You In Christ and Christ In You

We are on Lesson 17 and it is over the reading material, The Fundamentals of Grace by Lewis Barry Chafer. the first chapter of his book, Grace. So this is just an excerpt out of it. It's the first introductory chapter and as you, I was talking to Steve about this last week, as you go through it, There's lots of information in here and it takes you a while to pick it up and understand it. I don't think it's one of these little light readings that you just kind of blaze through it and get done in a very short period of time. I found myself re-reading, re-reading, re-reading.

And he's got a lot of subtle points to it, but it is a great book on grace. And this Fundamentals is just the intro and kind of lays out the fundamentals of grace. So I encourage you, if you haven't done so, please read it. And if you can, the book on grace is a good book to have in the library, not just to be a library stuffer. but something that you actually read.

I got to confess, somebody came into my office and looked at it and I got racks and racks of books. I thought, how many of those have I actually read? Shamefully, I say not many, but I also have a lot of really the flip side of what, you know, it's kind of the contrarian view of the scripture, I think, and some of the ones that are very law-based and a lot of things. But this is a good book to actually read.

So, you know, I also have gone through, today, I was thinking about this. I read, I don't know if you have The Hungry Heart. The Hungry Heart's a great thing just to start the day off with. And, you know, today's one, I was thinking it has with identification and And they had a great one on here.

It's eternally nigh is the topic, but the one from us, which I think from the identification, and this goes in with 2 Peter 3, 18, grow in the grace and knowledge, grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is in today's reading. This is from J.B. Stoney.

Two things mark spiritual growth. One is a deeper sense of the sinful old nature That's the beginning of our identification. The other is a greater longing after the Lord Jesus Christ. Growing the knowledge, the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's really what we're here about. Knowing about the old sinful man and what Romans tells us about our co-crucifixion and our identification with Christ. But then, now, we're understanding grace and what that means. So, anyway, a lot of good things to, again, in the grace book, if you can get a chance to get that and look it over.

But also, if you don't have that, really look over this, and hopefully you did before we start today's lesson, so you can answer these questions. Number one, what is, question one of lesson 17, what is Louis Barry Chafer's definition of grace? There's a definition of grace that's right at the beginning of this paper, and then towards the end, I think question 10 or 11, there's one at the back end of the paper where he has the definition of it. So what is the first definition of grace that Schaefer gives?

Nobody read the paper. Let's see. Good. Good, good, good. Yes. It's easy for him to say, right? Grace means pure, un-recompensed kindness and favor. He also has a section in there where he says, The meaning of the word grace, as used in the New Testament, is not unlike its 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 measureless grace.

So, again, this is Chafer, we'll get into and we've talked about him many times. What's his name? Macaulay. Macaulay's definition. Unmerited and unlimited blessings from God based on the finished work of Christ. So, similar things in the unlimited nature of it.

And so I actually looked at Webster's definition of grace. Anybody do that? It's kind of interesting. You know what the first definition in Webster's dictionary is? Unmerited help given to people by God. Not bad. I was kind of reading it and I was like, are you kidding me? No, this was a college edition within 10 years. Actually, Webster, at the beginning, he was a believer and has a lot of Christian definitions in there, but this one still remains. This is a late edition, so I think it's a college edition or something like that. Nah, nah. Then also, well it said unmerited help given to people by God as in overcoming temptation. So they kind of put a little qualifier on that.

Then second is freedom from sin through divine grace, a virtue coming from God, a short prayer at a meal, A temporary respite, as from payment of a debt. Approval, acceptance, as in his good graces. Charm, or attractiveness, or beauty. So I kind of started out high and then kind of went down as far as the definition of grace as we see it. But basically his definition at the beginning of this paper is grace means pure, unrecompensed, kindness, and favor. Does that sound reasonable? Yeah, I think that's good.

All right, why isn't grace withheld in the presence of human failure and sin? Question number two. What does it mean if there's human failure? Well, it's always, isn't it? It's always failure. Yeah, what does that mean? It means sinful. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think of how to rephrase this.

What was there if there was human failure? If God withholds it, then it's not grace. Yes, we're getting there. I'm getting up to what? If there was human failure, what was there? Success. Human success. We're getting close to what I see. If it's based on human action, then it's not grace. Actually, I'm parsing this question. See, I've got the answer right here. You should know this.

If there's human failure, there was human effort. So if there's failure, there had to be effort. So why isn't grace withheld in the presence of human failure or sin? So if it was based on human effort, That negates grace. Let's do the flip side. What does it mean if there is successful human behavior? Come on, this has got to be easy after the first one. If there is failure, there is human effort. If there is successful human behavior, there is what?

