You In Christ and Christ In You

Okay, we are in lesson 18. We're talking about grace. I don't know. I've been reading in these things lately. I was reading something this morning I thought I'd share with you. See if I can say this right. I had never seen this perspective before, but here's I'm going to pick up in the middle of one of these, and it's written by C. H. McIntosh some time ago. Here's how it goes, maybe you can understand this.

The ark had borne Noah and his family safely over the waters of judgment. It had carried him from the old into the new world, where he now takes his place as a worshipper. And be it observed, it was unto the Lord he erected an altar. Superstition would have worshipped the Ark and as being the means of salvation.

It is ever the tendency of the heart to displace God by His ordinances. Understand what that means? That if God gives us the law, we displace God with the law. Now the Ark is a very marked and manifest ordinance, but Noah's faith passed beyond the Ark to God, the God of the Ark.

And hence when he stepped out of it, instead of casting back a lingering look at it, or regarding it as an object of worship or veneration, he built an altar to the Lord and worshipped him and the ark was never heard of again. An interesting perspective. And I think, I'll read a little more. This teaches us a very simple, but at the same time, a very seasonable lesson.

The moment the heart lets slip, The reality of the Father himself, there is no placing a limit on the declension. It is on the highway to the grossest forms of idolatry. In the judgment of superstition, the ordinance becomes everything and God is shut out. The name of God is only made use of to exalt the ordinance and give it a deep hold and influence over the heart and the mind.

I'll give you another example. Growing up in a Catholic church, there were sacraments, right? Baptism, Confirmation, Confession, and they held the place and not the Lord. It was the sacrament was everything. It wasn't the Lord. The law that we lived under was everything and not the Lord.

See the difference? It's very subtle. I thought I'd share that with you. Okay, we are between questions 7 and 8, right? I think we finished 7, didn't we? Okay, so 8 is, by what means can we appropriate grace? And I gave you Romans 4.16, Galatians 5. Why is it of faith? Somebody read, and actually that would be good, somebody read Romans 4, 16. Do you understand the premise that Paul is laying out there? That it is of faith that it might be of grace. Nobody gets it? What does that phrase mean? Does it mean because it is non-meritorious? That's exactly what it means. Faith is a non-meritorious act.

And I don't think I can repeat that often enough. Because I think we sometimes look at our faith as the triggering mechanism to get God to act. It's like sitting at your keyboard trying to get your computer to respond, and if you find the right F key, God will respond. And we think of our faith that way. That is not what faith is. By faith you don't cause anything. Do you understand that? That's really important to understand. You enter into it by faith, but you don't cause anything to happen. Do you see that?

What was that word, faith, is a non-what? It's a non-meritorious act. Thank you. Actually, that verse is kind of funny because when you read through it, to me it sounds like he had to take everything away from us in order that the promise would go to the seed. It couldn't have anything to do with us.

That's exactly right. Do you understand what Donna said? That God has to take everything away, all the other avenues, of approach so that you're only left with faith. Right? Is that what you mean? Yeah. And I don't know, if you're like me, you see God working in your life, in my life, that way all the time.

You try everything but faith. And then when everything else fails, it's like Myself and my son and another young man were putting together a thing I bought last night and they were anxious to do it. And it's the old, when everything else fails, read the directions. It's the same thing, when everything else fails, live by faith. When all of your push-ups don't work, live by faith.

Galatians 5, stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made you free. And don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you, that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. So, if the ordinance becomes the issue, Christ will profit you nothing. Christ has become of no effect unto you. Whosoever you are are justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. Is that a big deal? To fall from grace? And you say, here it is. Why? Why is falling from grace such a big deal?

Because you lose your faith. You don't lose your faith. You lose fellowship. You remember a week ago we talked about what's the operating system in which God functions now? Only this way. In grace, right? So if you go to law, you step right out of the grace system, you're out of the loop. You're totally out of the loop. Because you don't have faith, right? Yeah, faith, but you're not living by faith in grace. That's what I mean, faith has gone bye-bye. Yeah, you're not trusting the Lord and you're not living in the grace of God. And I think you find that a lot, not that you need to be introspective, but you find Most of our problems as believers are because we're not walking by faith and we're not living under grace. We're trying to do something, okay? So, number nine, list some of the concrete results grace brings. Now this is your homework. What does grace bring to the table for you?

