You In Christ and Christ In You

Less than 15. Everybody got a 15? Andrew, do you have a 15? 15 or 16? Are we going to 15 or 16? 16. Where were we? See, when you can't hear, you can't hear those people speaking up. OK,

15. Let's see. What question did we stop at? Ready for 10. We finished 10 or we started 10. Ready to start. OK. OK. We're talking the subject matter is grace. Question 10, use your best efforts to define grace something more than we get what we deserve, or we don't get what we deserve, or we get what we don't deserve, or whatever. And the Macaulay definition of grace has been floating around here for some time, and it's a good one, but I'd be interested in hearing your definition of grace, the one that you've been secretly harboring and not telling us about.

Anybody? Unmerited favor of God? Okay. Anybody else? God has done everything for me. He's done it all for me. Okay. Grace is limitless. It's limitless. Grace comes out of God's love for His creation, for His creatures. And he's able to be stored freely because of the price that Christ paid for him. Cool, that's good. I can't repeat all that. It's God's blessing, to paraphrase, it's God's blessing towards us based on his love, his character, his love. It comes towards us because of the work of Christ on the cross.

Here's Aristotle's definition. Aristotle wasn't a Christian as far as I know. It's something conferred freely with no expectation of return and finding its source in the bounty and the free heartedness of the giver. That's pretty good isn't it? That's our boy Aristotle. He says something conferred freely with no expectation of return, finding its source in the bounty and the free hearted and the free heartedness of the giver. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's what I thought.

So I think that there are two or three aspects of the definition. and all of them are resident within the one who is expending the grace. Number one, they're the causer of the action or the dispension of grace, aren't they? They're the ones giving it. And they have to be totally free to do it. They can be under no restrictions. Do you understand what I mean by that?

Because if they're under restrictions, then it isn't grace. If they're under any obligation, it isn't grace. And when you bring in God as the character and the giver of grace, then you have to say that his grace has to be unlimited because he is. His grace has to be unlimited. There can be no ifs. So it's a very hard concept, unlimited grace from God to get your arms around. It's really tough because we don't live in a gracious environment. And the other thing about grace is that it has to be unmerited.

It can't be earned. In any sense of this obligation or earning, it's not grace, you destroy the definition. You see that? So I can say, well, you work for me and I'll pay you $10 an hour and you do a good job and I give you a tip. Is the tip gracious? No, it's not. It doesn't fit under the definition of grace. If I gave you the $10 an hour and the tip and you didn't do anything, that might be grace.

See? So, the reason I like Macaulay's definition the best, he says it's unlimited and unmerited blessings from God. Unlimited and unmerited. And I would say because it's unlimited, there's no time frame. He's not waiting for us to do anything. Because if he was, it wouldn't be unlimited or unmerited. blessings from God and it's based on the totally adequate work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Could God have been gracious and functioned in grace before the cross? Could he have just said, you know what, I'm tired of this law system, I'm going to start acting graciously. Could he have done that? He was gracious in the Old Testament. But it was limited, and it was sometimes, it was always unmerited. The Old Testament saints came to the table with their sins and their weakness, and God would be gracious like. He comes down from the mountain, and Moses does with the tablets. The boys aren't behaving too well, so he breaks the tablets, right?

What does God do? He said, well, you know, there aren't any, you know, there's no Xerox of that. You're out of luck. You know? No. Moses talks to God and God rewrites him and gives him back to the people. He didn't have to do that, so he acted graciously. But the Jewish nation did not live under grace, they lived under the Mosaic law system. Because he was looking forward to it.

But notice, is there grace in the sacrifices in the temple? Yeah there is, because it covered them They covered their sins with anticipation that their sins would be dealt with in the future. So it's gracious, but they weren't living in a gracious environment. Do you see the difference?

God only acts in grace today. Only. He doesn't revert back to law because you've been bad. Or because you haven't lived up to your supposed end of the bargain. He doesn't do that. He operates solely in grace only today. That's the only way he operates. No other way.

