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God’s Plan A
The Law of Moses was never God’s first choice, it was Plan B
This was His plan A.
Exodus 19:3-6
And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
Notice he said obey my voice and keep my covenant, not my commandments.
What covenant was God talking about? The covenant that he had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was already in place and it was the very reason God had heard their cries in slavery and delivered them.
A covenant is a relational agreement between two parties where both sides bring benefits to the other. Both sides have obligations to fulfill in the agreement, it is conditional on both sides keeping their agreement. But with Abraham God initiated the covenant, it was not up to Abraham to do anything, it was entered into by a promise of what God would do. This is the same covenant he was asking to children of Israel to enter into and keep.
He also said, if they kept his covenant, they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, sound familiar?
1 Peter 2:9-10
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
This was the offer that was on the table for the nation of Israel when God called them to come to him at Mt. Sinai but they refused.
Exodus 20:18-21
Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.
The people rejected God’s offer, exit plan A!
This was plan B.
In rejecting the relational covenant and choosing instead to have a mediator (Moses and the priesthood) God then gave them the whole law. Since they would not listen to his voice and obey it they had to have a written law to follow.
Paul said in Galatians 3:19
What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed (Christ) should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.
What was the transgression? Refusing his first offer!
Then Paul says “Before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” Galatians 3:23-25
So, Paul says that the law was added to guard us (enclose, shut in) and to tutor us until Christ would arrive but now, since Jesus has come, we are no longer under the tutor.
We are now back to plan A!
Now we hear his voice and obey. The only mediator is Jesus, not priests or pastors or anyone else, there is no one between us and our God. We enter into his covenant when we are in Christ, now the law is no longer necessary. We are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Going back to the law is to return to plan B, with one BIG exception, plan B is not available anymore. The written code is still there but the atonement provided for under the law is no longer available.
Hebrews 10:26
For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
To sin willfully is to return to the Law, it is to reject the offering of Christ and to go back to a system that is obsolete and has been removed.
In the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD every single vestige of the sacrificial system of atonement was destroyed. Not just the temple but all the instruments that went along with it. AND the lineage of the Levitical priesthood that was required to prove the true priesthood. Regardless of what some people may think, there will never be a return to true Judaism. What is left is Rabbinical Judaism that has no atonement for sin.
That is why there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, that age is over and has been for almost 2000 years.
Thank God we have a better covenant based on better promises.
Hebrews 10:12-14
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
Blessings,
Jeff Martin
Lavish Grace
How would you feel if an extremely wealthy person took a liking to you for some unknown reason and because they liked you so much they offered you an extremely privileged position in their business, let’s say “Sr. Vice President of Public Affairs and their personal ambassador to everybody”? I’ve never heard of a position like that but just go along for the sake this discussion. Then they begin to use their wealth and influence to do things for you that are way outside of what bosses usually do for their employees. They treat you so well that it’s kind of embarrassing because you know you haven’t done anything for them that would facilitate this type of lavish treatment. Then you discover that this position is not only permanent but a lifetime appointment!
You begin to wonder what your friends and family think about all this and then you find out….some of them have the same position as you! It turns out this guy likes everybody! And he doesn’t mind using his wealth to bless anyone that decides they like him too.
Sounds to good to be true? Well, it is if your looking for a wealthy person that treats people that way but it is exactly how our Heavenly Father treats us. In fact, instead of a lifetime position it’s an eternal position and he wants to spend an eternity showing us how much he loves us. I’ll prove it!
Ephesians 2:4-7
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Anytime a verse starts out with “But God” you know it’s going to be good!
Without going into the whole “saved by grace” discussion (I’ll save that for another time), I want to concentrate on how much God loves us and how he has planned to show that to us. Notice it says that he has raised us up (out of our position of death) and caused us to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ. This is a position that God has elected to place us in simply because of his love and mercy toward us and it is a place of great privilege. I won’t go into too much detail with this but it’s like being in the top position in a large company. You sit next to the boss at every meeting, you have authority to carry out the bosses business plan, you can evict those that are causing distress or harm to those who are a part of the company and you can write checks in the bosses name! This is just a brief example but you get my drift on just how awesome it is to be in this position.