There we go, human effort. So, either in good or bad, whichever way you look at it, in failure and sin, or I'm just walking little old ladies across the street doing my great things, does he exhibit his grace based on what I do? No. Lewis Perry Chaffer says, in fact, grace cannot be exercised where the slightest degree of human merit is recognized.

On the other hand, the issue of human sin must be disposed of forever. Christ, the Lamb of God, 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 relationship between God and man. Consequently, men are now either accepting or rejecting Christ, who has borne their sins.

So, is there a middle ground? If I do just a little bit, if I'm really good, if I'm doing teaching, if I'm teaching God's Word, will He shine upon me? Just today I'm teaching. God was just going to shine. A little more grace is going to be pushed down the road towards me, right? For sure. Says the co-teacher. He wants it next week. He's just patting it for next week. No, there's no middle ground.

You can't, you know, this is those things where you can't mix a little work in with grace because it negates it. If there's any human effort, and that's why I looked at it both ways, in success or failure. So a lot of times in failure, you know, boy, you know, grace, you know, God just wasn't looking my way and he wasn't, you know, giving his grace.

Or I think the more dangerous one is, I'm doing good things. And I, you know, I confess, numerous years of my Christian life. I did know these truths and I am a type A'er. I go and slay the world. But a lot of that, I try and do it and I don't want to be recognized, but in the back of my head I know what it was. My motive was, I'm going to go out and do all these things for the Lord. I'm not going to be recognized by people, but God, are you happy with me?

And I know that. And I look back on my life and I look at these things and I thought, now, how dumb is that? If it's based on me, I'm in a world of hurt. If anything is based on me, if His grace is based on my performance, I've got a long road ahead of me. Once you realize what grace is, unmerited, man, does that free up your acceptance of grace. Your whole perspective changes.

You don't have to perform. You don't have to do these things. And we'll get to the question, so how do you motivate a believer? The thing we battle a lot of times in grace is, OK, I'm just going to sit back in my room and absorb grace. I'm not going to do anything. Is that what we do under grace? No. We'll find out we now operate from a different position. But the motive has changed. I mean, my motive for years, even though doing things, I know in the back of my mind it's because God would just smile on me a little bit more.

Same on my frustration with, and I think I've expressed this many times, I get so frustrated at the time about trying to memorize scripture. We had a friend, Sam, who just knew scripture, and I always thought, man, I've got to memorize scripture. I've got to memorize scripture. I've got to, and I try, and I try, and I try, and I try, and I never got anywhere.

Well, once I realized that I'm doing it for what purpose, you know, is to either impress people or to stuff my head so I can immediately spew forth a verse, Once I figured out, no, and I think I expressed this when Mike told me, one of the first times I heard Mike, it was like, no, you read the Bible to obtain a relationship.

Go there to know Christ. Read it with that perspective. You're trying to get to know somebody. Christ. Once I did that, I know more scripture now than I ever have, trying to memorize. Because I was going to memorize, because I think God would just smile on me, because I'd know those scriptures. I would know them, and he'd just be so happy with me. What a bad motive. And consequently, failure. Anyway, so 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. That's from Lewis Barry Chaffer's piece there. Alright, why isn't more grace administered to a greater sinner and less to one who sins less? Let me put it a different way. If this were true, what would God's grace be based on? Human effort. So, if I'm a big sinner, God's just going to shove a little bit more my way, right?

No. If I'm really good and I only sin on every hour, or every once a day, I only need a little bit of grace to cover that one up, right? No. There's nothing based on my performance. I think we beat ourselves up, and we get a little bit into this, You sin or you know you've done something stupid or whatever and you know it's not what you should be doing as a believer. And we beat ourselves up. Is God done with it? Is God done with that sin or whatever you did? Yeah. Why are you beating yourself up with? Why are you continually pounding yourself? Confess, that's not why the first John 1, 9. Confess, I'm not acting like I should be.

Okay, back into the communion and the fellowship. God's done with your sins. He was done with it on the cross. So grace is equal to everybody, including Osama Bin Laden? Yeah. No, I think that is great. I think that is great because we do this equivalency and I do this. Osama Bin Laden, whoever, mass murder, Hitler, whoever. You know, oh, what a nasty guy he is. You know, horrible.