God is the author doing a favor for man, and in every case, it's unmerited. In almost every context, it is a man deserving the total opposite of what he gets. Even as believers, when we go to the Lord and we confess our sins, what do we deserve? Do you deserve forgiveness? You say, oh well I confess God, you owe me forgiveness. No, no. No, no. Forgiveness is grace. And I dare say that coming out of the environment I did, that's the way we thought of it, that if I did my part, God had to do his part. He had to because that was the way the deal was. It was set up that way.

Can the one distributing grace be put under obligation by those receiving grace? Understand the question? Let's say I'm the dispenser of grace to Roger. Can Roger ever put me under an obligation to dispense the grace to him? The correct answer is no. Why not? Because it has to be unmerited.

What is a promise that I'm going to do? God promised Abraham. He shows up at Abraham's door one day and says, Here's what I'm going to do." And he lays out what he's going to do. Right? I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you the father of a great nation. I'm going to bless all nations through you. And then he said, if you do so and so. Did he say if? No. He said, I promise I'm going to do this.

Now, the Bible clearly states that Abraham was declared righteous because he believed God. Well, what happens if he didn't believe God? Is God still going to carry out the promises he made? Absolutely he is. Why? Because it's his veracity and his integrity, he made the promise. So, here we are as believers. Do we live on promises? What do you think? No, we live on the facts. We live on facts. Okay? We live on facts.

Now, God has promised us that if you believe, we'll live in the facts. Are they promises? In a sense they are, because God has principles in place for spiritual life. And we can ignore those principles and not live by faith, and not live under grace. But everything that God says to us today, in Paul's epistles especially, almost everything there is a fact, not a promise.

It's not a future thing, it's something that's true of me right now. The only thing I can think of as future is maybe I get raptured, I'm going to get a glorified body, I'm going to be able to behold, unobstructed, the glory of the Lord. I'm going to be in the millennial kingdom, ruling and reigning. I don't know. There will be a bunch of other stuff.

All the things that matter about my position in Christ are already true of me. They are not promises, they are facts. In addition, could you say that promises are based on the facts? Yeah, that's okay. And I would say that the way to look at that is from a position and condition viewpoint.

Positionally, I've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. True? You mean there's not one that if I can figure out, if I can do better, I'll get another one? I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus in the heavenlies. Right? True? How about, go ahead. You go back to Abraham and Isaac up there on that mountain. Sure.

At that very moment there, that was either a test for Abraham or it was a... Abraham believed that it wasn't a test, that he actually believed that God would do what he would do. How does that correlate? From the time that Abraham was... that God came to Abraham, And the time he was asked to sacrifice Isaac was about 40 years. Abraham was growing that whole time in the knowledge of God.

He knew him and he trusted him. Did he make mistakes? Tons of them. Tons of them. But by the time God said to him, I want you to take Isaac up on the hill and sacrifice him to me, you notice he didn't hesitate. But he had, I mean, before that time, there's all kinds of things that he did that were really dumb, that demonstrate his lack of faith. But by the time he'd matured in his faith, you know, he's got his hand up, he's ready to go. And the word of God says that he knew and believed that God was able to give life.

See? Boy, I don't know if I have that kind of faith. Well, some days, maybe not. So, promises in a sense, my position isn't a promise, it's a fact. Okay, I'm thinking of a phrase, if my people repent, blah blah, that's if then. It's probably in the Old Testament. It's been taken now, people latch onto that now. Sure they do. To get God's blessing. So you have if then, phrase things that are laws that some people are taking as promises. But there are promises, laws, covenants, and principles. So they can be four distinct things. And I think that's why as believers we're not under a law system, we're under a grace system when it comes to performance. But we do live by principles. Grace has its own principles. And they're mostly based on since, not if.

When we were recreated in the Lord Jesus Christ and given a resurrected life, what we are learning are the principles of that life and how it functions. And it functions in an obedient way. It functions in a receiving of the grace way. It functions in the way that's characteristic with the life of the Lord Jesus. And it functions without a rule book. It's indicative or intuitive within the life to function the way that it does. To be holy, to be separate, to manifest the fruit of the Spirit.