The best part of the whole deal is the reason he has placed you there, look at verse 7 “That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace”. Wow! That’s why he put you there, so that throughout eternity he can lavish the riches of his grace on you. God doesn’t just talk about his goodness he demonstrates it! Just in case you haven’t gotten the full extent of what we’re talking about, let me break verse 7 down a little further.
Paul says “in the ages to come”, the Greek word for ages is “aeon” and it’s where we get our English word eon. It means a vast period of time, sometimes referring to eternity. Most people think of eternity as the afterlife, when we get to heaven (or wherever your destination might be) but we are living in eternity right now! Eternity encompasses all of time past, present and future and God uses all the ages of time to demonstrate his goodness to us, it will never ever end! If you trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation then you are in position for the overwhelming goodness of God.
In verse 6 the phrase “made us sit together” is present tense, this is not in the sweet by and by, it’s right now! So don’t think of this as some reward in heaven for all your good deeds, this is a current position for the purpose of God showing his love to you and through you and it’s by the exceeding riches of his grace so it’s nothing you’ve earned.
There’s another great phrase “the exceeding riches of his grace”! I’ll barrow a term from the psalmist David, Selah! Just stop and let that soak in a little bit, meditate on it a while. Before reading any further, ponder what that means to you.
Ok, I hope you really did meditate on that, now let’s break it down in pieces. First we’ll take the word grace and since you may not have read any of my other articles on the subject I’ll explain that grace is unmerited divine favor, something we didn’t earn and don’t deserve but it is so much more than that. Strong’s dictionary defines it as “the divine influence on the heart and it’s reflection in the life”. Grace is not just favor or God’s forgiving our sin, it does something to us, it changes us and empowers us. Paul said that by the grace of God I am what I am. In other words it was grace that turned Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Jesus and his followers into Paul the Apostle of Christ who took the gospel to the gentiles and wrote over half of our New Testament. That’s the power of grace at work! It’s not a weak excuse for weak people who invoke grace every time they wallow in the same sin that’s held them down all their life. Grace is a powerful medium of change!!!
Since we’re talking about the exceeding riches of his grace, we know what riches are, an abundance of possessions right? Lots of stuff. Well, God has lots of stuff! Not only does he have lots of stuff, he has exceeding amounts of lots of stuff!
I want to take a look at the Greek word for exceeding. It’s one of Paul’s favorite adjectives. Here he uses “hyperballo” in other places he uses “hyperbole” both are variations of the same word meaning to throw beyond, to excel, abundance. Our English word hyperbole is just a transliteration of the Greek. In other words we just use their word instead of coming up with our own and pronounce it in an english way. In many places that Paul uses the word it is a translated as abundance, meaning beyond measure. We use the English word hyperbole to mean something that is an exaggerated overstatement to the point being ridiculous.
To some people the goodness and riches of God’s grace may seem overstated, exaggerated, even ridiculous because they can’t imagine that God is really that good. They see him as an overbearing totalitarian that wants everybody to toe the line or else. They can’t imagine that he loves them so much that he wants to take an eternity revealing his kindness to them but the truth is that there is no measure to the riches of his grace, it’s beyond anything we can imagine. Paul uses the strongest language he has available to describe the goodness that the Father wants to lavish on you and he has positioned you in a place with Christ so that you can receive it.
The Father desires for you to take full advantage of the position he has placed you in, it breaks his heart when we don’t receive the grace prepared for us. Jesus went to the cross and died so that you could be there and to say that you don’t deserve it is to say that he didn’t do enough! Please receive the exceeding riches of his grace today!
