Which Side of the Cross - Lesson 9 Week 2
JD McCulley · Jun 4, 2017
Which Side of the Cross, No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926558485057

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, so we're on lesson 9. So lesson 9 and question number 6 is where we left off. Who is the person that we can see grace in? Let's just review here real quick. So we've transitioned from some of the Identification Truths review to now doing a review on Grace. And then we'll move into the third part of the class, which will be on Faith. So we're just reviewing all of the highlights and even going into a little bit greater depth in some of these areas that we've covered over the last several years. kind of bringing it all together. It's an encouragement to just be reminded of all that we've touched on over the years. But right now we're in having just had an introduction of Grace from Mike a couple weeks ago. I'm five questions into this area of Grace, and we're talking about Grace, and using this working definition that we all came up with as a class last week, and largely it's influenced by Macaulay's definition, but I think it came out well. The unmerited, undeserved, and we even said unlimited favor or blessing of God based on the totally adequate work of Christ. It's free for its recipients, meaning it's unmerited, and we said that grace is personal. And why is it personal? Why does Aristotle's definition of grace not go far enough? If you remember that definition, which was a good one. But it was limited in terms of its basis, right?

Its basis for the believer, Christ is, His work is the basis for grace. Without Christ's work, there is no unmerited, there is no undeserved, and there is no unlimited. Does that make sense? So, if we ask the question in number 6 here, who is the person that we can see grace in? It's the Lord Jesus, right? Absolutely.

And I think that we've all probably tried to define grace in a more generic way without considering the work of Christ, but grace, as we'll look at in the Old Testament here a little bit, we'll look at this. Grace was always looking forward to the work of Christ. And for those in the New Testament, it's always looking back to the work of Christ on the cross. And we also see grace in the identification truths. Those are all the things that are wrapped up in the full, complete, and total salvation of man, right?

And so, He is the ultimate basis, and you cannot have unmerited and undeserved favor shown to you without the work of Christ. you are still in a state of sin without, right? And therefore cannot be a recipient of grace in its full capacity. The only way that you can be a recipient of grace as an unbeliever is to have the full and total work of salvation offered to you freely, but not in your account. And what is it that is required of an unbeliever in order to receive that full and complete and total work for payment of their sin?

Believing. That's all. So the only thing that can be done for an unbeliever in response to grace, and they're not fully clear on what all that includes, but it's salvation. It's belief in the very gospel of grace, as we'll talk about here in a little bit. And so there is a response to grace that can be had, but it's done through simply belief. And then so much more happens for the believer who now knows the gospel of grace, and now gets to live in the ministry of grace as the Lord Jesus teaches him and motivates him or her in every area and respect of life. So that's a pretty easy answer. Lord Jesus, number six. Number seven. What does man bring to salvation? Nothing. Nothing? Anything else? Yeah, he brings a couple of things.

Well, we know you did. That's why I know the answer. So, it's not that you're wrong in saying nothing. It's just that there's a negative connotation to what man brings, and so we need to look at that. Let's look at Romans 5-6. Because your answer would be, he brings nothing good.

And you would be absolutely 100% correct. Romans 5, 6. Someone else get Romans 5, 8 and 5, 10. So Romans 5, 6, 5, 8 and 5, 10. And if somebody wants to get all three of those, that's fine. 6, 8 and 10. 6 is for while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Okay.

What did man bring in that verse? One more time if you don't mind. for while we were still helpless at the right time Christ died for the undead. And other translations say maybe without strength. So what is it that man brings in that scenario? Weakness. He brings a complete and total weakness. There is no strength for the ones that Christ died for. They're helpless.

Romans 5.8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in that while we are yet sinners Christ died for us. So what does man bring here? Sin? I'm not going to write all of them. We've got weakness. We've got sin.

Romans 5.10. This one's interesting. who were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, he shall be saved by His life. So it's not just that we're this kind of weak, helpless, sinful person over here, you know, waiting to be offered the grace of the Gospel.

We're actually adversaries, or we have adversity with God. So we're enemies. We bring adversity, don't we? We actually have an agenda. And it's against God. We bring an agenda against God. Is that fair to say? What about 2 Corinthians 12 9? We'll finish with that one. Somebody can grab 2 Corinthians 12 9.

He has said to me, my grace is sufficient for you to know, for power is perfected in weakness. Another version says, my strength is made perfect in weakness. So it's interesting that everything that man brings, God supplies the answer to. So in this case, The lack of strength or the weakness is what allows the Lord to show the perfect strength that He has in redeeming an unredeemable man without the work of the Lord Jesus. So it's His strength being made perfect in our weakness. So again, man bringing weakness.