Now, because I have two natures in me, and because I live in a world that doesn't understand any of this, and as a matter of fact is pulling me the other way, I don't act as I should very often and it can either be out of ignorance, I don't know what I am or who I am or what I possess, or I have purposely put myself back under a law system and I will not live under grace.

I like those laws. I like somebody telling me what to do. The problem is it's not consistent with who I am in Christ and so I may even look good. I may even obey. The problem is that if you start to study the law, it isn't long before you realize that, wait a minute, the law is a composite. It's a unit. If you break one law, you broke them all. Oh, man.

It's like breaking one of those tempered glass windows and it shatters into 5,000 pieces and the only way to fix it is to put it all back together and take all the lines out of it. You can't do it. So if you want to live under a law system, help yourself. Spend the rest of your life gluing glass back together. So it's hard, it's tough. So that's why we study the principles of grace, so we know. Because we're to live by faith in the facts. Alright? I've got to move on.

We were saying that, what you were saying that your answer is, if my people, but we're throwing that. If my people, if my people, if my people, yeah. So that's not a current thing. Well, who are his people? Republicans, right? Well, now, independents. No. No. There's only one group of human beings. There are three people groups from the beginning of time. You know what they are?

There's Jews, there's Gentiles, and there's the Church. The only people referred to as His people are the Jews. They're the only ones that are considered His people. The church is not his people, the church is the body of Christ, soon to be the bride. See the difference? Three people groups, Jews, Gentiles, and the church.

I'm thinking that the reason people are using them so much is they see society kind of deteriorating, but also I think there's the mentality, generally speaking, in this country that we've kind of replaced Israel. and all that stuff that really applies to us now.

The big promoter of that was, who was the guy from Liberty University, what's his name? Falwell. Falwell was a post-millennial. That was his philosophy and theology and that's what he preached. And everybody said, oh yeah, he must be right. He's not right. You know, the whole idea that if we obey and really clean our act up, then Jesus will come again. The Muslims think that if they clean that up, the 11th Imam or whatever his name is, is going to show up again.

If that were true. If it were true. If it were, no. Not connected to what you just said, but if it were true, that we had replaced Israel, and those promises applied to us, that would make God a liar. Absolutely it would. And it would mean that he totally lied to us about grace. Totally. because if we have replaced Israel then we're still under law. Every reformed church and every covenant church, that's what they teach. That there's this big, you know, melding of the church and Israel and that we are the continuation of Israel, which is called the church. It's ridiculous, because Israel never was under grace, ever. They received grace from God, But they were never under it as a principle. Never.

And you know what? In the millennial kingdom, they won't be under grace then either. They're going to have the law written in their hearts. Well, the covenant guys say, now we have the law written in our hearts. Oh, really? And we don't have to teach our brother anything because we'll all know? Really, you guys, let's go to the movies. What are we doing here? We don't need to be taught. Well, that wipes out another law.

We've already kind of explained question 12, the difference in God's grace in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the people always came to the table with sin, and God did respond in grace. But it was particular to those particular circumstances. Now, it isn't a matter of... Maybe put it this way. We have already come to the table, right?

And when you got to the table with your sin and weakness, what did God do? What did He do with you? He said, OK, no problem. I'll extend my grace to you. What did He do to you, the guy who showed up with sin and weakness? What did He do with you? Did He forgive you? He died. Who died? We did. I did. That's right.

So he forgave me my sins, but he did not forgive me as a sinner. I was crucified, buried, and resurrected with him, and now I am seated in Christ. My position before God is not as a Jew and not as a Gentile. I am now, from God's perspective and in my position, I am absolutely looked at exactly as Christ is looked at. Do you see that? So, and I live under grace. How cool is that?