Blessing,
Jeff
Grace Guarantees the Promise
Romans 4:16
Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
God has set things in order so that the promises are available to everybody, no one is excluded because of something done in their past, or yesterday for that matter. Anyone who has the faith to take God at His word and persevere will receive the promises! But, there is something we have to understand about receiving the promises of God, the righteous are the ones who receive. There is no contradiction in what I am saying but a misunderstanding of righteousness that has permeated Christian thought for centuries.
Matthew 5:20
For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
As a quick side note, please keep in mind that the “kingdom of heaven” is NOT the sweet by and by, Jesus taught and told his disciples to preach “the kingdom of God is at hand”, meaning that it was here. Jesus said “The kingdom of God is within you.” Many other verses attest to the truth that the kingdom of God or heaven came with the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God. The promises are our inheritance from our Father God and they come through his kingdom. This is a whole other subject but it is important to the discussion. Ok, next verse.
1 Corinthians 6:9-10
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
As you can see, those who choose their own way over righteousness are disqualified to share in the kingdom of God. It makes no difference what our opinion is concerning the list of behaviors that Paul lays out in 1 Cor. 6, only what God has to say about it matters and he says that those things will keep you from the promises of God. I can believe with all my heart that in the end these will make it into the kingdom of God because he is a loving and merciful God but that won’t change his mind. He is not talking about saved people who backslide or fail in an area, although those things can greatly hinder his purposes, he’s meaning those who make it a lifestyle. In Romans 1 & 2 Paul refers to those who practice such things, in other words a deliberate choice to ignore what God says and live according to our own morality, these will be prevented from receiving the kingdom.
Then you have the Pharisees from Matt. 5 whom Jesus himself said could not receive the promise of the kingdom either. These were ultra-religious Jews who carried out the law of Moses to the extreme. They even made up extra rules to make themselves more righteous in appearance. Paul the apostle was a Pharisee in his life before conversion and he said that according to the law he was blameless but he considered all of the that a pile of crap compared to the righteousness of God that he received by faith.(my paraphrase of a portion of Philippians 3). Everything they did was for outward appearances, they really weren’t concerned about God, they wanted to be held in high esteem by those around them and to be judgmental and condescending to those they deemed below them.
These are two ends of the morality spectrum and neither of them will be qualified to inherit the promises of God. You can’t be unrighteous(sinner) and you can’t be self-righteous(Pharisee), there is only one type of righteousness that counts with God.
You see, there are two kinds of righteousness. There is the righteousness of obedience and the righteousness of faith. One comes from the law and one comes from God, one is lacking and one is complete. The righteousness of obedience is lacking because we will never be 100% at keeping the law and because the motivation of the heart is not considered but the righteousness of faith is complete because it comes from God himself and is not determined by our ability to follow the rules!
Here’s a little story about the righteousness of faith!
Abraham had been given the promise from God at 75 years old that he would become a great nation and through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. (Please keep in mind that these guys lived well into their hundreds at this time) Then, at 85, God promised him again that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. There was only one problem, he had no children! It had been ten years since the first promise and at 85 it seemed even more unlikely. Abraham let his own reasoning and his wife talk him into producing a son through his wife’s maidservant, Hagar but God spoke again and told him it would be a son from his wife Sarah that would be his heir. He would have to wait another 14 years, when he was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, before the promise was fulfilled. By that time it was no longer just improbable but impossible for them to have children, that’s when faith had to move past human understanding and lay hold of the promise.
Abraham had the righteousness of faith. We know this because Romans 4:22 and several other places tell us that Abraham’s faith was accounted to him as righteousness, therefore faith=righteousness as far as God is concerned. He even deposits righteousness into our account. That’s what it means when it says that righteousness was imputed or accounted to Abraham. It is an accounting term that means to consider, count or number something as it actually is so if God says faith and righteousness are the same thing then they are the same. And Romans 4:24 says that it will be imputed to us also, if we believe! Now, if we have had righteousness deposited in our account then we are qualified to receive from God and it is grace that has made sure we qualify because it didn’t come through our works.