Salvation. Salvation? Security. Security? What does it bring on a personal level? In Lesson 16, you talked about it controls our conduct without rules and it prevents sin from reigning. Yes. That's what the purpose of grace is, is to keep sin from reigning.

How about, maybe set this up this way. If I think I can do something to enhance my position with the Lord or to move on in my Christian life, if I do it, how do I feel about it when it's done? I'm a little prideful, right? I'm either disappointed that I didn't pull it off, which means I trusted in myself to start with, or I'm a little prideful that I did pull it off, right?

The great thing that grace brings to the table is that it eliminates pride. If you're convicted of being proud, the only way to deal with pride is to live in grace. How does God eliminate pride in his sons? By putting them in a grace system. There's no place for pride in grace because God does everything. You can take credit for receiving. Isn't that cool? Here's the other thing that grace does. It increases itself, or it increases the offering. Let's say, and I think Holly Hills is a great example of that.

I don't know, 20 years ago now, there's a couple of people in this room that were here then, but we were financially in big trouble. to the point where guys that were elders at that point were talking about in six weeks we're going to shut the doors. So here's the decision that they made. That we were never going to talk about money again and that we were never going to take up a collection again. And that we'd have this little box in the back and we were going to trust God's grace to keep us going. We're still here.

That's an example of how grace increases. You see that? We talked last week about the more you use grace, the more of it there is. So if you live in a grace system, what happens is, is that the results of grace is that there's always more. You can't think, well, you know, I got about $14 worth of grace and if I use it, I won't have any left. That's not the way grace operates. Grace operates if I have $14 of grace and I use it, I have 4 million. It just geometrically grows. The other thing that grace results in is that it motivates for service. And we're going to talk a lot about that next week and probably the week after. How grace motivates for service. And grace causes love.

Do you understand that? Do you all have a copy of the Grace Circle in your notes? That will explain it to you. I love God, why? Why do I love God? Because He first loved me. That's grace. I obey Him because I love Him. Why? Because He first loved me. And He rewards me because I obeyed Him. Because I love Him. Why? Because He first loved me.

That's how grace works. And that's how love is included in the grace diagram. Any questions? So I kind of repeat in question 10, if I'm proud, how do I eliminate pride in my life? Did I give you Romans 3.27? Paul says, where is the boasting then? Great question. It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No. By the law of faith. How did I get it? I took it. And there was nothing for me to be proud about. The grace came to me And I took it.

I have to tell you, when you sit and talk to people who are struggling, when you start talking about this issue, it's very difficult for them to hold on to it. And I think that as we progress in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, you will find that as you try to explain grace to other people, it's going to be difficult for them to grasp it. That's why it's really important that you get a hold of it because it's what we live in as believers and I think you'll find that most difficulties in the Christian life are because people don't live by faith and grace.

They don't do it. And they have exercised their own will and their own energy to affect what they think is a spiritual purpose And either it's been accomplished and they're very prideful about it, or more than likely it hasn't been accomplished and they're disappointed. And so then you want to talk to them. They want to talk to you about why they're so disappointed. It's because usually they don't understand the grace they're under.

When it comes to giving, how does grace motivate giving? Get out your checkbooks. Get the pen ready. So, how does grace motivate someone to give of their time or financially or whatever? I mean usually, and I must say that it's difficult for an elder or a deacon who sees a need in his church to go to people and say, we have a need, you know, we need somebody to fulfill it.

How do you present that graciously enough so that the grace motivates someone to step forward? How do you do that? Well, don't you think it's automatic? If you have faith, don't you think it's an automatic thing that we want to? Yes. Assuming that you're spiritually mature and you walk by faith, yeah, I absolutely agree.

Let me turn to 1 Corinthians 16.3.