Grace is used completely in the context of man's salvation in all of these verses. Grace is absolutely necessary in order for man to be saved. And man does have quite a number of things that he brings to the table when it comes to his need for grace. I think that's clear in these verses.

Anybody else have any other thoughts on that one? Does he bring belief? A believer would. does he bring it to salvation? So I think that the one thing that we often get hung up on is the idea of belief potentially having a merit. If we choose to define belief as not having merit, which I believe is absolutely the case, then in that case, it is a unique and one-of-a-kind response that does not add to the salvation, but simply is what is required for it, but has no merit. So, does man bring belief to salvation? It's not that man's belief adds to their salvation, but it does...

Man shows up as an enemy to God, and his faith is in that enmity. He's got faith. We operate on faith whether we're saved or not, we do. So he comes to the table with the capacity for faith, but the object of his faith is totally against God at that point. And so, it's already present, and it's just, it's focus is not on the gospel of grace, it's on his own merit.

Or whatever it is that he's choosing to believe in, which ultimately is something in the created realm, as opposed to the creator himself, right? Romans 1. Does that help? So then no. I think it's a little bit of a tricky wordplay in terms of, does he bring it to salvation? Yeah, he brings faith to salvation, absolutely. But it doesn't add anything to the salvation itself.

Right. I was just thinking maybe we bring free will, we bring will to the cross and through free will comes belief in faith. Okay, so do we have free will? Well, let's back up. The scripture basis of what we're talking about, the word is faith compound. Hearing? That's right. The word of God. So it's a response. It's a response. It isn't a work. It's an obedience of responding correctly. Maybe that's the key here? Yeah, that's definitely involved in what we're talking about. Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God, right? And so you need substance, the substance of the Gospel specifically, in order to believe. It's not a vacuum. It always has an object. It always has an object. Faith always has an object. And I think, Mike, you mentioned earlier, prior to faith having the object of the Gospel, faith has the object of the sinful man, right?

And sin is, as we talked about last week, what is sin? It has dominion over man, right? It's the master, is what it's called. Lord over. And so, in that sense, Joe, I think that we don't have a free will. We operate under the master of sin. So we're not free from mastery over sin. Of sin, rather. I think we have a will for one specific purpose, and that's to use it to believe. So we come as a slave to sin, and willingly. We may not even be aware of it.

But when the object changes, when the gospel is presented, then man has the capacity to believe the gospel. Respond to that. I'll say one other thing, when we get into the third section of this class, we'll talk a lot about the four aspects of faith and the difference between what faith is objectively, what personal faith is, and you get it confused sometimes. Yeah, that's going to be good to review for sure. Cool.

So, again, just to make it clear for me, the question, the way the question raises is, what does man bring to his own salvation? So at the point of salvation, the last act of the old man is to believe the gospel. Is that right? Would that be right? I want to review that before I answer that. Okay. Because I've been caught in some verbiage with the lacked act of the old man being belief. So let me review that and I'll get back to you on it. Okay. Yeah. Is that fair? Okay. Number eight. This is going to be interesting. So I've got some literature to share with you from Lewis Ray Schaeffer on this. Number 8.

In the context of salvation, is God's grace apparent? Absolutely 100%, right? We wouldn't have a problem answering that question. It is primarily apparent in salvation, however, and I'll just read here, hang tight, this is a bit of a longer quote from Schaeffer, but I think it's interesting the light it brings to this question.

It says, the Lamb of God has already taken away the sin of the world. And we know that John chapter 1, 29. The fact that Christ as substitute has already borne the undiminished righteous judgments of God against sin is the sole ground upon which divine forgiveness is now exercised. Does that make sense so far?

The forgiveness of God towards sinners, therefore, is not an immediate act of grace. It is rather a judicial pardon of a debtor in view of the fact that his debt has been fully paid by another. We could not know how much he paid, yet though unable to measure redemption, we may rejoice in the fact that all, even to the measure of the righteous reckoning of God, is absolutely and eternally paid by Christ. It is not a question of the relative benefits which might possibly accrue to the sinner under one form of forgiveness or another, where he forgiven graciously or in strict justice, it is a question of the basis upon which any divine forgiveness can be extended righteously."

So, that's lengthy, that's a lot of words there. The point is that regardless of How much has actually been taken care of in terms of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? It's not required that we understand every single aspect of what was satisfied, is it? I think we talked about this a little last week.