Faith operates best when the improbable becomes the impossible, when all our resources and understanding have been exhausted and when we have been forced to either believe God or give up. Some will just abandon the promise because of a lack of perseverance but some will hold on until they receive. Although, once we have experienced the faithfulness of God, it becomes easier to disregard our own understanding and man’s ability and move directly to faith in order to acquire from God the things we see in His word, the promises of the kingdom.
It is the righteousness of faith that comes because of God’s grace that qualify us to inherit the things of the kingdom. Grace truly guarantees that possibility for everyone to be qualified to receive the promises, it’s up to us to believe!
Blessings,
Jeff
Moron Grace! Sorry, More On Grace!
1 Timothy 1:8-11
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
For those of you who insist on being under the law of Moses and (I cringe as I write this) that includes the Ten Commandments because they are part of the law, you must be willing to take your place among this list of offenders. If the law is not made for righteous people then you can’t achieve righteousness by keeping it, therefore you assign yourself to the place of the sinner when you measure yourself by the law and not according to God’s grace.
Paul said that the law is good……IF…….it is used lawfully. To use the law lawfully you apply it to the law breakers, along with the punishment prescribed by the law, and they include all those who rebel against God by refusing to be reconciled to Him through the blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, those who have believed in faith and been reconciled to God have been excluded from the law. In fact, in Colossians 2:14 Paul says that the handwriting of requirements (which is the law) have been wiped out and removed from us because they were working against our relationship with God, so he took it out of our way and nailed it to the cross! If you have been exempt from a requirement you couldn’t keep, why would you insist on trying anyway? You would have to be a moron!
It blows me away to think of how easily we slip back into the thinking that we have to perform at a certain level to be okay with God, that if we just try really hard and do all the right things God will be happy with us. The worst thing is that most of our christian teaching will help send you back down that road. We are an achievement based society and without the law we think we don’t have a way to gauge our progress.
Here’s how it would go for most of us: Am I keeping the first commandment, no other gods before Him, check! Well, unless you count the fact that I put most of my time and energy into acquiring and maintaining a bunch of stuff instead of into my relationship with God. Okay, maybe half a check. Second commandment, no engraved images, no idols, check! I don’t worship idols, uh, unless you count money because I have to have it to buy all that stuff I don’t really need and I’ll do almost anything to get it, oh and there are images engraved into all our coins. Okay, uncheck. Third commandment, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, check! I would never do that as long as you don’t count all the OMG’s and other times I invoke the name of God with no honor or the respect that is due to Him. Okay, I think I’ll quit while I’m behind, before the hole gets any deeper.
That’s a hole you’ll never dig your way out of!
There is a way to determine if you are making progress, Paul calls it the “fruit of the Spirit”. Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law…….22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self- control. Against such there is no law.
This is something that is produced out of a relationship with God, not by our own attempts to gain His favor. The fruit is produced by His character being infused into us through constant dependence on His goodness and grace and if you can see evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in your life then you are making progress. If not, don’t pull out the ten commandments and try harder, change your focus to Jesus and what he has done to remove that burden from you. Spend time just soaking in the freedom that is in Christ and enjoying the fact that you have already been accepted through grace. (Eph 1:6)
Does that mean that we can just do anything we want because we are under grace? Shut up! I’m sick and tired of that argument, it clearly says that we should walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit. If we are allowing the Holy Spirit of God to lead and guide our steps do you think He will lead us into sin? The very title of “holy” should give you a clue, uh no, he will lead us into righteousness. In fact, Jesus said he will lead us into all truth and bring to our remembrance every thing he taught and I don’t think he taught anyone to sin. Plus, the Holy Spirit has the ability to change our heart, something the law could never do. The law produces hard, rigid and unfeeling people, the Holy Spirit produces loving, kind, gentle and self-controlled people.
