they've created for themselves. If you study philosophy, they go into moral law and all these other things and where they came from, etc. But man is basically a legal creature. And it's because he started that way. Adam in the garden was given the first law.

What was the first law? don't eat this fruit, right? And if you do, you will die. So when he ate it, what happened to him? He died spiritually and eventually died physically. But that's the law principle. The law principle is basically if you obey me, I will bless you. If you disobey me, I will curse you. There's no slack. You know, there's no 20 years of hard labor. You die.

And so man has been There are different stewardships or dispensations like Schofield talks about, but basically there's always been regulation systems that man lived under. He never was, I can do what I want, when I want, when I please. I mean, he thinks he can, but he's always under, if you're not under the law of, under the principle of law, then he certainly is under the principle of sin. Sin controls him.

It's not the other way around. Okay. Now only believers, are under the principle of grace. They're the only group of human beings on this planet that are under the principle of grace. Nobody else is. Even in the age of grace that we live under, people outside of Christ do not experience or live under the principle of grace. Only believers.

How about the Holy Spirit withholding Restraining evil? It's a gracious act on his part and for the benefit of man, but the principle that man lives under outside of Christ is not grace. And I think it's difficult to understand that until we spend some time really studying what grace is. Because we think, well, gee, if somebody was nice to me this afternoon, that was grace. No, it's not. They had an ulterior motive. They were nice to me for a reason and it wasn't grace. Right.

OK, so no matter how you slice it, if you're dealing with nonbelievers in your experience, they're under a law system. period and so and they are also under sin so scripture says in question 12 there are two things scripture tells us that we can be under what are they and Romans 3.9 says what then are they better than we talking about the Jews are they better than all the other people because Gentiles and Jews because they have a law system given to them by God Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jew and Gentile are all under sin.

Romans 6.14, sin will not be master over you for you are not under the law but under grace.

Do you see how law and sin go together? How do they go together? How do law and sin, they are brothers in crime, how do they go together? It points out what sin is. It does even more than that. It inflames your sin. It's the impetus for sin. Because of our sin nature, as soon as someone comes to us and says you can't or don't What happens? What's our reaction?

It's amazing with kids. My son, don't do that. Or you should be doing X. I think when they were small and they were marketing, he'd like to turn us. We were at my sister's house in front of the stove. Don't turn that stove on. I can't stop. We couldn't stop.

We have in our house. a water purification thing. And it's got little three nozzles on it about the height of a two-year-old. And I think Ivy now is of the perfect age. Every kid that's ever spent a Wednesday night at Bible study at our house discovers that thing. And we have to be very careful because when you hear that waterfall sound, you know you're in trouble.

And as soon as you say, don't go back over there with the water, get ready, because that's where we're going. You can see the little sin nature operating right there. Why are believers not under the law of sin and death? I guess what I'm asking is, from a biblical standpoint, why aren't believers under the law of sin and death? Because we're under grace. Let's look at Hebrews 7, verse 11 and 12. I'm going to read it and then maybe you... Hebrews 7, 11 and 12.

Now, if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood, for on the basis of it the people received the law, what further need was there of another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek and not be designated according to the order of Aaron.

Do you understand the question? Why would you need another priesthood if the first one worked? For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also. So what God did is he changed the priesthood. The priesthood no longer is the Levitical priesthood which was from the Mosaic Covenant to a new priesthood, the Order of Melchizedek. When you change the priesthood, you have to change the rules. And the rules got changed from a law system to a grace system. Melchizedek, do you remember when Abraham met Melchizedek in the Old Testament? What did Melchizedek do? What was the first thing he did?

He blessed him. That's grace. Now if you happen to run into Aaron, you'd have to bring your sacrifice and your 15 shekels. Because he was all about covering the sins committed under the law. But Melchizedek is a priest who does nothing but bless. That's what he does. And why is he able to bless? Because the consequences of sin have been resolved, and he's now not a priest of resolution, he's a priest who's trying to resolve things. He's now a priest, Christ is now a priest of resolve.