Christ doesn't get up every morning and say, I've got to go to page 47 and see what the Father would like me to do today. He doesn't do that. Because His very resurrected life is always pleasing to the Father. Guess what? So is your resurrected life in Him. It's always pleasing to the Father. There's never a time you won't be pleasing to Him because of your position in Christ.

You see that? Because we read it someplace in the Bible. I was reading this week, the death bed musings of J.B. Stoney. They were really cool. Here this guy, he's served the Lord, he says, the one thing we need is acceptance. We need to know and believe we are accepted before the Father.

No kidding. No kidding. Does God say to Courtney now, OK, I'm telling you this, but you still are under a lost system until you believe me? His position is in place. Courtney doesn't get to enjoy the grace that he's under unless he lives by faith. And the cool thing about faith is that it's unmerited. Faith is unmerited. Your faith is to believe what somebody else has already done. Right? Your faith is the triggering mechanism to live in the grace that is already yours. That's okay, I'll stick with that. Is there a difference between faith and believing?

I would say it this way. If you want to define biblical faith, it all has to do with the object of your faith. In other words, in personal biblical faith, my object is in the facts of the Word of God. I can have a belief system and believe anything. I can believe the moon is made of cheese. Whether it is or not is irrelevant. If we're talking about biblical faith, it must have an object and the object must be the Lord Jesus Christ and the facts of him, especially Paul's epistles in the New Testament. So I think that biblical faith, I'm going to add biblical faith, and believing are not the same thing. Because I can believe that I'm going to win the lottery. Is that a fact? Okay, we have to believe. And faith isn't something that you can conjure up yourself, is it? Is faith a gift? No. I think everybody has the ability to believe and have faith. Before I was saved, the stuff I believed was amazing. I was a Catholic. I believed a whole library full of stuff that I don't believe today. Was I a man of faith? Yeah. We all believe.

When's the last time you were on an airplane? When you stepped on that baby, did they say, come on, you're going on the plane? You said, no, I'm going to get on it by faith. I know that baby, when they charge it up, it's going to fly. You flew by faith, didn't you? Now there was a guy up there driving it. But you got on it because you believed that thing would get you to your destination without coming short of the goal. Except for Courtney's mom.

Faith in the person and work of Christ. Belief in that. Yeah, that's fine. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence or the reality of the things of God. The object is really important in what you believe. If you're a Muslim, you believe in the Koran. Okay, so you're a man of faith. The trouble is you don't believe the truth.

Is it dangerous to teach grace? Is it really dangerous to come in a Christian environment and really teach grace? Some people think it's dangerous. What would make you think teaching grace is dangerous? Because you can go out and do whatever you want to do. Is that what grace means? That I can just do whatever I want? Go for it. See, the reason that grace is so... Lewis Barry Chafer says grace is the most hated thing in the world. Because it doesn't leave anything for me to do, other than receive. The other argument is that grace would just create chaos.

If I could just have, quote unquote, and this is by the way my son's philosophy, if I could just have freedom, I could do whatever I wanted and I would be free. Really. What has he forgotten? He's totally controlled by a sin nature. That's the big lie. Here's a human being, here's the sin nature, and the sin nature dictates every step of that person's life while it's whispering in that person's ear, you're free. And you're going around, whatever it wants you to do, you're saying, hey, I'm free. Free to do what? To sin.

See, we don't understand that grace is the greatest motivator there is. There isn't any greater motivator than the grace of God. Because as you learn the facts, they motivate you. You respond to the grace. I think a couple of things. One, the other we've run across too, is grace is apathy. That I don't have to do anything. I just sit here and I'm going to amorphous blob here and not do anything. Because it's unmerited.

That's right. And that was just as much bondage as doing something. Yeah. And so there's that, you know, where it says. So I think we fought apathy on some of these where it's, you know, grace just is no, so that means I just do nothing. Yeah, don't have to do anything. The answer to Courtney, I've had Christians say that to me and I say, well, go for it. Go for it. If you don't think the Holy Spirit can get you off the couch, go for it.