The law is a strict taskmaster because you have to keep every single requirement or you are guilty of being a lawbreaker, even if it is the least of the rules. The law requires perfection! And since we aren’t perfect we have to suffer the guilt and condemnation that accompany failure when under the law. So which is better for us, the law or the Holy Spirit? Which one would you rather be under? I know what my choice is because I’m not a moron!
My point is, if you have confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and have been made righteous through the work of the cross, the law is not for you! Rejoice in the fact that you are under grace and you can let someone else worry about all the Thou shalt nots!
If you have never trusted Christ you will be judged by the law and each one will be found guilty under the law. The penalty? Death and an eternity in hell. Sorry, there is no way around it so the best thing to do is get your exemption while you still have the chance! It’s easy, just agree with God that you are a sinner and confess that you believe Jesus died for your sins and that God raised him from the dead and voilà, you are forgiven of your sins and exempt from the law.
Blessings,
Jeff
Grace and Holiness
Do grace and holiness really go together? I mean, if God is constantly having to give you grace, how can you be holy, if you need grace then you must have done something wrong, right? If you were holy then you wouldn’t need grace……would you? These terms seem like a contradiction because our understanding of them is usually based on a religious mindset.
In the English language we use the word “grace” in a very different manner than New Testament grace, which is the Greek word “charis”. When we hear the word we think of a grace period where our negligence is overlooked for a time and we are not charged the penalty of our transgression. In religious terms grace has come to mean being able to transgress the laws of God without penalty, that because we are under grace we will not suffer the consequences of our actions. God just overlooks our sin and we can go on our merry way. This understanding of grace has led to doctrines that frown upon grace or at least limit it because it is seen as a license to sin.
We are not in a grace period, where God overlooks our sin until we can get it all together, but we are in a dispensation of grace. Dispensation is defined as; an exemption from a set of rules or usual requirements. What does that mean? It means, you can’t break the law if you are not under it!!! There is a big difference in being given amnesty and being exempt from the law altogether. Under amnesty you are guilty but pardoned, being exempt means there was never a transgression in the first place!
Romans 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
“Dominion over” comes from a Greek word that means lordship. In other words, do you want to be under the lordship of sin because you choose to be under the law or do you want to be under the lordship of Jesus Christ and under grace? Which one makes a better master, sin or Jesus? One or the other is going to be calling the shots and it is up to each one of us to make a choice.
There are some very religious people who have chosen to place themselves under the law, thinking they are submitting to Jesus when in reality they are submitting to the dominion of sin. The law has no power to change you, it only identifies wrong behavior and motivates by fear of punishment. If you are guilty of breaking the law you are condemned to receive the penalty for breaking it. In contrast, grace is by definition, the divine influence on the heart and it’s reflection in one’s life. Grace leads you into right behavior through a motivation of love! There is no condemnation under grace.
You see, the law has been fulfilled by Jesus Christ and his sacrificial death and replaced with the grace of God, which is divine enablement to fulfill the requirements of God without the threat of punishment as the motivating factor. In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul calls the law, and specifically the ten commandments, the ministry of death and the ministry of condemnation. If you are in Christ you are not under the law but under grace. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus!” (Romans 8:1)
Now we are beginning to see how you can be under grace and be holy at the same time.
Matthew 5:20
20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Does that sound like a grace statement? I mean, the scribes were charged with making copies of the law by hand, writing each letter one at a time. They knew every letter and punctuation mark in the first five books of the bible by heart! The Pharisees were the lawyers of their day, they had studied the law and every commentary on the law until they could quote it forwards and backwards, they knew the law! To them, righteousness meant keeping the law without fail. They even had laws on how to keep the laws, their whole life revolved around the Law of Moses.
