Last Thursday night we looked at how God takes the blessings He gives to believers out of the Riches of His Grace in Christ and brings them into our experience by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This led to many good questions, and operating on the principle that if one person asked a question there are probably many more who have the same question but don't ask, here is one of the great questions we discussed on Thursday night:

What is “positional” truth? “Positional” truth is what is true of all believers the moment he or she believes in Christ and His Work on the Cross for them. Paul tells us in Eph. 1:3 that the moment we believe, God gives us ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN HEAVENLY PLACES. Notice it doesn't say He gave us some or most. He gave us ALL the blessings that He is giving today the moment He saved us by grace through faith. But where do we go to learn what these blessings are? We learn what ALL these blessings are for us today in the Body of Christ from the writings of our Apostle Paul. Our blessings in Christ include having peace with God, having a grace standing that gives us 24/7 access to God's riches, having confidence that God has included us in His Glory, and that we are the recipients of His infinite Love. And those are just some of the “positional” truths listed in the first verses of Romans 5! We could add to these blessings like redemption, reconciliation to God, eternal life, forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, removal from condemnation, righteousness/justification, accepted in Christ, freed from sin, death and the Law and many more. These “positional” truths can only be found in Paul's writings. They cannot be found anywhere else--not in the world's or human's or even man-made religious and theological systems. They can only be found in the things God revealed to the Apostle Paul for the church, the Body of Christ, as recorded in Romans through Philemon.

But how do we fully enjoy these “positional” truths in our experience? Do we have to wait until we die and go to heaven? Until we are raptured? Or can they be enjoyed right now in the present? The answer is that God wants us to enjoy them RIGHT NOW! And He has given us the Holy Spirit to do just that. When we read about the “positional” truths for the Body of Christ in Paul's letters and think on the things we have learned and received and heard and seen from him (Paul--Phil. 4:9), the Holy Spirit takes those and brings them into our experience by correcting our thinking, filling our hearts and empowering our external actions. And whenever this occurs, it will always result in a walk that is well-pleasing to God. Let's look at 2 examples:

1. We read in Paul's writings the “Positional” truth that believers Have PEACE WITH GOD. God the Holy Spirit takes this “positional” truth and teaches it to us, incorporating it in the inner person, where it enters our experience as the PEACE OF GOD that removes all anxieties and guards our hearts and minds through Christ in the very presence of the GOD OF PEACE. (Rom. 5:1; Phil. 4:5-9)
2. We read in Paul's writings the “Positional” truth that God commends His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God the Holy Spirit takes this “positional” truth, teaches it to us and incorporates it in the inner person, where it corrects our thinking and overflows our hearts with His Love that leads to the Much More assurance of salvation. We are eternally secure in Christ. (Rom. 5:1-8)

Romans 12:1-2 tells us that the Christian life is really just taking the gift of salvation by grace through faith as revealed in Paul's Epistles, and then spend the rest of our lives down here on earth unpacking its “positional” truths; praying about them, asking God about them and letting the Holy Spirit teach them to us and bring them into our experience by faith in complete reliance upon God and His Word.

It seems we generated a lot of interest in last night's ZOOM Bible Study/Fellowship. I know it is not because of my sub-par teaching and presentation skills. So it must be because of God and His Word. For those who have been unable to attend, here is a synopsis of what we have been learning about.

1. In Rom. 5:1-11, we learned about GOD'S SUPER-ABOUNDING LOVE: While we were yet ungodly sinners on enemy status before Him, CHRIST DIED FOR US!
2. In Rom. 5:12-21, we learned about GOD'S SUPER-ABOUNDING GRACE: Just as when we were in fallen humanity under the headship of Adam 1, everything that belonged to Adam 1 (all the things associated with Sin and Death) automatically came to us (all we had to do is be born into the world). So too ... in the new humanity under the headship of Adam 2, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Last Adam, everything the belongs to Christ by His obedience in going to the Cross (all the things associated with Righteousness and Life) likewise automatically come to us (all we had to do was receive His super-abounding grace and righteousness by faith and were placed into God's family).
   IN SHORT: We learned that EVERYTHING THAT BELONGS TO CHRIST BELONGS TO US!
3. This raised the question: Where do we find these Riches of Grace that belong to us? In Rom. 6:3-4, we learned that they reside “in Christ,” therefore the moment we believed, God placed us into Christ, thereby He placed us into His death, buried us together with Christ (in the family tomb), where Christ was raised from the dead by the Glory and Power of the Father, and we were raised with Him unto newness of life into a whole new sphere of existence.
4. Well, having all these Riches of Grace in Christ is all fine and good, but how do we access them and bring them into our everyday lives, into our present experience? Rom. 6:5 gave the answer to that. We bring them into our lives by being “planted together” or fused together or united together with the “likeness” of Christ's death and resurrection. A “likeness” is a representation of something, and God's representation of the good news of the death and resurrection of Christ can only be found in one place: THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE REVELATION OF THE MYSTERY, WHICH IS CENTERED ON PAUL'S GOSPEL. When we fuse to, coalesce with, become one with Paul's proclamation of the Gospel, it brings the Riches of God's Grace in Christ into our present experience.