All I have to do is look in the mirror and say thank you. Because other than, you know, God directing me, I'd be the same. And I've got to understand, I would be exactly the same. I am the same. You know, in my sinful nature, I'm the same as every one of those. There's no grading. He did 5,000 atrocities and I only did 2,000. So I'm a little bit better than him. I only did 4,000 sins and he did 10,000. So he's a little worse than I am now.

And the beauty of that is that it's available to everyone. Whether Osama Bin Laden, Praise be to God if somebody was able to show him the Lord Jesus and change. He would be no different than I. And I really believe that. I mean, when I look in the mirror, I think a lot of times you look at somebody and I don't know how they're going to, you know, they can't, they can't accept the Lord. I just know they can't.

Every time I do that, I look in the mirror and I say, how did this, how did this guy get there? You know, I'm sure there were a lot of people looking at me, crazy in high school, crazy going, you know, and going, whoo, this guy's never going to, you know, he's, you know, left field going to go crazy, you know. I'm sure people looked at me and said the same thing, you know, wow. And then, you know, the change, when, you know, slow process of the Lord working on me and, you know, come to know the Lord. You know, it's only by His grace extended to me that I'm a believer and part of His family.

So, I mean, you can't grade. And that's really the point of this, too, is that grace is not administered any differently based on our, you know, in salvation. On anything, we are all sinners. And there's no grading on that. You know, it's kind of the, you know, one sin, it's just the same as a thousand. He makes a key statement.

He says, grace is exercised in perfect independence of human sin, before you can grieve human sin. It almost gives you the impression that grace is already extended out there. And no matter what you're doing, you can't sin greater than what His grace has already extended to us. Yep, and I'll get to that. There's great scripture on that. That's exactly, you know, as we start looking into what grace is, it can't be outdone. It is unlimited. You know, we have a hard time, especially us engineers, you know, unlimited. What does unlimited mean?

Really big. What was it we were just talking about? Offset. We were talking about Chuck Norris, old Chuck Norris jokes. Chuck Norris is so good, he's counted to infinity twice. So anyway, that's here and there. Unlimited. We have a hard time understanding what unlimited, infinite, infinite blessings is. Because we always have to put a box on it, a bound. So we can't out-sin, we can't out-do grace. It's unlimited.

Getting back to why isn't grace administered to a greater sinner and less grace to one who sins less? Again, that means if it was based on us, then grace would be negated. If this premise were true, that would mean that grace would be parceled out as needed. In such a case, much sinfulness would call for much grace, when little sinfulness would call for little grace. So, is grace given out by God in amounts that just meets the believer's needs?

I think sometimes when we're talking about grace, we fail to mention that God is just. And I think when we're talking about grace, we're all one at the foot of the cross. All of us are equally the same in that we have this sinful nature. That's the grace you're basically talking about right now. Now we'll get to the difference. Well, the extent of grace in the offer of salvation. Dealing with the sin, we'll get to those in a couple of questions. What that means, and whether that was a gracious act. I'm talking about people like Bin Laden. We don't want to give the impression that he's going to be in heaven.

No. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. There's only one question to be, for every human here, every human on the planet, Do you believe in who Jesus Christ is and what he's done? That's the only question. That's it. That's the only question you have to, a yes or a no. And so, for him, it's the same for every one of us. Do you believe?

If he doesn't believe, he's not under this grace system. Once in that group we're studying, we just started in the book of Romans, and what's cool about the book of Romans is that the first three chapters put every human being in the position where they have no escape, no wiggle room, they have to depend on God's grace. They cannot, Jew, Gentile, doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you've done, by the time you get to three, middle of three, every human being stands at the foot of the cross needing grace. Nobody earned anything other than condemnation. Condemnation, right.

Getting back to Steve and answering this one. It's not given out just to meet your needs. You don't get just enough to get you over the hump. And this is Romans 5, 20 and 21. The law came in so that transgressions would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And that's superabound. That's more than you can imagine. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. That word is the superabound, which is not just enough. It's infinitely more than what you need.

So it's not just that when we have grace, it's just doled out in little pieces. It's again, going back to this unlimited, unlimited situation. So it's flooding at us. And again, we'll go back to these things that I kind of started my rabbit trail last week with, you know, what does it mean when we take grace? What does that mean?

And I thought I liked the answers. It's a whole, bevy of thoughts there. Peace and rest. It's life in Him. All this is what we say when we take grace. It's just knowing Him and believing that. And as you do that, you have peace, you have rest, you have direction, you have motivation, you have all these different things. And that's taking that grace and understanding who God is and who the Lord Jesus is. As you do that, you grow in the grace and knowledge of Him.