Paul is talking to the Corinthians about, you know, he's taking up a collection as he travels through the cities. to take money back to Jerusalem, because the Christians in Jerusalem, there are two things going on there. One, there's a drought, so everybody's suffering. And two is that the Christians are under persecution, so they're having a very difficult time surviving. So Paul says, now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do you. Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him, in story. Now watch this next part. As God has prospered him, what's the God has prospered him tell them? It's from God and he prospered them. Here comes the grace.

That there be no gatherings when I come and when I come whomsoever you shall approve by your letters then will I send to bring your, and King James says, liberality to Jerusalem. You remember when we talked about the Greek word for grace? Remember what it was? What's the Greek word for grace? Charis. In this context, in my translation it says, then will I send to bring your liberality to Jerusalem. You know what the word liberality is in Greek?

I thought it said thank you. It is. It is. It's the same word. And the reason that it's the same word is that grace is responded to by grace. Do you understand that? That's kind of a difficult concept to get around. As God has prospered you, grace motivates more giving. You see that?

It isn't that they need the money. Or we've got a huge budget. It's not like when you get your property tax evaluation in the mail. People call me up all the time because I'm a realtor and say, well, I need to lower the evaluation of my property so that my taxes aren't so high next year. What they don't understand is that they don't understand how the government works. You know how the government works? They start with the budget. They want a million dollars.

And then they work backwards through the mill levy, through the assessed valuation. So whether your house, let's say that everybody gets a lower evaluation and they think they're going to get lower taxes. No, they're not. Because there's this little thing called the mill levy. And they take the evaluation times the mill levy to equal how much you owe. So if your valuations are down, what do they do with the mill levy? And you don't have any control over the mill levy. So everybody cuts back except them. Grace works totally opposite from that. Grace doesn't work because it's needed. Grace works because you've been prospered to start with.

I can love you because God loved me. I can forgive you because God forgave me. I can support you because God supports me. Or if God is designed for you to support me, I can take it graciously, you know, and without any sense of paying you back, because we know.

There's another sense there too, isn't it? In the sense that it's not yours anyway, so it's easier to give because it's not a possession. Everybody understand that? No. What do you mean it's not a possession? money you have. You have it because of God's grace. And you're just the custodian or the steward of that money. God determines where it goes. You don't. He does. So what do you have that God didn't give you? The five grand you made last week? Somebody give that to you? You went to work and you worked all your life and now you have an IRA. It's mine. No, it's not. It was all of grace.

I used to tell those guys on Tuesday, if you guys want to grow spiritually, go get a commissioned job. Because you'll learn what dependence on the Lord is. Or start your own business. It's one thing to go to work for somebody else and every Friday they pay you. It's another thing to be in business for yourself and nobody pays you for showing up. You learn to live by grace if you're a believer. So if God prospers you, he does it not so that you can be rich, he prospers you so that you can be used of him to grace somebody else. Now, that equation can go totally the other way. I'll tell you a story.

There's a guy in Amarillo, Texas who's a wonderful man, he's 82 years old, and he was Miles Stanford's biggest supporter. this guy invented, he was a bulldoze driver as a young man and he invented a rock crushing machine that he patented and he made millions off of it and he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he has no he And I gave my company, I sold my company to four guys that worked for me, Christian guys. He said, those four guys are so good at what they do that I'm making more money owning 20% than I ever did owning the whole thing. He was such a big donor to Dallas Seminary that when he pulled his money out of there, the board came to see him. He supports 100 new tribes missionaries.

His pile keeps growing. He recognizes that all he has is from God alone and that he has to be diligent about where God would distribute it. I'm telling you, this guy has more trouble. He's always at a roadblock. Lots of people in the Christian circles know he has money and they're always soliciting him.

But he's spiritually savvy enough and understands grace enough that you just don't knock on his door and get it. How would you like to be in that position? So, I said, well, you must understand grace better than most of us. Because God has put you a steward of a lot of money, and as he sees fit, he said, well, what's going to happen when I die? He said, it's still the Lord's money. Does it transcend money, the grace, the process?

Oh, way over. Yeah, it does. It does. The government will take it if he doesn't give it away. That's true. That's exactly right. The government will take it. And maybe that's where the Lord wants it. I don't know. He doesn't know. This guy at 82 ought to be playing golf. He spends all of his waking hours trying to figure out what to do to get rid of this money. And I'm not giving out his phone number.