EXAMPLE: The Greek word for “likeness” was often used for fine music that represented an aspect of nature, vividly bringing it up before the ears of the listeners. A more modern example of this might be Vivaldi's Four Seasons Concertos. Each concerto represents a season of the year, vividly bringing it up before us as we listen. I remember hearing these Concertos at a concert years ago. A young couple sat in front of me. They were arguing with each other. They were so angry they each sat on the far side of their seats so that they didn't have to touch one another. But then something amazing happened. The music started, and not long after I looked down at them, and they were holding hands, tapping their feet together in rhythm and had big smiles on their faces. Being united to the music's “likeness” or representation of the seasons of the year through Vivaldi's concertos completely changed their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions.

5. That's how we live the Christian life in a way that pleases God. We must become united to, coalesce around, become one with Paul's Gospel, God's “likeness” or representation of the Good News of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. This is the only way. No other way will work. We must follow Paul's lead because He is the one following Christ today (1 Cor. 11:1)! Nothing else will work. Human wisdom and worldly knowledge won't work. Going to the preaching of Peter and the 12, Christ's earthly ministry or the Old Testament will not work because they proclaimed the bad news of the Cross of Christ. No, God's concerto for today, God's music for us to follow today, God's representation for us to unify around today is Paul's Gospel—the Preaching of Christ according to the Revelation of the Mystery—the GOOD NEWS OF THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF CHRIST! It is the only way for us as an assembly to worship and praise God with one mind and one mouth (Rom. 15:6-7). Just like the couple that sat in front of me at the Vivaldi concert, we must all set aside our differences, what we like and what we dislike, and just become united to Paul's proclamation of the Cross. If we do, we will all be holding hands listening to it, tapping our feet in unison to the rhythm of it, and all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions will be guided by it. And when this happens it ALWAYS results in a walk that is well-pleasing to God.
   IN SHORT: THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE THE VICTORIOUS CHRISTIAN LIFE IS BY SINGING ALONG WITH PAUL!
6. But we are still missing one piece of information. What does that “dead to sin” life and walk actually look like? We will learn that next week as we go on to Rom. 6:6-7.

Several of you have contacted me since Thursday interested in getting more information about believers being co-crucified with Christ, and how it relates to being dead to sin and serving God in righteousness. We will be spending more time on this on Thursday night Bible Studies in the upcoming weeks, but I have put together a brief summary below to the questions you have asked.

Several people commented that they can see the importance of God identifying the believer with the death, burial and resurrection but have difficulty understanding the importance of being identified with His crucifixion as well. In Rom. 6, Paul explains that God took us and placed us into Christ where He identified us with His death, buried us together with Him (which brings us into His family) and makes us participants in the power and glory of His resurrection. He takes us to the highest of heights, the most honorable and glorious place anyone can be! And we embrace this by faith in Paul's proclamation of the Gospel, which is the likeness of Christ's death and resurrection, God's “concerto” of His Son's death and resurrection, if you will. (Rom. 6:5).

All of that is great! Our past is dealt with and our future guaranteed, and this will reach complete fulfillment in the future resurrection of our of our bodies (Rom. 8:23).

But what about now, today, in the present. What about the time we spend between getting saved in the past and being bodily resurrected in the future? What does participating in the power and glory of the Risen Christ's life look like now? Today? That is where being co-crucified with Christ is so important. Yes, we serve a Risen Christ, but that Risen Christ is also the Christ who was Crucified. The Lord Jesus Christ left the highest heights and came down to the sin-cursed, death-decaying world, serving in the likeness of humanity under adversity, humbling Himself to go to death to save fallen humanity, going to the lowest point of all: The death by way of the cross. What motivated or drove Him to do that? Agape Love (Phil. 2:1-8; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 5:1-11, etc.).

