Grace - Grace as Motivation

So we're working down through, Ron just told me he made it home last night, but Kathy is in room 621. We're working through the grace questions and we, I suppose I could turn that beeper off. We finished up last week answering the question, why do the thoughts of repaying God for His grace utterly out of harmony with grace?

And the answer was pretty simple. Because grace is un-recompensed favor, it has to stay that way. It doesn't need to be paid back. It doesn't create an obligation. and it doesn't create an environment where, well, the Lord has done so much for me, I have to keep showing him how thankful I am that he saved me, or he showed his grace to me by saving me. So if grace is to remain, pure, unadulterated in its generosity and benefits, then it's got to stay that way.

So you have to look at it from that perspective. So today, the next question when it comes to salvation, why are all human works not taken into consideration? Is that on the list? Okay. When it comes to salvation, why are all human works not taken into consideration?

And I'll read a little bit from Chafer's paper. He said, 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 towards the sinner. And the discharge of that obligation towards the sinner would be the payment or recognition of a debt.

Yeah, it's the Romans 11.6. If it is by grace, it is no longer the basis of the works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. You can't make God a debtor. I think you said the main thing I was thinking about is you make God a debtor. That's right. You can't do that. It's impossible to do.

The verse I had is Romans 4.4.

Now to him who works the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. So I can never put God in a position where he owes me, and that's what religion does. If you look at it, and the tenants of especially denominational religion, like the one I came out of, they're trying to do that all the time.

They want to put God in a position where he has to react the way they think. Well, it also feeds the flesh, too, which wants to do something. It wants relevancy by doing something. That, again, just feeds the sin nature by doing something. It's one of the things I was trying to talk about in last week's message, is that all human religion, whether they believe in the God of the Bible, or whatever kinds of deities, is always focused on trying to obligate God, or the gods, to bless me.

Right. And that's a work system, that's a law work system. And it's usually worldly rewards. Right. Because that's the only rewards we really know about or care about. Well, and that's the law, right? Yeah. You know, if you do this, then I will bless you. That's right. That's how it works. Yeah, that's how it works. And we talked about that. The law system was meant to lead us right to the cross for the grace system and salvation is part of your question there.

It operates within Grace, and there is no I in grace. I does not have a role in God's obligation to do anything. I think it's for the natural man. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to save somebody because we're so I-centered that when the gospel is presented to us as a free gift and all I have to do is believe it, that does not fit. So if I do believe it, then what? What kind of obligation did I put myself under? Nothing.

It's just grace. So if you get your arms around what grace is, and you start to see it, then Paul's epistles start to open up to you because he's always talking from that perspective. always, and that's probably why it's so difficult for Paul's epistles to be understood, because so many times, especially in academic environments, so many times they are looked at theologically and logically, human thought, which always includes, you know, if I do this, you do that. But from God's perspective alone, He does everything. Everything. And I'm, you know, I'm like you and you're like me. I don't like it like that. I don't want to owe you. It stumbles the intellect. It might kind of go back and almost piggyback on what Miles had shared last week.

I remember you'd always talking about, and this is, ubiquitous to the human flesh is going back to the Incas and everybody. Everybody knows they're a god, Romans 1, and typically it's, I need to do something, he's angry and I need to satisfy him, or I need to do something. The child sacrifices that were to appease the gods or do... It's all emblematic of the flesh wanting to do something. Knowing a god and wanting to do something. Think about Romans 1.

What are the two things that God requires? One, that you be thankful. And two, that you honor him as God. How do you do that? Believe. That's the only way you do it. And belief is the one thing a human being can do that he can't take any credit for. Because the value is in what he and who he believes in, not in the fact that he believed. That's kind of cool. All right, a couple of verses.

Galatians 3.22, but the Spirit has confined all under sin, all, except for Democrats. all understand that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. And that's Galatians what? 322. Is that right? Yeah, I think it is. And Ephesians 2, 8 through 10, where God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, et cetera.

So if you can't pay them back, then what is the motive for serving Him? Love. That's it? Dependency. That's what you said in the Grace Circle. Think about the question. If I can't pay Him back, then what is it that motivates serving Him? I would say dependency. I'm going to say the life of Christ. The life of Christ. I'm stealing that from Miles Stanford.