In Hebrews chapter 1, when he had made sufficient payment for our sins, what did he do? He sat down. Why did he sit down? job was done. Notice there aren't any chairs in the temple. Did you ever notice that? No chairs. Especially where the priests hung out. They never got to sit down. If the people would stop sinning, maybe they could have sat down, but they didn't.

So the sin issue wasn't resolved. So the law being changed, and this transposed into something in another place, we're not under a law system because something has changed. The priesthood has changed, and also the system under which man now can live has changed. The other verses that have to do with that are 2 Corinthians 3, 7-11, and it doesn't really get to the point until we get to 11, but I'll read it.

But if the ministry of death and letters engraved on stone came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently in the face of Moses because of the glory of his face fading as it was. How will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation was glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For if indeed what had glory in this case was no glory because of the glory that surpassed it, for if that which fades away was with glory much more that which remains is in glory.

Do you understand what he's saying or do I need to explain it? What's happening is that the law had a glory to it because it was actually the characteristics of God himself. This is how he functioned and lived. But he imposed it on man, as we know, to cause the sin nature to abound, primarily so that grace could superabound over it. But it faded away, because there was a new glory that came into existence, and that was the life of Christ in grace.

The law had been done away, or put away, which means to nullify, to make something inoperative. It doesn't mean that the law is gone. It's just as inoperative in terms of those who are under grace. We are not under law because the law has been, for us, done away with. Now, how did you get out from under the law system? How did you do it? What happened that you got free? How did you get free? You died.

The best example of that is, let's see, who's who's the baddest criminal around these days? Somebody condemned to death. Let's let's say Osama bin Laden. OK, let's say we capture him and we, you know, spend 15 years trying him because the liberals are in charge.

But he gets condemned to death, all the appeals are done, and he's marching down death row to get injected into his veins the fluid that's going to kill him. What if he falls over and has a heart attack before he gets to the room? Do they pick him up, drag him in there, stick him on the gurney and stick the thing in his arm and kill him again? No. Why not? He's already dead.

So why aren't you under a law system? You had a heart attack on the way to the gurney in the cross of Christ. You died. So the law has nothing to say to you anymore. The law searched you out, got a hold of you, found out that you were guilty, condemned you to death, and in the cross of Christ you died. The law has nothing to do with you anymore. You alright with that? Because that's the principle. OK.

Is either of these operating systems that man is under positional or conditional? And we talked last week about position and condition, the law of sin and death position or condition. Would you say that law is conditional because it demands performance? Could you say lost both position and it certainly is condition because it works itself out. How about the principle or the operating system of grace? It certainly is positional, right? Is it always conditional?

Answer no. And so, gee, if you say I live under a principle of grace, but for me to live under it depends, didn't I just make it legal? I'm picking on Gary over here. What does it depend on? It does depend on something. What does it depend on? Grace depends on God. No, because God is already showering his grace. That's right, it depends on whether you believe.

From memory now. Oh perfect, that's what I want. No, that was the other one. Can I have that? here by then. That's a great thing about having a co-teacher, a guy who comes prepared. OK. Where am I going? Oh, there we go. OK. Great. Thank you. OK, we're going to answer two questions in the next two months. First question is, what is grace? And the second lesson is based on a totally. OK. According to Chester McCall. And the second thing is, is how do we function under grace? OK, so.

Just, those of you who have not memorized Chester McCauley's definition, tell me what you think race is. What is it? We had a good brother, Sam Dahl, who would take the words, gods, which is at Christ's expense. It's interesting. It's just part of it, I think. What do you think race is? OK, OK. So far, what do you think?

I think it's all from God and it's nothing that we can do to serve and accept to believe in. OK, cool. We're the unmerited saver of God. Unmerited saver. OK, that's right. Unmerited saver. You know the definition for that. that a believer breathes. Oh wow. It's our life source. Yeah. Do you have a definition of grace? Okay. Before I knew this definition and understood all about it, grace to me was God's love expressed to us. But we had a little something to do with it because we had to behave ourselves. Yes we did. In order to get that grace.