Again, I like the way 2 Peter 3.18 is that you combine the two. It's knowledge of Him and grace together. You grow in both of those together. And I think they're inextricable. You can't separate them. As you know Him, you're drawn into grace more. Because the focus is on Him, you're now free to receive this grace. All right. Four.

Why does the thought of repaying God for His grace utterly out of harmony with grace? Let me ask this question. Why do you pay someone? Because you owe them. You did work. You did something. If I work for somebody, they pay me for what I've done. So what is a gift? Grace is a gift, right? It's our gift and all we have to do is say thank you, as you always say. You're kidding. So a gift is what? A present. Something given without a debt or something owed. It's a free gift. It's something that you get that is not earned. Webster also, but something given is a gift. Is grace something earned or something given? Anybody? Earned? By this time you should not be saying earned. No, it's without merit.

If we look at Romans 5.15 and 16, 5.15 I believe.

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to the many. Again, it is a gift. The grace is a gift given to us. Now, what about grace itself? We can look at Romans 11, 6. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. It couldn't be more simple. So, any work If there's any work, you know, I asked about the middle ground. Is there a middle ground? Can you do a little work? Just a little. No. This one's very clear.

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. So, there's nothing you can do to earn grace, either by failure or by success, by what you try and do. I mean, it shouldn't be any clearer than that. If there's any work related, grace is negated. So stop trying to impress God. Stop trying to earn His favor so He'll bless you just a little bit more. If I just read the scripture all day today and I meditate and I pray, God will bless me tomorrow.

Right? Get to know Him. Understand who Christ is, and you'll rest and receive this grace. All these blessings. I like how Schaefer puts grace with respect to time. He says, grace being un-recompensed favor is necessarily un-recompensed. Now Nick got me going. Like father, like son. Unrecompensed as to obligations which are past. Unrecompensed as to obligations which are present. And unrecompensed as to obligations which are future.

Grace must always remain unadulterated in its generosity and benefit. How emphatically this is true of 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, and He is thereby glorified and sinners are saved.

And it goes on to say, rightfully, a benefit cannot be called a gift if it is paid for before, at the time, or after. I'm not going to do it today, but tomorrow I'm going to do it. Or yesterday, I wish I would have. Does Grace have a time frame on what you do? No. Grace is extended to us all the time. Yeah, it's like breathing. It's like breathing. If we receive it, you know, it's up to us to receive it. He's flooding it out. It's up to us to receive it and take it.

And that's by knowing who Christ is and believing, you know, all these blessings that he's given to us. I like what Donna said, one of my big ones, rest in peace. You know, when you begin this relationship, and you grow, as I read from The Hungry Heart this morning, knowing about the sinful nature, but then a longing for Christ. As you long for Christ, you want to know Him more and more, grace is just flooding upon you. And that's really the key, I think, for us to receive grace, is to know Him.

Alright, five. If we can't pay Him back, Then what is the motive for serving him? Because we love him. Perfect. So it's not because he's blessed us so much that we want to return the favor, right? It's not that way. It's because he blessed us, so I've got to repay him. I've got to repay him for all these blessings, right?

No. Okay, yeah. Is our response to be on the same level as the grace given? Uh-huh, I think we're getting up on that question. Ann, you? Well, it seems to me it should be that way. In other words, if God is demonstrating grace towards me as a sinner, or even as a believer, then my response should be in kind. But is it based on that? It's based on the grace given. But is that a requirement? No. That's the point I want to get. I think I'm getting to this a little later. Yes, as you receive that, but as you know Him, you will act graciously. What are we called to be conformed to? His image? We're to be conformed to Him as we know Him. What will we do? We will act graciously because He acted graciously. As we know Him, it's not...

I guess the point I want to make so people don't get confused is that that's not a requirement. If God acts graciously to me, I have to respond graciously. I don't believe that's true. We will, as we know Him and grow, that's why I say as we long for Him, we will do that because that's who we are in Christ. It's not a requirement. I guess that's the point I want to make is, and I get to this a little bit later, is that yes, we will act graciously if we're in Him walking by the Spirit because we're like Him. Because He acted graciously, we will act graciously. But it's not a requirement. If it is, then it's a merit and we negate grace.

I like what Chaffer said about that question. You lowered the kindness of God to the sordid level of barter and trade. I really like that because you want to make a deal with God. What's interesting about that mentality is that if you go at God with a barter and trade mentality, then you think you have some rights in the transaction.