When you experience the grace of God and salvation right at the very beginning, you do not understand all that the Lord in His grace has satisfied through the very forgiveness of sin and the judgments that were all satisfied on the cross. We don't necessarily fully understand how that affects our entire gift of grace and forgiveness. But yet it doesn't take away the fact that all of it has been applied to you and made credited to your account, so to speak. Is the cross of Christ a gracious act? Let's look at our definition. Is the cross of Christ a gracious act? Well, without it, we don't have a good definition. No, forget us. I'm just talking about the act of Christ being crucified. In and of itself, is that a gracious act? Right, that's the justification, right? That's where the courtroom and the gavel, and the offended, and the offendee, is that a word? Sure. That's where all of that is satisfied based on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

See, the cross, I don't think, was a gracious act. Well, because the payment. Yeah, there was a payment. There was an if-then. And it cost God a lot. It did. It cost his own son. From that, grace is extended, but the act itself, the death of Christ for the sins of the world, was not a gracious act. But without it, we don't get it. That's right.

Does that make sense? So, God saves sinners by grace. By reviewing what we just read, God keeps through grace those who are saved and God teaches in grace those who are saved and kept how they should live and how they may live to His eternal glory. So, He saves sinners by grace, He keeps them through grace, and He teaches them through grace that they might be motivated by that very grace for life. Does that make sense?

Saves, keeps, teaches. I think that's interesting. Number nine, the best understanding of grace is comprehended by whom? People in this class. We'll come back to that. The best understanding of grace is comprehended by whom? So what are we saying here? Those who are believers of the life of Bapaw, can they realize how much is forgiven?

Okay. Well, that's interesting. One of the things you said was how much. Okay. So... What are some of the things in a believer's life that teaches a believer how much? Based on kind of what Russ was just saying. How much? Let's kind of flip it around. How little, right? How little he brought to the table at one point.

When a believer recognizes just how unworthy and how incomplete and total need they are for the very grace of God. They begin to comprehend things of grace in much greater depth, don't you think? I think so too. And that's in the Word of God. We're not talking about something that's a spiritual experience per se, although those can be a part of that.

But it's the need, right? You had a need You had a very specific need when you became a believer, didn't you? What was your need? Did you need to get up and walk to the front of the... to the church and feel embarrassed that everybody was looking at you? I don't know if you guys went to the front. Who went to the front? A lot of times, man. I didn't know. I was like, I'll just do this. This is my backup. This is my backup walk. Some of us went to the front. What was your need? As an unbeliever. I needed a savior. You needed a savior. And so you understood the grace of the gospel because of your need.

And as we get into the greater depths of grace and its teaching, and how unmerited and undeserved and unlimited, and we look at grace in the scripture, it is our need that helps us to further comprehend it. And that's what God uses to help us understand His grace is our very need. I mean, everywhere in the Old Testament, we'll talk about it, God shows His grace, even then, based on man's needs. So, I would just answer that question. that along the lines of grace never has any trouble for those who are unworthy and in need. It never has a problem expressing itself in the word for those that come to the table recognizing their full and total need of Him.

We were visiting with some people last week and talking about this subject and one of the persons said, you know, I've got this need and that need and I pray all the time that God would make me strong so that I can overcome. And I said, no, you should pray that you get weak. And that was kind of an assault against them. They went, wow, that's not. And so we had a discussion about need. Why weak? I'm asking the question. Why would we pray that we might be weak and not strong? How many times have we prayed for strength? Okay, is that wrong?

I think it's the heart of the prayer itself that's more important here, but In order to think more biblically along those lines and maybe even pray in such a way that's more consistent with how God views us and sees us, in our weakness, His strength is made perfect. We just read that in 2 Corinthians 12.

It's God's glory, ultimately. And God's glory is made evident through His perfect strength, through His own. He shows His strength through His own, in His own unique way. And He is glorified, not the believer. We're the vessel. And the weaker the vessel, and the more dependent upon the Lord Himself, is where the Lord does His stronger work, according to the scripture. So, in prayer, might we focus on his strength being made perfect and our weakness being all that we have?

I think it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Could you say that the greater intimacy you have with Christ, the more understanding you have of grace? Absolutely. Right? Grace is not a definition that lacks personal connection to the very person of the Lord Jesus, right? It's one and the same. So in order to know grace, you must know Christ. And that's where intimacy is involved.

Yeah. I think they're one-on-one connection there. Okay. We have number 10 nailed down, don't we? So we'll skip that one. We answered that right out of the gate. I'm glad we did. I think it's helped a lot. Number 11. Can the one distributing grace be put under obligation by those receiving grace? He's debtor to no one. You guys agree with that? Yes. So what's his basis for grace? Love. Okay. So what is love? God. Okay. Oh, corny. God is love. So love is a characteristic of God, right? So we could say that it's based on His character, right? It's who He is.