So what is grace designed to accomplish? What's it supposed to do? Question 1, Lesson 16. What's it supposed to do? What's it designed to accomplish in the recipients of grace? God just didn't do it because he did it. He had a purpose in mind. We are to be saved, aren't we? Saved. Let me put this in your mind.

It is a method of controlling conduct without rules. It's designed specifically to prevent sin from reigning. It's not a license to sin, it's a system designed to prevent sin. You know, as you read the Bible, you must say at some point in your life, you look to God and say, well boy, if law hasn't prevented me from sinning, do you have a system that would keep me from sinning? He says, yes I do, it's called grace. Boy, did that scare you, didn't it?

That's why I said we shouldn't be teaching grace. Grace, danger. What do you think? Do you think grace will do that? Do you think grace will prevent you from sinning? No, see, you don't buy it. Think about what I've said. Is grace designed to keep you or prevent you from letting sin reign in your life? is the answer in Romans 6, 14?

We're not under law, but we're under grace. Why? Read the whole verse. Read the rest of the verse. For sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? That's the number one. Why? Because you are under law. Because you're not under law, but you're under grace. Not under law, but under grace. So God says, okay, here's my plan. sin will not have dominion over you anymore, and those of you who have wised up to the fact that sin does have dominion, the only way to get out from under the dominion of sin is how? By being under grace. That's the only way. You can't do it by a law system, you can't do it by your efforts, you can only do it by living under grace.

I didn't say it, he said it. How's your belief in that? See? Very short sentence. Sin's not going to have dominion over me anymore. Why? Because I'm under grace, I'm not under law. Pretty cool. So what's it designed to do? Prevent sin from reigning. It's a system put in place by God to prevent sin. Now, hopefully as we study it, say that again?

What's the mechanism of the grace that's not allowing sin or Here you are, and here's God, and everything about you that was offensive to him has been eliminated. Not only that, he has taken you out of Adam, which is the man that offended him, and he's put you in Christ, who's the man who's glorified him. So here you are, standing before God in Christ. There's not a thing that is distasteful to God about you. So in response to that, He being God, and He Himself unlimited and unmarried, showers all of His blessings on you. All of them. All at one time, not sequentially. All at one time. So you're standing there, and here comes the grace full on.

Are you going to say, oh never mind, I think I'm going to sin? Understand the premise of what I just said? When we begin to realize the intensity of grace in Christ, why would you leave? Is there anything more appealing to you as the man in Christ than the Father's favor? No. The only way you sin is to step out of grace and satisfy the old man, the man that hates God. Now, the reason Steve has just stated the reason we're studying grace so we can find out what those elements are and respond to them. dead to sin.

That's the mechanism. Once you consider yourself dead to sin, you're free to receive all the grace. That's right. See, the thing is that you're either under sin and death, or you're under grace. You don't live on the yellow line. You're either under sin and death, or you're under grace. One or the other. Yeah, that kind of threw me when you started giving your answers there, because being dead to sin, there's another step beyond that.

Alive unto God. I am alive unto God. Yes. What I have, and I didn't have for many years in my Christian life, was the focus on Him and the appreciation of Him to the place where My focus wasn't on sin, it wasn't really even on being dead to sin, but more on, wow, I am in Christ. I know God. I know Him. And my joy is full. And when joy is full, I can slip back and start focusing on sin, and I said a lousy word, or whatever it was, but I can come right back to that joy.

So, to me, that's the purpose of grace, is that I would know Him in that way. That's right. And so, grace turns out to be not only a position of fact, but an experiential thing. Because it has a hold on my heart. He does. And when I begin to realize that He only comes at me in grace now, only.

I mean, what's confession designed to do for a believer? It's designed to get you back in the flow of grace. That's what it's for. Because if you're not, if you're outside the flow of grace, where are you? You're under sin and condemnation. That's where you are, conditionally. It doesn't change your position. So God is always moving in grace to get you to live in the grace.