Exactly. But this is common to us earthly. It's the way we think. The Constitution tells us that. Again, what we say, you come over to my house, what's the first thing you want to do? Oh, we'll invite you over on Wednesday next week. Whatever. We do this when we go out to lunch. You paid last time, didn't you?

And he did actually. So now he's now putting it on me. So he's not acting great. I keep trying to teach him that, but he doesn't do it. You know, I ask him, but he says, oh, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He never says no. He says just what he did. No, I paid last time. work of the Spirit. Yes, convicting us. I think from just myself wanting to respond, because there's all kinds of teaching out there, you know, that you couldn't improve yourself in response to what God's done.

So that's the human thing versus the Spirit, the Transformer, or my Spirit, and responding to what the grace is. See, that's the whole thing of what I believe, why we go through identification first. Because if you don't understand the old nature and the new creature in Christ, you're always struggling with the old nature. I think the identification, when we understand that we're co-crucified, we're dead unto sin, we don't have to respond, we have a new creature in Christ that we're living in Christ, that's where we want to be, walking by the Spirit.

Our motive, whenever I have this motive like, again, I'm doing something to be good, I need to do something, that's the old man. And the only thing he's got left is to try and make us do things, and put us back under the law, put us back under works.

And so, I'm getting to that where the motive, well, the motives, about why we... I think it's the next question here. Oh, no, it's this one, yeah. The motive. And I'll get to that in just a bit with some verses. Mike, did you have something? No, it's good. Gets you when you're joking. I just thought, how bad is that? I just realized how bad we are.

Two teachers teaching grace, and what do we do when we go out to lunch? You're paying next time. I think we need to learn what we're teaching here sometimes. First we have to look at how it came under grace through salvation. Salvation is always presented as a gift, an unrecompensed favor, a pure benefit from God.

If we look at Romans 6.23, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we look at also Ephesians 2.8 and 9, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." That's how we get the grace. It's a gift.

You can't pay them back. The motive for serving Chaffer also states this, in a like manner, no service is to be wrought and no offering is to be given with a view to repaying God for His gift. Remember, if it's a gift, it's not earned. You don't pay back. Any attempt to compensate God for His gift is an act so utterly out of harmony with the revealed truth and exhibits such a lack of appreciation of His loving bounty that it cannot be other than distressing to the giver.

You know, I thought about it. Wouldn't this be true if you've given a gift to someone and they just keep saying to you, but I'm going to pay you for it. I'll pay you for it. I got jammed. This is where teachers get it. We teach this, we have to. People come back to us. Somebody gave me a coffee roaster. and gave it to me, and I said, no, that's too much, you can't, no, no, you can't, that's too much.

And they said, Courtney, what do you do under grace? What is grace? But that's too much. No. And I kept thinking, here I am trying to tell the giver, no, that's too much, you paid too much, you can't do that, no. What do you think God does when we say to grace? No, God, that's just too much blessings. I'll read my Bible three times a day throughout the next week, just as a little back payment for what you've done. What do you think that says to God? You know, think when you say to somebody who gave you a gift, no, I got to pay you for it. No, that's too much. Really, really, that's too much. You can't, no, you can't spend that much on me. I'll work for you. Come over for dinner. Really, just come over for dinner because you gave me that.

What does that say to the person, the giver? It's saying to them that you gave me too much of a gift because I can't afford to pay you back. Pay you back? Our first thought is to pay back. So what do you think God does, like I said, when he's pouring out grace and we say, nope, I've got to do a little bit, sorry, that's just too good. That's too much because I can't pay that back. I can't pay that back. You're flooding me with these blessings. I've got a little too much. Man, my bank account, I can't pay that.

It's the insult that Christ's payment wasn't sufficient. Exactly. Although in salvation we think, oh yeah, it's fine. It's kind of funny. You understand that God paid for all the sins, and yes, okay, I understand that. But now, now that I'm a believer, boy, I've got to start working for it. You know, He was good enough to give me all this, pay for all my sins, but now, boy, I've got to get busy. I've got to work. How dumb is that? But it's so overwhelming, don't you see? It's so overwhelming, and we're really not worthy of it. I mean, it's mind-boggling when you think of it.

You know, we are worthy. We are in Him. We are offspring of Him. We are the same family as Christ. Is Christ worthy? Yes. We've got to get to this position where we understand who we're identified with. We are worthy. We are worthy in Him. And that's why, like I said, when we go through the identification, if we're in Him, are we paying back? Do we need to pay back? Do we need to do something? You know, it's not.