It's what He does. It's because He wanted to do it, not because He had to do it or felt compelled to do it because He saw us down here, you know, sad-faced and lonely and without any hope. He didn't do it because of that. He did it because he wanted to do it. Because it's who he is. It's what he does. It's love. And grace is a component of love. I don't think you can confuse his righteousness with his love, though, because like we talked about before, The crucifixion of Christ on the cross was not an act of love and it was not an act of grace.

It had to do with God's righteousness and His holiness and it was a horrible thing but there was a satisfaction that had to be paid to God for the sins of the world and whether He would extend it to man's salvation or not was irrelevant. It wasn't part of it. The eternal covenant has no place in there for man. It's between the father and the son to solve the sin issue. And it's not a loving, gracious thing. It's something that has to do with righteousness and holiness so that God can be satisfied about the offense against him regarding the sin of the creation. At that point, He's under no obligation to offer salvation to anybody.

He can't be, because if he was, then this question would be answered, yeah, you can put God under obligation. It's like another thing. Why does God forgive me my sin? Is it based on the fact that I confessed Him? Or the fact that I'm sorry? has nothing to do with it. He forgives me because of what Christ did on the cross.

That's the sole reason he does it. Or can do it. Can do it. So in his righteousness he is satisfied by the payment of the Lord Jesus on the cross and now has judicially satisfied and is now able to through His characteristic of love, offer forgiveness to us. They are not one and the same, but because of one area of satisfaction, the other is made available to us.

I would have a hard time saying that the work of the cross didn't include the love of God, simply because I realize that by definition in the Eternal Covenant side of it, but It's not like we can divide God's characteristics apart from one another. No. In the sense that... I would say this though, that the cross was not based on God's love. No, I would not say that either. But at the same time, It is the character of God that wants the satisfaction and the insult for sins paid for so that he can love. He can do what his heart would want him to do, which is offer him. But he's under no obligation.

It's really important to understand that part of it. Do you understand why that's important? If the judicial side of the cross is not satisfied, apart from the gracious offer of love, or the loving offer of grace rather, then he has obligation to us in some capacity. What makes it even more confusing is I was placed into Christ when Jesus was finishing the deal between He and God. During that transaction, we were all placed into Christ.

Okay, so we've got five identification truths, right? What are they? That we talk about often in the Holocaust. Death, ascension, and seeing. Okay. So, we were identified with Christ's death. Why? to be put to death in Christ, right? So is that a judicial thing, or is that love and grace and all the stuff that we're talking about? That's why I've had trouble with this whole concept.

I know Mike's right. I don't even know I'm right. I just know you are. We'll talk later. I heard that thought in there. There's a balancing thought maybe if I could share it. I don't know if this is going to fit, Mike, that God so loved the world. that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might have eternal life. He shall not perish. He so loved us that He gave. So encompassed within His love is this judicial act that extends to us. Yes, He was offended and sin was out of And through his love for us, he endured that.

Love doesn't put God under an obligation. I didn't say obligation. It included that he obligated himself might be the way to say that. I think, but I don't know if that's the right way to say it. I'm just saying that there's a balance there when we say He had no obligation to reach out to us.

Doesn't that leave out His love for us? He obligated Himself by His love. Well, Ephesians says you're saved by grace through faith. In that matter yourself it is a gift from God. The gift is because He loved us. But the salvation isn't because He loved us. It's a gift by faith through grace.

I think that... I'll shut up. No, no, no. Don't ever feel that way, please. I think that's a valid point. Do you guys agree? It's a very interesting and valid point. So, thank you for sharing it. I think that what Mike is communicating, I think what I'm also trying to bring maybe a little bit of balance to is that we cannot have the work of the cross being involved in any kind of obligation to us. He did not do that out of obligation to us.

He did it out of his desire to have sin satisfied once and for all, and it cost him greatly to do that. Because of his satisfaction with sin, he is able to do the things that he does by giving us that gift of his Son. God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, and that is what He did as an offer of the Gospel. So we start to see that in the New Testament and the Epistles as the Gospel comes together and is made clear and is communicated throughout the book of Acts and then most clearly by Paul. We start to see exactly how He gave his son specifically as a payment for the sin problem.

And so that is the expression of his love. And the only thing I would want to caution us is that we not get overly complex with how we split the difference between the love and the judicial side of God, because He is a complete and total, all-encompassing, sovereign, righteous, just omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, immutable, eternal, loving God. He has all these things at once, but we have to be careful how we say it, where we identify His expression of love and the cross.

I think that's the point. There's the judicial side of it that prevents obligation from being a part of it, and then there is the the following act of his love by offering us the gospel of salvation because of what he did to satisfy his justice. Is that fair? Yeah. Could we say that when he created the world and the humans he was desirous of sharing himself with this creature, this creative being.