So grace motivates more giving. And actually when you look at that verse in 1 Corinthians, the offering itself is called grace. In other words, in most churches you go And they say, well, it's now time to take up the offering. Actually, what they should say is, now it's time to take up the grace. Because that's what the word is. See that? It's time to collect the grace. There should be no sense of obligation. The minute there's obligation, it's not grace. The minute you think, oh, what a need they have, that's not grace. You see that? And that's another interesting concept.

Do I go and get involved in some Christian program because the need is so great? Is that why I go? What do you think? Well, the need is so great for you to go in there because there's hardly... Well, here comes a circumstance. There's a huge need, and I know I can probably help a little bit, so I'm going to go because the need is so great. Is that why I go? Well, you could be helpful. Wouldn't that be great to go then?

But you've just left God out of the picture. Well, no, but you are with him. He's with you. Well, so there's the equation. Has God called me to go there? Regardless of what the need is. There's plenty of need around. But is that where he wants me? You would go regardless. Well, I would go if the Lord sent me. I wouldn't go if he didn't send me, no matter how great the need was. But that doesn't mean that if you fall off your bike and I stand there and look at you bleeding, then I think, I'm going to talk to the Lord about this.

So, God has blessed me. His Son has paid the total price, so thank you. See that? Now brethren, we wish to make known to you the grace of God which was given in the churches of Macedonia, begging us Verse 4, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation and support of the saints. Why? Well, when Paul went around collecting money, he always did it on the basis of the fact that God had graced you first. You see that?

So the motivation to give is always grace. No other motivation. No other motivation. 2 Corinthians 9.15 says, thanks be to God for his incredible gift. What motivated this thanks be to God?

We were with some people this week and one of them was saying, boy, you know, I'm having a real problem. Is God real? Does he love me? And I'm thinking in my mind, At some point, they're going to be able to say, thanks be to God for His incredible gift. So, what is the incredible gift of God? It's Christ and His work. He's done it all. A Christian should never be...

It's like sometimes you sing hymns where you're asking God to do something. Most of the time, you're asking Him to do something He's already done. He must think, hmm, didn't I take care of that? You know, begging God to forgive you? Why would you do that? Why would you ask God to forgive you? Your favorite verse, 1 John 1 9, do you see in there anywhere where it says, God forgive me? It says that He is going to forgive me. But I don't ask them to do it because I'm already forgiven. Do you see that? So I don't have to say it? No, you don't. Why do I? Maybe because you don't understand. Most people do though, don't they? Oh sure they do. Sure. Or like, oh Lord bless me.

You know, we ask God to bless me in this and bless me in that, and one of those hungry hearts that says, if you go over in your mind and you can find one thing that God hasn't blessed you with already, then the whole thing's a fake. Because Ephesians says, I've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. What did he miss? I didn't get my Mercedes. It's not a spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. Sorry.

Do you see what I'm saying? So if you live under grace, the whole response to grace is thank you. It's never asking, because you've got way more than you could ever think or ask. The problem is we're ignorant about it. Asking forgiveness and confession are two separate things. What's that? Asking forgiveness and confession are two separate things. Totally separate. Because confession means to say the same thing, and actually when you say the same thing as God, what does he say about you?

You're forgiven. It's like under the Old Testament, and even in the Gospels, if my forgiveness is based on whether I forgive you or not, right? In the Old Lord's verses, forgive me my trespasses as I forgive you. So if I don't forgive you, guess what? I don't get it. But Paul says that I forgive you because I've already been forgiven. That changes the whole equation. I come to forgive anybody's offense against me automatic, because I've been forgiven.

Do you see that? Have I not? Or have I? Is the work of Christ on the cross adequate or not? Is it enough? Did He take care of all my sins? How about the ones next Thursday? Do you cover those too, or are we going to have to start over? No, those are paid for too.