So. Yeah. Yes. I'm really hung up back there on that going to the execution chamber. It's such a good illustration of being under the law. Yeah. You know, it was taking me straight there. Well, it's interesting that when you when you watch like the news channels and someone who they think really deserves to die, and they die before they can get their hands on them, they're really disappointed. Because they didn't effectuate the death. Somebody took it out of their hands. And functioning under law now as a Christian is like getting back on the gurney again and going down that hallway. That's exactly right. It's like trying to get a dead body to get up and live again. That's right. Under principles that it died unto. That's exactly right. So, the best definition of grace, I think, is the Macaulay definition which Gary gave. It's the unlimited and unmerited blessings from God, but it has a reason. It's based on the totally adequate work of Christ. It's based solely on what He did.

So, two key words, it's unlimited, and so I know we all sit in this room thinking, well, where's my Mercedes? you know, how come I'm not healthy, and how come, you know, I just don't live in this wonderful, pristine, aloof sort of loving environment, if it's unlimited, and I'm always running around trying to figure out how I can pull the lever or hit the key that's going to dispense more grace, you know, it's like the chicken hitting the thing to get more food. And it's unmerited, and the unmerited part is the toughest part.

Because we come to Christianity with a merit mentality, don't we? We may not be Jews, but we're Gentiles who have a merit system all our own. We have the little black box right back here, which is our little value system. And our value system accrues to our children and everybody around us.

And we get offended when somebody goes against our little value system. and we come to Christ in the grace system and there's absolutely nothing we can do that can contribute to, increase the flow of, or in any way deserve God's grace. That's hard. So, let's talk a little bit history. The Greeks used the word charis for grace. And originally it was a word that just meant anything that was pleasing, they would call grace. It could be charming, attractive, beautiful, anything like that, they used the word charisma, or charis, where we get our word charisma.

And when Paul said in Colossians 4.6, let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with grace, what did he mean? Let everything you say be seasoned with grace, or with grace seasoned with salt. What did he mean? It means that all of the speech of a believer should be charming.

You guys need to go to charm school. It should be charming, but it should be seasoned with salt. What does seasoned with salt mean? It gives it flavor. How did it give it flavor? What's a seasoned salt? phrase me. And by the way, believers who say, well gee, I'm not very good at speaking, it's interesting that Paul says that all of our speech for every believer should be charming, seasoned with salt. What does that mean, seasoned with salt? It means that don't cross me or I'll step on you?

Or whatever I am, I'm kind of a salty guy? A little irreverent, is that what that means? I think based on how much salt they put in our food today, it must be desirable. Desirable. What that season with salt means is that you know how to turn a phrase. That's what it means. It means that you have an ability to say something in a way that is pleasing.

So here I am as a believer, I don't study, I don't read, I'm kind of stupid. How do I turn a phrase charmingly? How do I learn that? How do I learn it? God says this is what grace is, that we should do it. How do I learn it? Yeah, I learn it through the Word of God. I learn very carefully, through the study of the Word of God, the principle of grace. And so when I find myself in a position where I'm to speak, I speak charmingly, and because I speak biblically, I can turn a phrase. Do you see that? And it isn't because you just happen to learn to be a good speaker, or the teleprompter is up and running. Sorry about that. So, a believer should always be charming, because it's the life.

Aristotle defined grace as something conferred freely, with no expectation of return, and finding its source in the bounty and free heartedness of the giver. Aristotle wasn't a born again Christian, neither was he a godly Jew. He was a worldly philosopher. I wish your dad was here, he's got the greatest definition of what a philosophy is.

It's something to do with a room full of blind people with the lights out trying to show each other where the door is. Here is Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, and he understands that the person who is the bestower of grace does it solely out of the goodness of their heart, with no expectation in return. He figured out that much of it.