Now Jesus comes along and makes a statement like verse 20. It sounds like he is saying that to get into heaven we have to do a better job at keeping the law than the scribes and Pharisees. Impossible! How could Jesus expect us to do that? The issue here is that Jesus is talking about a different kind of righteousness, one that exceeds theirs. Exceeds means to go far over and above, super abundantly. The kind of righteousness he is talking about is so far above what comes from keeping a bunch of rules that you really can’t even compare the two, you have to contrast them like light and dark. If you get them confused you end up under the dominion of sin.
So what is Jesus saying here and how does he expect us to achieve that kind of righteousness? The answer is, he doesn’t! The kind of righteousness that he is talking about, the kind that super abundantly exceeds the kind that comes from the law is the righteousness of God! Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and HIS righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Nobody achieves that kind of righteousness, they receive it by faith.
Paul, in contrasting his pedigree as a Pharisee and his position of being in Christ makes this statement in Philippians 3:7-9
7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.
Last week I was talking about trusting in grace, this is one element of that, we cannot trust in our own ability to acquire righteousness. And why would we want to when we can receive God’s by faith? In Romans 10:3 Paul says that the because the Pharisees were ignorant of God’s righteousness and tried to achieve their own, they have actually rejected the righteousness of God. Why would anybody refuse what God is willing to give them in favor of something they can’t attain?
In 1Peter 1:15, immediately after saying that we should put all our eggs in the basket of grace, Peter tells us to be holy, to not be conformed to our our former pursuits. He says that we should be holy because God is holy. Holiness is an outflow of righteousness, it means to be blameless and pure. We have already seen that when we are under grace that we are blameless concerning the law because we are not under it’s requirements. Therefore, our holiness is also something that is given by God and received by faith. We are His holy people because Jesus paid the price for our holiness and our conduct should reflect the righteousness and holiness that God has imputed to us through faith.
If sin is a major issue in your life, maybe you are under the dominion of it instead of being under the dominion of grace. You will gravitate towards the thing you focus on the most. If that “thing” is trying to keep a set of rules you will invariably break them! In 1 Corinthians 15:56 Paul says that the strength of sin is the law! It is a divine paradox that sin would be strengthened by the very thing that says don’t do it. On the other hand, if you focus on the goodness and grace of God then you will automatically begin to operate out of His goodness and even the need for the law becomes obsolete.
In Christ and under grace you are holy, blameless and above reproach in the sight of God. Grace and holiness go together like a hand in a glove. Holiness should be the outflow of the grace that is upon your life!
If you think that because you are under grace that you can sin and get away with it, that grace is a license to sin, you are not under grace but under deception! Satan has fooled you into thinking that God doesn’t care about your behavior because He loves you so much. Nothing could be further from the truth, He cares so much that He sent Jesus to fulfill the law on our behalf and then filled us with His grace so that we are no longer under the dominion of sin. We are now free and empowered to live the life that God has prepared for us!
Blessings,
Jeff
Trust in Grace!
What are your expectations for your life? Where do they come from and how do you expect to accomplish them? God has a plan and He has provided a means to help you achieve the goals He has placed within you.
1 Peter 1:13 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
I recommend that you read the previous 12 verses but up to this point Peter has been talking about our salvation through Jesus Christ and how the prophets had been fascinated by what God was going to do and tried to figure it all out. It says they prophesied about the grace that would come to us. Peter even says “things the angels desired to look into”. All of God’s creation had been intrigued by how God was going to pull this off! How was he going to bring salvation to a people who can’t get anything right? We’ve screwed up everything God ever started! But he had something up his sleeve, he said “I’m going to do it with grace! I’m going to do it for them so that the only way they can screw it up is if they try to do it themselves!” God probably doesn’t say “screw up” but you understand what I mean.
Now I want to break verse 13 down for you and take a look at some of the word meanings from the original Greek language.