So, if you're going to comprehend grace, how do you do it? How do you comprehend? How do you get your arms around this thing, Grace? How do you do it? What do you do? What do you do graciously to get your arms around Grace without it being an obligation? What do you do? We just thank God for everything and that's it. Okay. Thank Him. That it? Everybody buy that? Nothing more than that?

2 Peter 3 says, grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and the day of eternity. Amen. If you don't study Christ, you will not understand grace. How do you study Christ? Oh, by the way, what motivates you to study Christ? Because I told you you should? No, because you love God. Because He loved me. How do you find out about Christ? How do you find out about Him? In the Word of God. That's where you find out about Him.

So, in most churches, now that you're a Christian, you're going to have to do 10 minutes of quiet time every day. You're going to study your Bible 15 minutes, you're going to pray it for 40. And when you get done with that, you know God is going to prosper you in the Christian faith. What have I just done? I've given you three laws, haven't I? But if you're saved by grace and you understand that the Savior gave His all for you and that you are saved by grace, how are you going to respond to that? Whatever He wants, I'm there. He wants me to learn of Him and His Word, that's where I'm going. I can't help but go there. I can't help but respond. He wants me to grow in the knowledge of Him, and the grace of Him. I can't help but stop.

Because I started ungraced. And the more grace I learn, and the more grace I understand, the greater my response. You see how that works? The more grace that's given, the more grace that I respond to. And I start to get caught up in this tornado of His grace. It motivates me, it moves me.

Is grace comprehended quickly? Do you grasp it really quick? We'll have a seminar this afternoon and by 6 o'clock tonight we all got it, right? How is grace comprehended? By studying. And at what rate of speed? Whatever makes you comfortable. Good answer. No, that's good. No, that's really a good answer because grace is designed to make you comfortable in the Lord. Because if you rush through it, you may not get it. You won't get it. You just say, okay, I read all these pages. So I think it's important to have the mindset that grace is learned slowly.

Yeah. Okay. Peter says grow. Yes. That's why the word grow. You know, this is springtime going into summer. If you're watching your plants, it's really cool. They're growing. Unless the rabbits get to him. I saw one this morning. He's going to rabbit heaven this afternoon. But it's slow.

It takes, Myles in his book used to say, and I quote somebody else, he said, it takes the Lord a couple of days to grow a weed. It takes him decades to grow an oak tree. Well, we're oak trees. It's a slow process. So if you understand that it's a slow process, because it's thorough. That's why it's slow. It's thorough. It does not leave anything undone. Do you understand what I mean?

Yeah, because I remember he saying that people could go to church forever and still don't get grace. So isn't that a sad thing? But if you start on the grace road, and you know it's going to take time, and you're spending time growing in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, you begin to discover it's almost at lightning speed in terms of your being able to take it in. You see that? It's really fast subjectively.

It's only under the teaching of the Word. It is in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is so unlimited and so richly infinite infinite that we never totally grasp it. We are going to be learning grace. When Phil Amidon went home to be with the Lord last week, two minutes before God took him out of here, he was still learning grace. Still learning. It's one of those things that you never get totally, you grow your whole life in it. The issue is, let's get started. In most Christian circles, they never get started in the grace because they're too busy doing.

So, describe in one word what an attitude of grace would be. Don't jump at your answer. I want one word. Describe in one word what your attitude about grace would be. What would that word be? Thankfulness. Gratitude. I have a different word. What should your attitude in one word be about grace? How about the word receive? What about that word?

My attitude should be that I'm going to receive it as much as I can. We can relax and grace in the battle of the Christian life. The key word is just to tap into it. Just receive. That in turn gives the most potent motivation in the world. that God should forgive some of the things I said and have done is absolute grace. I should receive it.

How many people do you know, Christians that you know, who struggle with a certain issue, and here's what it boils down to. They will not accept God's forgiveness. Are you with me on that? I did, or they did, and this has been bugging me forever. And the whole issue comes down to, well, you can't forgive yourself because you don't think God has forgiven you, and I'm going to stay here. Is there anything that, other than Courtney, anything that you've done that God didn't forgive you for? Huh? Is there? Can you think of one thing?