Acts 7.10. And delivered him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh the king. Talking about our friend Joseph. I'm so used to the mouse that I don't use this anymore.

The Greeks also used the word charis in response to a favor done. Now this is kind of interesting. If I'm going to express grace towards you, I'm going to use the word charis. If you're going to respond to the grace, what word are you going to use? You're going to use the word thank you. What do you think the Greek word for thank you is? Charis. Same word. What's interesting about that, about charis, is that grace being an operating system, it's the same word used in the whole system.

And some people called Donna and I up on Friday night and invited us to go to dinner with them. And they paid. And it was kind of expensive. And if you ever want to have the challenge internally about what grace is, have somebody invite you out to dinner and they're paying. and you're reaching for your wallet and you're trying to do whatever you can do to make yourself look worthy of the grace they're giving you, rather than just saying, thank you.

I'll have you over next week. No, I won't. I'm just going to thank you for being so gracious to me. I'm going to take it. Boy, that doesn't fit with us, does it? Isn't that hard? I mean, there's nothing more difficult. Because we live and breathe and function in a lost system. It's tit for tat. Give and take. As a matter of fact, if I know that you're calling me to give me some grace, I may not answer the phone. Because I'm thinking I'm going to have to pay you back.

I just reprinted a series of books that Mount Stanford published called The Position Papers Anthology. It's a three volume set of 750 pages of position papers. Really wonderful stuff. And the last time I printed it, we copied it from and scanned it into a Microsoft Word document. And the guy that was supposed to proofread it for me didn't do a very good job. And so when we published it, it had all kinds of typo errors in it and stuff like that. But I'd already had the books published, printed and couldn't afford to do it again. So we sold them.

A brethren guy from Nova Scotia calls me about a year ago and he is hot. Do you read this? This is precious stuff. Go on and on and on. And I said I asked him, I said, would you edit it for me? He said, I'd be happy to. So he edited the whole three volumes, 750 pages and sent it to me so that when we reprinted it, I could, you know, correct most of the mistakes. Well, I felt like I owed him. So I sent him a free copy of the new book. He called me yesterday.

He couldn't have been nicer. Oh, thank you. And on and on he went. I'll never forget this guy. I can hardly wait to meet him in attorney. His name is John Beckham. He's just the neatest guy. But he's serious about the Word of God. He's really serious.

And I found another mistake. We'll have to fix it on the next one. But I felt obligated to send him something because he helped me. Rather than just, isn't it hard to learn how to receive grace? Because we feel like we're in a disadvantageous position if we receive grace. Don't you feel that way? Maybe some of you are more spiritual than me.

You think, well, no, I'll take it any way I can get it. As an example, This is the one church in Denver, probably, that we understand this the best. When's the last time we took up a collection around here? I think I was here. In the 80s, somewhere. And it was a grace principle that they learned because they were broke. We learned because we were broke. I guess it was a we then. But what I find interesting is that In churches when you take up the collection, really what you're doing is taking up the grace.

You see that? You're not paying for the sermon. We're not paying for the Sunday school. We're not paying for anything. We are so overwhelmed that we can't wait to respond and so the taking up of a collection is really the taking up of the grace. So in order to eliminate that, we got a grace box upstairs and you can put it in there if you want or if you don't want. The whole body of Christ here functions totally on God's grace alone, financially. No other way. It's amazing. From that day forward, I remember Hal and Wayne talking about the fact that there wasn't enough money to keep going for more than two months. I'm not sure that I was. They didn't know what to do. And those guys prayed about it.

And they decided they were never going to talk about money again. And they were going to create this little box that's up there. And they would never mention it except once a year at the annual meeting. And we've wiped out the annual meeting so you never have to hear about money again.

And you know what's interesting? God's grace has sustained this place from that day to this day for every need we've had. And if there's a little example that shows how grace works, that's how. Isn't that cool? I was up there teaching one Sunday when Hal was gone, I think it was Father's Day, or no, it was Easter. And there was a well-dressed gentleman in the audience that I'd never seen before, but he was doing his Easter obligation, right? He comes up to me afterwards, he says, where do I pay? I said, you don't pay. Well, you got it and you tried to give it to me. I said, no, no, no, it's all fake. Didn't understand grace.