Loins, the waist area, it speaks of what we reproduce of ourselves. The mind has to do with what we think about and how we go about arriving at decisions. So to gird up the loins of your mind means that we have to be very careful and protect our thought processes. We need to have a mindset that is anchored in the truth of the word. Otherwise, we will be producing or reproducing the lies of the enemy. The focus of our thought life determines what type of seed we are planting. Abraham produced Ishmael because he allowed his mind to be taken off the promise of God and attempted to make it happen by listening to his wife’s reasoning. We have to be very intentional about what we allow to occupy out thoughts!
That includes putting our complete trust in the grace that God has extended to us by revealing Jesus Christ to us through the Holy Spirit! Trusting in anything else other than the grace of God produces religion and the letter of the law which produces death!
Be sober! This is not about getting the “warm fuzzies” or “tingly all over”, it is about a serious, intentional thought process that will produce the life of God in us! You can run all over the country to get that next spiritual fix from wherever God is moving or you can have him move in your own life. There is nothing wrong with going where the Holy Spirit is moving but some people chase the experience instead of pursuing His presence.
“Rest your hope fully upon the grace” let’s break this phrase down from the Greek, the word rest is not there, I guess they pull that from what is implied in the word “upon” but it has more to do with placing than resting. Hope means expectation, confidence, trust. Then the word fully means completely, without wavering to the end. Now, the word upon. This is an interesting little word, it literally means to superimpose, to place one thing on top of another so that both are still evident!
If you superimpose a photograph you place one image on top of another so that it appears to be one image. In the days of Jesus it would have been more in the form of an image on a coin. They would take a coin and place a die with an image on top of the coin and when it was struck the image would appear, superimposed, on the coin.
Finally the word grace, in the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Dictionary you will find this definition for the word charis, which is the Greek word for grace- the divine influence on the heart and it’s reflection in the life! I thought it was unmerited favor, absolutely! I thought it was a gift, yes! In fact the word charisma and charismatic come from this word for grace but more than anything it is God moving upon the heart of man to see him line up with the plans and purposes that God has in store for him!
Our expectation of salvation should be superimposed on top of this grace so that our expectations and God’s grace look like the same thing! And we need to maintain that image completely without wavering to the end. How you finish is much more important than how you start. Don’t allow the enemy to get you sidetracked by past mistakes.
If your hope of salvation and the grace of God don’t look like the same thing, then you are trusting in yourself and not God! As much as we Christians claim that we stand on grace, we still, deep in our hearts, think that we have to do something for our salvation. And we induce that in each other because we don’t want anyone to be apathetic, we place guilt on people to get them involved or to do the right thing when all that is needed is a better understanding of the grace that is being delivered to us as Christ is revealed through the Holy Spirit.
I will probably state this every time I talk about the grace of God but grace is an empowering, enabling force that God uses to transform and equip his people. None of us deserve it but it is offered to all. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” He understood that it was grace that motivated him and enabled him to do what God had called him to do. He knew that he wasn’t capable of what God asked but he superimposed his trust over the grace of God to the point that it appeared that Paul was doing it when it was God all along!
I caught the end of a live message by John Bevere, he was talking about how the church is turning to the world for ideas to draw people in when we should be turning to the grace of God because it empowers us to be better equipped than anyone else that doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus. They should be copying us, not the other way around. I wanted to jump up and cheer!
John said that English and writing were his WORST subjects in school, his teachers only passed him to move him along to the next person. When God told him to write a book he said, “you have the wrong guy, I can’t write anything.” but he submitted and allowed the grace of God to work through him and once he got started, he said he couldn’t keep up with what God was showing him. Now he has written 14 books that are read and translated all over the world.
We, as Christians, need to come to the understanding that it is the grace of God that enables us to carry out the plans that God has for us and that those plans are probably above our own ability! Only by superimposing our expectations over what God is doing in our hearts and doing it His way all the way through can we accomplish the plans that He has for us. If we mess up there is grace. If we go astray, there is grace but it is not there to coddle us, rather to empower us to rise above our weaknesses.
Blessings,
Jeff
stronggrace.com 