How about those little deep, dark things that you've thought about through your whole life? Sometimes you think, oh, you know, I did that, I'm glad nobody knows about it. Before I was a Christian, am I forgiven about that? That's influenced me my whole life.

What about that thing? Are you forgiven? You bet your life you are. Everything. Even when you don't remember. And the reason you have been forgiven is so that you can live in grace. You can take it. You can receive it. Because if there's any barrier to it, then you don't take it. You don't receive it. Because you don't think you're worthy. Isn't it possible for a person to break fellowship?

Absolutely it is. Absolutely. Do you see that as being the reason for John 1? Yes, it is. That's the whole reason. That's what it is. It is no work that you're doing. No. It's something that he asks you to do, because that's the way it is. Well, if you're a believer living under grace, then you break fellowship. The first thing that goes through your mind is, how do I get back to fellowship? And the Lord supplies the answer. It's grace. That's why I say you live in a fellowship by your own choice. Yes, you do. You absolutely do. That's right. And I think sometimes that the Lord has the option to maybe chastise you for something like that. Well, sure. I mean, if we insist on wallowing in sin, he's going to let sin do its work on us.

That's what I'm trying to say. upset the whole apocryphal statement on what grace is. I don't want to believe in what it is, but I think that is a requirement. We're Christians to live in obedience as well as Christians. Well, I'm sitting here as a Christian. I'm not out of fellowship, but I really have a desire to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus. What am I going to do? Somebody says to me, well, you know, get out the Word, spend some time with the Lord quietly, Just to get to know him. Not to memorize verses, just to get to know him.

And trust him to reveal himself to you and to show you his grace. So you go and do that. Are you responding legally? You shouldn't. No. You're stepping into the stream of grace. That's what you're doing. Because you have the faith to do it. Because that's what he wants us to do. And we'll talk next week and go on. I'm going to tell you something that's perfectly, we as Christians sometimes I always forget that as being a Christian responsible. Yeah, yeah.

A guy said to me early on in my Christian life when we were talking about responsibility one day, and he said, if you cut out the word responsibility, what does it mean? It means the ability to respond. Only believers have the ability to respond to the grace of God. And non-believers who are called to receive Christ, did he give them the ability to respond or not?

What do you think? Sure he did. Sure he did. So even that's a grace. See, there's no time, any of us who are ever going to stand before God, I can hardly wait until we're all at the beam of judgment, right? And one of us says, hey Lord, you forgot. I did. Not going to happen. He's going to say, yeah, but you forgot these 4,000 things I did through you that you didn't even know I was doing. And I'm going to reward you for those.

How about that? I see too that in 1 John 1, 9, so often we look at the doing, something that we did, the confession, rather than the being. And unless you understand the grace, you don't understand who you are. And so to confess, means that you understand who you are and that you are acting outside of that. So it's a different...

One John 1.9 is much... I can't formulate what I want to say. It's much better understood when approached by grace.

If you use One John 1.9 as kind of a Catholic confessional, which is an obligation, Those of you who never grew up in Catholicism, let me tell you how the confession deal works.

On Saturday, because it's the day before Sunday, you hop down to the church, and you get in the pew, and the priest is in this little box, and you're supposed to examine your conscience and make a list of all the sins you've committed since the last time you went to confession. You go in the box, and the priest slides this door, and you say, Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Here's what I've done in the last seven days.

And he listens. And then you say, for these and all my sins, I'm really sorry. And then he gives you this little cool thing called absolution. And then he gives you a little pen and you know, say a bunch of prayers or something and out you go. And so when you walk out of there, you're supposed to feel like I'm clean, right? Well, that's the formalized confessional.

Most Christians who are not Catholics think that way, don't they? I've got a bunch of sins, I've got to go to God, I've got to ask Him for forgiveness. No, you don't. You don't have to ask Him for forgiveness. He says to confess. And under grace, what is confession? To say the same thing He says. If I don't know what He's saying, how can I confess?

If I don't know my position, if I don't know the grace that I live under, if I don't understand the complete work of Christ on the cross, that I don't understand 1 John 1, 9. I don't understand what it's there for. And it's not there to get me clean, it's there to restore me to fellowship, which is the normal environment that I live in in grace.