He talked about the life motive, which didn't make a lot of sense to me at first, because when we think of motive, we think of, OK, what am I going to use to get me going? And that's the wrong way around. of Christ as our life, in a way, it's almost an oxymoron. Motive is kind of a, in my mind, Christ doesn't need any motive, so to speak. Other than that, he's motivated to glorify the Father. But that's just who he is by nature. I think life motive is the right motive, and I'll tell you why.

A human being believes in the person and work of Christ as we know around here. Not only is he justified before God, accounted righteous, but he's placed into Christ. And as you learn in Romans 6 in the identification truths, you find out that you basically as a human being have been altered. You left one strain of humanity, the Adam strain, and you found yourself in the resurrected, glorified strain of the Lord Jesus Christ. You now have His life. And His life is service.

We could say source. Say source. That's a good word. Because for the believer under grace, when they understand this, and that's the asterisk here, and then they believe it. That's the second asterisk. That goes for all of us. But the source comes from Christ's life, and so we operate, and we're motivated, animated, and literally into the conforming process, right? So, grace fits with that source, because it's from God. Whereas, what's the source for self? Well, that's from here, right? Your source is from me. And the interesting thing is, behavior can look the same. and not be sourced correctly. I asked a trick question on Wednesday night and nobody got it. Are you ready for this?

What two men in the Bible, what man in the Bible looks righteous but isn't? And what man in the Bible isn't righteous but looks like he is? Who are the two men? First one, what is the man in the Bible that looks totally unrighteous yet he is? Who is he? Lot. But you have to get to Peter's epistle before it says righteous lot. Because the guy's a total loser. The other guy, who's the guy that looks really righteous but isn't? Judas Iscariot. He was one of them. Two different sources. One found sanctification, the other didn't.

You know, it's interesting. If you contemplate and spend some time just thinking about the reason I do what I do as a Christian is because of the life that I have, not because any of my soul-ish properties are motivated, but they are, or because I'm I'm now spiritually alive, I wasn't before. It's life. That makes a big difference in how you live. So where does this kind of get street level?

And as I think through it, you know, thinking grace is my motivation today. I'm really going to operate in grace. What is grace? Grace is this. You know, see, I'm living in America, and you go through that, and you're like, okay, I'm motivated by grace because I believe that is what is true of me. Or I say, I'm motivated by the life of Christ. And it is active in being conformed in me, and that's what motivates me. And grace is a part of that, right?

But it's not like I'm channeling grace for the day. It's, I'm trusting the source that I've been placed into, me put in union with, And I am, for lack of a better term, accessing the resources I have in this new source, this life that I have. A couple things. I go back to life, but I go to John 17, our union with Him. I mean, we're in Him.

We have the same relationship, Christ and the Father, Father and us. And what was Christ's whole purpose? To glorify and satisfy the Father. That was just His nature was to do that. Now, that's our nature now. But actually this morning with Hungry Heart, Don't go too far in that, because I'm going to use it at the Lord's table.

Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ and God, when Christ, who is our life, is revealed. So if we realize we've died, and actually, You know, for you have died in your life.

I mean, that's today. And by doing that, our focus should be on Christ. And then, if it is, it's Romans 5. We're in a... I heard you guys talking about this. We're in a... Grace is reigning now. That's the system we live in. And if we're Christ-centered, Christ-focused, seeing him seated, that's our life. It should be the motivation for us. Let me give you a more practical.

Three days ago, I wake up in the morning and I'm itching all over. It's driving me nuts. And I can't figure out where it's coming from. All my meds are pretty much the same. But as the day went on, it got, and then yesterday, I thought, well, maybe what I need to do is go to the store and buy some Benadryl. And so I do. I took one Benadryl pill.

I was totally wiped for about eight hours. I mean, I was, hmm. And I get to thinking, I gotta probably teach tomorrow. I gotta do the Lord's Table. I haven't even started. And I thought, what am I going to do? And then I said, Lord, you're going to have to get me there. And I'm learning as I grow older that every time I come up against something like that, my fallback position is, well, Lord, I'm going to have to depend on you. It's come to that. just to get me to the door, or to get me someplace, or to get the right words, or to say the right thing, or whatever. I think it's one of those mindsets that you keep referring to him as you grow, because he has demonstrated to you over and over and over again, it's my grace, buddy.