And that is the pattern of service believers are to follow today, using Paul's apostolic ministry as the example. Yes, God has taken us to the highest heights with Christ—raising us with Christ and seating us together with Christ in the Heavenlies (Eph. 2:4-10). Yes, He has made us participants in the Glory and Power of Christ's resurrection, making us adult sons in His family under the headship of Christ wherein everything that belongs to Christ belongs to us. But God beseeches us to carry out our ministry of proclaiming this Christ who was Crucified, to a sin-cursed, death-decaying world, serving under adversity as His ambassadors, willing to endure all the humbleness and shame and ridicule and suffering that proclaiming a crucified Christ as our Savior brings. Any thought, feeling, emotion, action or deed done according to Agape Love is always produced by God's power and is acceptable to Him.

In Summary:

Anything done by Agape Love is always the fruit of righteousness because it is accomplished by the power of God, thereby demonstrating that we have indeed been freed from the power of sin. The corollary to this is that: Anything done apart from Agape Love, anything done apart from the empowering constraining Love of God at the Cross of Christ, is sin because it is produced by the power of sin. It may look good to you or your friends or the world, but it is sin. One pastor put it this way: Anything you do that an unbeliever can do is not the Christian life. Both the believer and unbeliever can do the same external act, but only believers can do things motivated by the Love of Christ at the Cross and, therefore, empowered by God. The unbeliever has rejected the Love of Christ at the Cross and, therefore, what he or she does is not empowered by God. Therefore, it must be empowered by the flesh under the power of sin, and, therefore, it is sin.

Paul puts it this way in Rom. 8:7-8 that the flesh cannot do anything that pleases God. And in Rom. 14:23-15:3 he says that anything that is not done out of faith and love (which centers on the death and resurrection of Christ) is sin. Sin is not just keeping ourselves from breaking a law or command of God's or achieving some moral standard. Sin occurs whenever we operate apart from Agape Love. But we serve God by serving others, bearing the fruits of righteousness, when we do things motivated and empowered by the love of God displayed at the Cross of Christ.

This is the goal set before us. We will never reach the goal perfectly. Paul didn't (3:10-14) and neither will we. It is a process. As we grow in the full-knowledge of Christ and His Cross (Phil. 1:9), and we believe it and embrace it more and more, we will more and more think and feel and act from the love of God. Anything, ANYTHING, done based on that exists because it was produced by God's Power and not Sin's Power. This is what it means to be separated, freed, DEAD to Sin and ALIVE to God (Rom. 6:6-11). Paul puts it this way in Rom. 12:1-2: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind ... As we participate in Paul's proclamation of Christ according to the Revelation of the Mystery, it renews and thereby transforms our minds, ultimately conforming us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29).

Romans 6:1-10: We are in an amazing passage that we don't want to rush through. We want to become so familiar with it that it changes our thinking and changes our lives. Here are some of the highlights:

God and Paul begin the passage by explaining to us using the metaphor of baptism that when we received His gift of righteousness and super-abounding grace by faith, God instantly and eternally transferred us out of the realm of sin and death and placed us in the realm of righteousness and life. God identified believers with Christ's death and buried them together with Christ, bringing them into the family tomb—a place of great honor—where they participate in the glory and power of God in raising Christ from the dead so that now believers can walk in the newness of His resurrection life. What an amazing privilege! What an amazing honor! The moment we believed the Gospel, God once-and-for-all took the believer and raised him or her up to the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS into the very life of Christ Jesus Himself. Phil. 2:1 says the believer has been swept up into the life of the whole Triune God. In other words, God brought the believer into the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS with Christ. There, we have all the riches of God in Christ. Everything that belongs to Christ belongs to us. Listen to Paul try to convey this infinite truth in finite human words: But God (the Father), who is rich in mercy for His GREAT LOVE wherewith He loved us (displayed at the Cross), even when we were dead in sin, (God the Holy Spirit) quickened us (made us alive) together with Christ (God the Son), by grace ye are saved, and has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. Through God identifying the believer with Christ's death, burial and resurrection, the believer is swept up into the life of the Triune God. This is indeed the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS!