And the cross, he desires of settling the issue of sin and all its, you know, everything that it encompasses. And the two do not overlap. They're not mixed together. The judicial had to be satisfied so love could be expressed. But he was desirous of bringing man back to himself as well as desires of settling the issue of sin. Yeah. He wants to share himself. That's who he is. Right.

He doesn't need man to do that, does he? He has the triunity of God allows expressions of love to be to occur within the triunity of himself. So he does not need man in order to love. I think we might have mentioned someone like Allah in the Quran would need an object, would need to create man in order to have an object for love because he is not triune. So he needs a creature in order to express certain aspects of himself. God is not that way.

However, He created because He loved. And you are a part of that creation. And what makes you unique about the rest of the creation is that you were created in His image. Which extends a whole wealth of other things that apply to mankind that don't apply to other created such as animals or even the angelic realm? Yes. I hate to disagree. Oh, we do.

If I'm born in Adam, am I born in God's image? Well, are you talking about Adam prior to the fall? Or after the fall? I mean, Adam and Eve were created in God's image, but from then on, Were humans created in God's image, procreated in God's image? I don't think they were. We have the image now of a fallen man. Of the fallen man, but those of us who are in Christ, you can say yes, we are. But those outside of Christ, are they created in the image of God?

The image of God, so this will be interesting, is the image of God Does it have to do with the characteristics of mankind or the perfect expression of those characteristics? Well, you can't have the perfect expression without the right source. Right. But you can have an image. I'm suggesting that when we look at what does it mean to be made in the image of God and how does that differentiate us from my dog? Right. that image is a mirror, right?

We're talking about a finite set of attributes or characteristics that make up mankind and that relate to the infinite attributes of God himself. The way that I've learned it is that you have sovereignty, righteousness, justice, and so forth. And we as little lords over the earth, given that command to go and care for all that he has created, have these attributes that are in his image that allow us to exercise a certain amount of sovereignty. Which is not ultimate and complete, infinite sovereignty, But we can't have sovereignty or rule over as he asks us to have.

Righteous is the one that really gets you because how can man be righteous? How can he have a finite version of God's righteousness being made in his image and be fallen? So what happens to God's image the moment in the man, the moment that Adam falls? Now you have a flawed image. We have separation. We have death. Yeah, we have separation. We have death. That's right. It's sin. Missing the mark.

Dominion? You don't have dominion anymore? Dominion? Well, you still have dominion. We've become enemies of the one that we're made in the image of. Yes. We still have the created realm that you just now we have dominion in such a way where we don't we don't exercise the minion in the way that we were designed to. We exercise it to serve ourselves rather than as a gift of God, right? We can keep our dog in the kitchen.

So I guess the question here is, is the image of God something that unfallen Adam had and now we as believers have again. And in between we don't have the image of God. Because that's kind of what it sounded like you were saying. Well, you know from the Romans verse, that Christ died for the ungodly. If you're ungodly, you're not like God. And that's what in Romans chapter 1 and other places, God doesn't describe human beings as anything other than they're not godlike. Right. No, children of wrath. Yeah. Right. So when one is saved, not only the original purpose is accomplished, but also actually superior to what he originally intended with Adam. Yeah.

Because we're now sons. What do you guys think? The fact that all of us are believers, that we are called, that we are the heart, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, that's a big deal. It's a big deal. Who can extend to the limits of God's grace in their minds?

We can only comprehend a little bit of it. I'm just kidding. I'll also talk to you later. Isn't that what he says in Ephesians, that for the ages to come he's going to raise a yule log with his kids? The Ages to Come, Grace is a component of our learning and education with the Lord Jesus. The Ages to Come.

Well, I didn't finish quite yet. We do have a number of, and I want to summarize these because I think I'm on the last question here. Explain the difference of God's grace in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. So, are you going to be here next week? Yeah. Well then you've got the floor. Yeah, you can start next week. Alright, well let's pray then.

Father, thank you so much for just the growing and the learning that each of us have in our own way and just the joy it is to bring it together in a class setting and just be able to talk about you. Lord, I thank you for those here and just the very mind of Christ that you've given them and just the grace that you are teaching them in their own circumstances. Lord, we absolutely as an entire body just recognize our need for you and just the joy that it is to know that we are in the body of Christ, that we've been placed in that. for your bride, and we are very special to you because you love us. You loved us first, Lord, but we do love you very, very much, and we thank you for the truth of who we are in Christ. I pray that we might be motivated this week by that same grace. It's in your name we pray. Amen.