So, one of the things we're going to talk about too is how grace motivates you. Usually, if I want to motivate somebody, How do I do it? If I want to motivate you to... Somehow, I can use fear. I can use intimidation. Guilt's a great one. Guilt's really a good one. Need. I can lay out the need. Say, boy, we have a tremendous need. Wouldn't you feel terrible if you didn't help contribute to the need? all of those kinds of things, right?

And those are, depending on how gifted the guy turning the screws are, will determine how much he can squeeze out of his audience, right? But it's always based on something that is either going to benefit you or it's going to keep you from being somehow harmed, right?

Isn't that religion today? That's religion. Sure. We've got to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and the pastor needs a new Mercedes. Whatever. We've got to go on a trip, or we're going to have a cruise, or we're going to have a whatever. But hopefully we're going to learn that grace is the greatest motivator there is. There's nothing stronger in a believer's life to motivate him or her than grace. So what does that tell us about grace? One, we've got to learn it.

How much grace did any of you understand before you were saved? Zero. Not a single, nothing. You knew nothing. People did you favors, but you didn't know about grace until you were saved. And how much have you learned about grace since you were saved?

Depending on the teacher you sit under. That's right. Really? That's right. You sit under, when it's legalistic, you're not going to learn grace. I agree. Do everybody agree with that? If you sit under a legalistic teacher, you will not learn grace. Do you agree that it's something that must be learned? you don't show up with the grace mentality, right?

So in my discussion on Friday night with the people we were having dinner with, we were talking about salvation and growth and that kind of thing. He said that people don't understand the cross. I said it's even worse than that. Because of the pollution of the gospel message today, so many people do get saved, but they don't get saved on a grace basis.

Because they're always asked to do something in addition to believing the gospel. Receiving Jesus into your heart. Making a commitment to Christ. Coming forward. Getting on your knees. Being sorry for your sins. Repenting. All of these things. The gospel is really simple. Jesus died on the cross for your sins. Yours. He was buried and He rose again. What do you do with that? You believe it. That's it. You're done. Put a period after that, nothing else. If you believe that, then you're saved by grace. Only. Somebody else is doing it all. You're not doing anything. Your faith didn't contribute to it at all. Nothing. What did your faith contribute to your salvation? Not a thing.

Was the act of God saving you, let me rephrase that, was the act of God to offer you salvation a gracious act on his part. I'm going to rephrase it because you gave me the wrong answer. What God did to extend salvation by grace to you was what he did a gracious act It was in return for Christ's death on the cross and for Christ paying the penalty. But it wasn't obligatory. See, what the father and the son did about the sin issue was not gracious. It was righteous. It was holy. And it cost them everything they had. There wasn't any grace in that deal.

When that transaction is finished, is God under an obligation? to say to Calvin, OK, Calvin, now I'm going to save you. Is he under an obligation to do that? No, he's not. He's satisfied about sin, isn't he? He could have said, I'm done. Have fun, fellas. See ya. You were a mistake anyway.

I'm not offering you my grace. Because if he's to offer grace, then it's got to be something he doesn't have to do. You understand that? God's grace functions based on no obligation on his part at all. He has no obligation to save us. None. He does it out of the goodness of his heart. So here comes towards us, in grace alone.

He says, okay, if you believe me, which is the one thing you can do that doesn't contribute to what I've done, I will save you for all eternity. So you get the grace, you get the salvation extended to you by grace and the response has to be by grace. Does that make sense to you? You started with the offering. The offer is gracious, the act is righteous and holy. The offer, yes. So when you said the offer, the offer is gracious, the act is righteous and holy.