And that's the mindset that we have to get, that we are in Him now. And as you understand that, the blessings, we aren't going to have a payback mentality to God. We are humble, we're thankful, obviously thankful, for all that He's done. But now, you know, we don't have to do anything for these blessings that He's wanting to give to us.

Continually, all the time. Super abounding. More than I can even think of. And so, you know, like I said, this was a very good point, you know, do we insult God by saying, nope, I can't pay you back enough, so just slow those blessings down. You know, I only got enough to pay you back for this much, so slow that stuff down. No. And you're trying to repay him, you're cheapening the gift. Exactly, exactly. It's just so beyond.

But it's so against what the natural man wants to do. You know, it's like I said, when someone gave me the coffee roaster, my first reaction was, no! No! And fortunately, I said right away, what about Grace? Whack! You know, it's like, wow, that's plain unfair. That's just plain unfair. So you're not supposed to take what we teach and then put it back on. You can't do that kind of stuff.

Okay, now getting back to the question of motivation, or motive of our service to God. I think Chafer sums it up this way. All attempts to repay his His gifts, be they ever so sincere, serve only to frustrate His grace and to lower the marvelous kindness of God to the sordid level of barter and trade. How faithful 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." Pretty good, I thought. Service is the Christian's means of expressing his love and devotion to God. You love them, you love him, so you do what he He's told us to do in the Scripture.

As you mature in that and you have the focus, the object is Him, it's not a burden. It's not something I do because I have to. It's because I love Him. And it's not out of repayment. Yeah, it therefore becomes those who have received his gifts and grace to be jealous for the purity of their motives in service for him. That's kind of going back to what Steve said. You know, how do you know?

Well, one, I always use if it's a burden. I think if it's a burden, I kind of use that as somewhat of a litmus. You know, if it's a real burden, then am I doing it out of self? It shouldn't be a burden if you're doing it out of walking by the Spirit.

If you're in love for someone, it's not a burden to do something for them. You know, if you do something for your wife and you love her, it's not a burden to do it. You do it because you love her. Same with God. It's not a burden to do what He said in here, in the Scripture. It's not a burden because you love Him. He's the object of your love.

It's not work. All right. Six, when it comes to salvation, why are all human works not taken into consideration? We've kind of gone over this. Besides all the scripture which states that salvation is by grace and not of works, why do all human works have to be discarded? It's all human effort. It's human effort.

Chambers says, if God should discover the least degree of merit in the sinner, this in strict righteousness, he must recognize and duly acknowledge. By such a recognition of human merit, he would be discharging an obligation toward the sinner, and the discharge of that obligation toward the sinner would be the payment or recognition of a debt.

If you look at Romans 4.4, now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor or grace, but what is due. It is therefore imperative that every vestige of human merit shall be set aside completely if an opportunity is provided whereby pure grace may be exercised in the salvation of men. For the sole purpose that pure grace might be exercised toward men, the human family has been placed under divine judicial sentence of sin.

Again, once you're under sin, and we'll get to, unfortunately, I may not get to this, about what the cross did and removed the sin, all those sins, and then positionally where we are now. So, again, all human works that's on the sinful side, those have all been dealt with at the cross. We're now in Him. Now we're free to receive all this grace that he's bestowed upon us.

Why doesn't God deal with your sins on the basis of leniency or mercy or because he's big hearted? Couldn't he have just said, that's sin, forget it. Why? Justice. Right? Other? Righteousness. Holy. Can a holy and righteous God just look the other way when sin is involved? No. Can't do that.

Depending on how we want to do it, I'll try and blow through these last ones maybe beginning next week. Alright, we'll finish up at least a few of these next week. Because this will get into some of those key questions. Where are graces and salvation? And the Bin Laden question. Some of those things, I think, can be answered by some of these.

Alright, let's close. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time. Father, we just thank you again just as we Come to know your grace. We are so thankful. That's all we can do is be thankful. There's nothing that we can do. There's no merit. There's no work. There's no effort that we can do. that would warrant your grace being poured out upon us.

It is a gift. It is free. It is something that you want to bless us with in such a way that there is nothing that we do to earn it or merit that grace and those blessings that you bestow upon us. So Father, just let us come to know just who we are in Christ. that we are worthy through your son to receive the grace, the blessings that you want to bestow on us freely. And let us just realize what a wonderful position that is. So Father, we just thank you for this time in your word and we just commit the remainder of the day to you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.