It's my grace. The flesh is weak, but the spirit Okay. Do you understand what I mean by learning just the everyday functionality of grace? It's something that, it's hard to teach it. It's really hard to teach it, because you can give examples and definitions and but it really, grace really centers around intimacy with the Lord Jesus. And when you know him, you know he's gracious. He never says to you, well, I might react if you would do A, B, and C. No, it's never like that. And you learn to trust him, no matter what. So, Well, can I say, you just explained yourself in a different way. So, you recognized that you were up against a task that you weren't going to be able to complete, but probably in yourself you were trying to figure out how to do that.

Oh, I was. I totally was. Right? And so you've got a thing that needs to be done. But I had to watch the Masters Golf Tournament. And one of them had you doing something different than the other one had you doing. And one of them looked a certain way, and the other one looked a different way. I think that that there's a temptation from self and law to say, okay, I'm going to get busy on this, even though I feel like I'm dopey and stuff. I'm going to try to get this done because it has to be done. And it gives you a set of things that you need to accomplish in order to get to the place when you came to a different conclusion. It wouldn't have been wrong to have gotten busy and fumbled around your computer and probably not gotten anything really accomplished. But you would have been doing an admirable thing. You were going to teach.

I was sitting in the family room. My temperature was 102. And my mind isn't working. Yeah, the TV's on, but I'm not paying attention. I'm sleeping half the time. And I thought, it's getting darker and darker outside. I'm going to go to sleep, and we'll do this in the morning. If you physically didn't feel that way, and you remembered at that moment, would you have handled it differently? I don't know. I might have called you.

But it's just really interesting, I guess, to me is that, yes, what you did is you reckoned on a truth instead of got busy trying to get something accomplished that you knew you couldn't get accomplished. Or whether you even knew you couldn't or not, you knew that the Lord would have you trust Him with it. Could we say it this way, that grace implies that the Lord is always ready and willing to provide everything that's needed to accomplish His will. I agree. Well said. And we as believers need to be aware of that fact.

So I went to bed. I did everything this morning. And I'm still itching. But I don't have a fever. Anyway, I'm finding maybe it's just because I'm getting older. You know, you forget stuff and different things. I look to the Lord and say, listen, I won't remember that. I can't find my sunglasses.

And he's great. How do I say? He's reliable. He shows up when you need him, Donna. Just a comment along those lines. It seems like it's so easy at least speaking for myself, how easy it is that if you have the capability, that tends to be the way that you go first. And only when you reach the end of that do you look to God. But I think, like whoever just said that, that God's Miles said that God's ready and willing for every single moment, whether you're capable in flesh or not.

That's right. He is. So then it's His good works, not ours. That's right. But you don't get to sit down and say, oh, this one's His good work, this one isn't. That's not how you live. I mean, it's spontaneous. and to live. Can you imagine what it's going to be like being home with him and everything is gracious all the time?

Wow. We're ready. I'm ready. Before you're shoulder up. Okay. Find the next question here. So, bear with me. I think I know where I'm going. Have we talked about how God forgives the non-believer and talked about how God forgives the believer? There is a difference. I think I heard that in the recording from last week.

You know, Mike, I want to add one thing to your thought of grace. Grace doesn't always mean you get the answer you want. Oh, no. And you may not see the reason for a year later, five years later. He'll take you through things. Give me the, you know, I'd love to be able to do this. And he doesn't. And yet, it doesn't change His grace, it doesn't change His love, it doesn't change anything. That's the whole point. I just want to make the point that grace doesn't mean you get everything you ask for.

No way. What's that song you mentioned a couple of weeks ago, On a Good Day? Yeah, on a good day I'm a child of God, and on a bad day I'm a child of God. Yeah. I just want to make that clear that just because grace, grace doesn't mean that God answers our request. Part of what grace does is changes your value system. You know, you stop thinking fleshly plus good things and start looking at, well, Lord, what do you consider good? What do you consider? What is it like with you? I go back to one of my standards. It gives me peace and rest through anything. I go back to my sovereignty of God and His love. That gives me peace and rest through everything. I know His grace is the system that is reigning right now, but it just gives me peace and rest.