It is spiritual insanity for a Christian to sin. Is it normal for a Christian to be sinning? No, it's not. No, it's not. It's a spiritual insanity to sin. If we were living in a strictly spiritual environment, if you were sinning, they'd put you in a home. They'd send you away. It is not normal for a Christian to sin. Your position in Christ, as you're abiding in Christ.

Galatians says, walk in the Spirit, and you cannot fulfill the lust of the flesh. So, as a believer, I'm supposed to be walking in the Spirit, right? Isn't that what a believer does? When a believer does that, it's impossible for him to sin. He has to come out of the Spirit in order to sin. And once he does that, he's not functioning as a Christian anymore.

I think it's due to ignorance, not knowing your position, not knowing your identification with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and being self-focused. It's all about me. It isn't about the grace of God that I live under. You see that? What we're talking about, in one sense, is cause and effect. What causes what?

At this wheel, 1 John 4.19, because we love him because he first loved us.

Well, if you start reading 1 John 14.21, you're going to kind of mix that cause and effect order up, because that's talking about He who has my commandments and keeps them is he who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved. It's like, if I do, then God will love me.

You've got to make sure you start at the right point in the wheel. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That's why you hear me say so often that you have to be very careful that salvation is presented on a grace basis. Because if a person starts on grace, they're more likely to continue on grace. If they start on a little law and a little grace, they're going to gravitate to the law right now. They're going to want to know what they need to do. Now that I'm a Christian, tell me what to do. That's not grace. Grace will teach you how to respond.

The grace of God, if you're saved by grace, then you have been saved by the Savior and you know Him as Savior. You know Him. How can you not respond to Him? But if you've been saved by commitment on your part or a little walking forward or all this, then you started out on, I'm doing it. See? And that makes it difficult for you to learn grace. But as you learn grace, you respond in grace. And grace, Schaefer says grace is the greatest motivator there is, and I agree with him. enough to forgive my sins.

Now work on me and improve me. Improve me, that's right. I think that's where the whole crux is because I'm saved and everybody gets to the point of salvation through this great gift of God. But now I can go and fulfill the law. I can now be a better person. God's going to work on me and help me out through this man has been co-crucified.

You have to understand that, I think, very beginning, before you understand grace. Because otherwise, you just fall in, and the natural man wants every bit of that. You know, when we first started this class, I think about the fourth class, I asked the question, Christ died on the cross and paid the penalty for your sins, right? What did he do with you, the sinner? And I asked, did he forgive you, the sinner? And that was the wrong answer. What did he do with you, the sinner? He crucified you.

In Christ. So now you're a brand new resurrected creation who is suited out and designed specifically to live in grace. You see that? So now you've got two natures floating around in you. So what happens? Well, I've decided that the old man is better than the new man, and I'm going to abide in him. So what does he do? He supplies one John and one Mary to do what?

To get your focus out of what you have been crucified from, so that you begin to live by faith so that I am seated in Christ in the heavenlies. You see that? And Courtney's right. If you don't understand that you've been crucified, buried, and resurrected in Christ, you are never going to get your arms around grace. You won't. Because that's the grace principle there. But we still have that sinful nature. We sure do. But you know what? You don't have to respond to it. You're free. Right, but at times we do, don't we? I do, which is horrible, but I do. No, that's true, you do. You do.

And that's why learning grace is so important, because the more you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, the less you're going to go back there, because there's nothing there that appeals to you. But as you grow in the grace and knowledge of Him, they grow together.

And so I think that it's a slow process. And I think the spiritual maturity as you grow, that old man becomes less and less. Because it's insanity to start picking these sins. And I find as you grow, I think some of those old enticements become less and less. Because they're not who you are.

We've got to close. We're going slow, but that's okay. We're going to go at snail's pace, and the more participation, the better, because if we leave this class at the end of the time, understanding what grace is, it will change everything, the way you think and the way you function, and the way you deal with everybody you come in contact with. Dear Father, how we thank you for the grace that we live in, and we thank you for the very person of the Lord Jesus, we can fellowship with and abide in and rest in Father. We pray in his name. Amen.