Is that clear to everybody? Is that clear to you? Well, I was going to say this. You wonder sometimes when you think back to the beginning of creation, when God formed you, each one of us are the same. Yeah. Why then did he put him in a certain way? It seemed like he put him in things we were supposed to respond to, you know, life has formed us to be disciplined in the faith. And I don't mean by that that if you do one little thing, run a swatch, and you go straight to the hot place. I mean that these were responsibilities that he expected us to do, and that's why some of the things, they call them commandments sometimes even in the New Testament, things that God Isn't that interesting?

Because there definitely is a responsibility on man's side of the ledger, right? No question. You asked two or three questions there. One of the questions I'm not going to answer right now is the imperatives or the commands under grace. We'll talk about those in a whole class.

But God acts graciously towards us. Because He's God, He knows all things. He has all knowledge in play all the time. He knows that Roger was going to respond, but he knows that the guy sitting next to him isn't. Does that mean that he increases or decreases his grace towards Roger and less towards the guy next to him?

No. Because grace is of such a character, it has to line up with who God is, and so his grace comes at every human being. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe. Whosoever. So his grace and his salvation goes out to the entire human race.

Did he exercise special grace with me? For me to be responsive? What do you think? How about the guy sitting next to me who went, I don't want any of that. It's a crutch. You're weak. How about the guy next to me? Did God exercise less grace with him? I don't think he did. He would cease to be God if he did that. What's interesting is that if God knows who is going to believe in his son and who isn't, that would somehow influence what he does. I don't think it does because he's God. Now that leads to one other question.

Did God demonstrate grace in the Old Testament even though it wasn't a grace principle that everybody lived under? Did he demonstrate his grace all the time? The Jews would bring, what did they bring to the table? Sin. What did God bring to the table? Grace. In some cases, they were put out of the land, put into captivity. He did it on a grace basis. He always gave them a way back. They came with sin and condemnation. He came with a remedy. All the time. Didn't have to. Didn't have to. But he always did. So God did act graciously under the Old Testament system.

But there was an awful lot of consequence for the nation, especially the Jewish nation, when they didn't abide by the law. Not necessarily abiding by the law, but also believing in the law. If he said, I'm going to bring you back into the land, or go into the land and take it, it's yours.

And they didn't believe him for what he said. They had to find a way around it, or maybe he meant this, maybe he meant that, whatever, but wasn't that part of grace too, was believing him? Yeah, absolutely it was. And because they didn't believe him a lot of times? Well, seldom. Just like wandering 40 years in the desert, they didn't believe him. Yeah, that's the best example. Well, how gracious was God in those 40 years? What do you do with all of those people in 40 years running around in the desert?

All the unbelievers died. That's what happened. That's really what happened. So when you come back up to Kadesh-Birnia, who are the guys that are left? A whole new bunch of Jews, and still the same two guys that believed in the first place. Right? Joshua and Caleb. The point I want to make is this.

God acted graciously in the Old Testament, but it was not an operating system that he functioned under. In this day and time, right now, God only, only, only functions on a grace basis. only to the whole world. Even though they are not undergraced, he comes at them graciously. He does not deal, even in the world system, legally. And so when you hear Christians say, well, our country is being punished because we didn't obey God, that's ridiculous. He's not vindictive. He's not upset. He's none of those things. He has principles in play. And if you don't function by the principles, you suffer the consequences.

Abraham was a pretty good example of that. He went up there and poked the knife up for her to do the job for Isaac. That was a pretty good example. She drove that plane home pretty well. Yeah. Abraham was counted righteous because he believed God. That was the only reason. Did you say that the first act of grace was providing coverage for Adam and Eve? Yes. Absolutely. When Adam sinned, God provided skins to cover himself, which means he gave him a remedy to cover his sins.

Gracious act. But the system wasn't gracious. The system is gracious now. Let's close. Our dear Father, how we thank you and how we desire as we go forward to enter into a greater understanding of grace, how you function in grace, how we abide and live in grace, Father. So we're dependent on you for that. And we thank you, Father. We pray in your son's name. Amen.