Grace is the system, but it doesn't mean we get the answer. I could go through a trial and I don't get my answer. He could have kept you gaga for another 12 hours. I just want to make clear that grace doesn't mean you get the answer that you want. Grace is just his plan and his operating system, but it's all for his purposes.

Peace and rest don't become valuable until you don't have it. And then it becomes really valuable. And you realize that the only place is in Christ. He promised the world, you come to me and I'll give you rest for your souls. It's the one thing you can't buy in the world. I don't care who you are. You can't earn it. And to be all right with God, peace and rest.

But I also think that in His graciousness in training us, He'll let us swim around in something that is not peaceful and not restful so we can tell the difference. Because we wouldn't know. Can grace This is from JD, can grace provide security in spite of our imperfection? And how does that work without becoming a license to sin? I like that question, that's a good one. Grace provides security in spite of our imperfections. How does that work without becoming a license to sin? When we learn to trust Him for His provision rather than ours. It depends on the thing.

I mean, if you're Ron Ford with an oxygen tube sticking out of your nose, what are you thinking? They run into a guy like you and say, well, you've got to trust God about this. He's thinking, okay. I mean, you can't tell somebody. You can't give them... You know, when we give people, we say, well, if you did so-and-so, then you would have rest. What have you just done?

You made a law out of it. But, you know, the objective side or what motivates is Hey, you've already went four days without smoke. That's earthly logic. Yeah, but it does help you find God. Help you find God. The trial. Yeah. Because He'll use that. Yeah. I mean, that's the great thing about God's grace. He uses whatever. He's not limited to the things that you think he can use and can't use. We're talking about grace leading to peace.

Actually, that's one of the verses we got this morning in the main service, Romans 8.6. Sorry, I'm working two translations in my mind here at the same time, but the mindset of the spirit is life and peace. And I just, in the context of this conversation, life is not peaceful. We're all kind of existing in a very chaotic and sometimes very tumultuous and painful and very trying existence. in the midst of that, because we understand something, maybe very imperfectly, but we understand something of what God's doing in it, through it.

Can I read Romans 8.5? Sure. If men comply with their lower nature, their thoughts are shaped by the lower nature. If with their spiritual nature, by the spiritual... Is that Weymouth? Yeah. I don't think it says exactly that way, but that's okay. You know, I think going back to your question, if I heard it right, I think the Romans 6, 1 and 2, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin live in it? So I think that's the key. There's the logic. I should have read the next verse. Your question had the, you can phrase it again if you'd like, but the license to sin. So the question really is, can I sin because of grace? That's exactly the question. I mean, that's the one you're asking yourself. Or, maybe you're not even asking the question, maybe you're saying, I can sin because of grace. Yeah. Well, it's like the Catholics. I can sin on Friday, go to confession on Saturday, and I'm cool.

And what Courtney just said, the key is, the reason that doesn't work is because you died. Yeah, that's the whole reason it doesn't work. Yeah, I'm dead to that. I'm dead to sin. That's the reason. And doesn't it seem like the cross of Christ is in order to have any benefit of grace, that has to be in play? Say that another way. If you don't understand that you died, then how do you exercise any freedom in grace? You can't. That's a great point. You can't.

You know, when you back up to the last second to last verse of 5, Paul lays out the goal that grace might reign through righteousness. Grace is a reigning principle, so what does he do next? He goes right into identification and he says, you know, shall we sin that grace may abound? And even continue on in three, or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized in death?

It says here, thoughts shaped by the lower nature means death. Thoughts shaped by the spiritual means life and peace. I think it's a little confusing for what we're talking about here is death. That's connecting death and the lower nature. You could say, can I sin because of anything? We're talking about grace right now. What we're not trying to confuse is that you can't sin because of anything only because you've died. That's the connection there. We're talking about grace right now. Does grace give me a license to sin? As complex as you might want to get with that answer, it goes back to what we just said.

No, because you died, and you've been set free from it. And let me tell you all about what that means now. That's why you're not sinning. Not because you can, because God's going to overlook it somehow in our race. Right. I'm really excited, because this perfectly set up the next hours. Exactly what I'm talking about. So, see if I can answer any of that. We gotta pray. Father, we thank you for the time and the opportunity and your graciousness to allow us to discuss questions that we might grow in the grace and knowledge of your dear Savior and Son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name, amen.