Well, I think I answered question two, let's go to three. Do you think grace is a natural way of thinking for us? What do you think? Yes or no? The answer obviously is no, and that's why Paul has to tell us. Why do you think he tells us that we're under grace?

Because you wouldn't and I wouldn't have come up on it on our own. If grace isn't taught, If I'm never taught grace, then I will never get it. I will never get it if I'm not taught. Now, I might be self-taught in the sense that I study the Word of God and the Spirit of God is teaching me, but I must be taught grace. I don't come to the table with any grace at all. I've got to learn it. And it's an entire operating system. It's not just a commodity. You don't pull into God's gas station and fill up with 15 gallons of grace. It's an entire system that we live in. Grace. It's not a natural way for us to think. Grace is not natural.

How many thousands of times have you heard this? If I invite you over to dinner, isn't the first thought you have in your mind, you've got to invite me back? If you're living under grace, that thought never enters your mind. Never. You think, oh boy, you're a whack job because that's always annoying.

The third part of this is we will never understand grace until we get into the word and study it. So if you're a believer and you're cruising around and you don't spend any time in your Bible and you don't spend any time in Paul's epistles, what do you know about grace? Nothing. You're not going to get an education in grace in the Old Testament or the Gospels. I'm talking about a full education. You'll see bits and pieces of it, but you've got to go to Paul to get it. And John. Those two guys understood grace, really understood it. And they're the ones that teach us.

Do you agree with this statement? There is no more immoral, rotten and filthy person to the core with sin than a person who is a legalist. What do you think? Because if you say yes or no or you don't want to answer, maybe I'm a little legal. seven and eight. What shall we say then? Is the law sin?

God forbid. No, I had not known sin, but by the law. For I had not known lust or desire, except the law said thou shalt not desire. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of desire. For without the law, sin is dormant, dead.

So, if you understand that the reason for the Mosaic Law was to do what? What's the real reason that God gave the Mosaic Law? In Romans 5, it came alongside. What was it designed to do from God's perspective? makes sin abound. It was never designed to control behavior. So if you want to be a legalist and be under the law, I can rightfully say from a biblical standpoint, there is no more immoral, rotten, filthy to the core than a person who is under the law. Because when you are under the law, what does the law do? It makes you filthy, rotten, sin.

That's what it does. That's what it's designed to do. It's just carrying out his purpose. So when you listen to these guys who give you the 45 things to do, well, you probably don't want to raise your hand and say, according to Mike, you're pretty rotten and immoral. So, how is grace to be known and understood? He just told us it was through study of the Word.

The verses I wrote down was Romans 5.15, the second half. The grace of God and the gift by grace of the one man Jesus Christ has abounded unto many.

John 1.16 and 17. For of his fullness we have received grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

Well, I didn't get halfway through. Actually, I can. You know, this is done. I can teach next week and then you can pick it up when I'm done. All right. Remind me. My memory isn't very good. So remind me where I'm left. Question six for next week. And the next set of questions that Courtney is going to hand out are all in response to. This paper, I think you're the last page. Yours didn't have it, did it? I didn't have a second page. So I read it, too. It went from one. No, they're in here.

Because I think this is this is a paper written by Lewis Barry Chaffer called The Fundamentals of Grace. And there's, I think, seven elements to it. And that's important. He's going to teach starting next week and on for the next week or so. So we're going to pray and then I'll hand these out. This is this is really good material, but read it slowly. Read it before the next class and the following. Because it really is. You need those are the questions. And it's really good.

It's actually the chapter one. So this is really a good five or six pages on understanding, but it's difficult to read. I must admit that as a believer, I started that grace book at least six or eight times and couldn't get my arms around it from the very first chapter. So that's why we're going to discuss it because once you get into the principles that he talks about, it's really, really helpful to understand grace.

That's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for the grace we live under and how we are so dependent on you to teach us what grace is and how it functions and that we are, in fact, those that live under grace and nobody else does, just us. So, Father, we look forward to your grace moving towards us to teach us to live under it. Father, we thank you. We pray in your Son's name. Amen.