This is what we call “positional” truths. These are the things that God does for all believers the moment they are saved. But these truths are not mysteriously instilled into our brains at the moment of salvation. And we cannot determine them through human wisdom, emotions, feelings or experiences. Rather, they are supernaturally revealed to us in God's Word, and for us today, that means the Scriptures of Paul. Rom. 6:5 tells us that we bring these “positional” truths into our walk by becoming united, becoming one with the God's representation or likeness of Christ's death and resurrection as proclaimed in Paul's Gospel, the Good News of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

But that leads us to a very important question. Now that God has placed us in the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS WITH CHRIST where we receive all the riches of God in Christ, what does the Christian Life actually look like when lived down here on earth? An erring Historic Christianity, going all the way back to the Corinthians, thought this meant believers are to reign as kings, gloating over others (1 Cor. 4:8), receiving health, wealth and prosperity. For them, getting saved means we can make God our co-pilot or business partner, and like Midas, He will make everything we touch turn to gold. What nonsense!

So, what does God and Paul say the true Christian life looks like? In Rom. 6:6, Paul answers this by giving us another aspect of what God did with us the moment we were saved. He united us to Christ's crucifixion. We don't just serve “Christ,” we serve the Christ who was crucified (for us), and we were crucified together with Him! Having placed us in the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS together with Christ verses 3-5, Paul now takes us down to the LOWEST OF LOWS together with Christ in verse 6. Christ didn't just go to any death. He went to the LOWEST OF LOW deaths, even the death of the Cross (Phil. 2:8), the most dishonorable, shameful, horrifying of all deaths.

Paul never speaks of Christ's death on the Cross without in the same breath speaking about His AGAPE LOVE being displayed at that Cross. Just a few verses before our passage in Rom. 6, Paul wrote of this death on the Cross: God commends His Love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8)! And listen to Paul's wonder and amazement in Gal. 2:20: I was crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who Loved me and gave Himself for me! The true Christian life is brought into our experience when we serve on the basis of Agape Love the Christ, who was crucified and we were crucified together with Him. Phil. 2 puts it this way: Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same Love ... let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others: LET THIS MIND BE IN YOU, WHICH WAS ALSO IN CHRST JESUS (Phil. 2:2-5). And what was this mindset that Jesus Christ operated according to? Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made Himself of no reputation and took the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in the fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross (Phil. 2:6-8).

So now we are ready to put this all together. Just as Christ, who was in the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS as absolute God, did not grasp the things He had being God like a robber grasps his stolen goods that he is going to keep to himself. Instead, Christ opened His arms and reached down, down, down to share His riches through self-giving for the benefit of others in Love, even though it led Him to the LOWEST OF LOWS: the death on the Cross. So too, we, as His crucified people who serve a crucified Christ, are to follow this same mindset that led Him to the Cross: AGAPE LOVE. We, whom God has placed in the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS together with Christ where we receive the Riches of God in Christ, live out this life down here in the lowness of this sin-cursed, death-decaying world, for the purpose of sharing these riches in Christ with all ungodly sinners on enemy status before God. We are His ambassadors, extending His Grace and Peace to a lost fallen world.

And anything done with this mindset; anything done in self-giving service that is motivated by the Love of God at the Cross of Christ to build-up others in God's truth for today (ie., Agape Love), anything, ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING done in this way, is always apart from sin and death and their power, and is always, ALWAYS, tied to God and His righteousness. It is always acceptable to God and well-pleasing to Him. This is how we “walk in newness of life.” The Christian life is not trying to reach some level of morality for boasting in oneself or abstaining from doing certain sins. The Christian life is serving God by serving others in Love. The pagans could be moral, and unbelievers can abstain from certain sins. But only those who have received the Love of God at the Cross of Christ by faith (ie., believers) can operate on the basis of Agape Love. This is (indeed!) faith, which works by Love (Rom. 6:6-10; Gal. 5:6).

After the teaching, we had a great discussion that brought up a very, very important point. In our highly individualistic society (so prized in America) we tend to think that our primary service is as individuals. But this is not what Paul thought. None of us has the resources or the ability to live the Christian life of Love fully on our own. The primary way this life is lived out is not individually on our own but communally with others in a “local” assembly. (Of course, our recent experiences with ZOOM show that “local” can now mean something much more than it used to!) The primary way we serve God in love is by participating in an assembly of grace believers. This is God's provision for service. In an assembly everyone participates in the proclamation of Paul's Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the Mystery. In an assembly everyone one can participate in whatever way they can, whatever their age or skills or education or anything else. What we cannot do individually, we can do communally through the Bible rightly-divided and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Christian life begins in the assembly of grace believers and then spreads out from there.

I apologize for the length. I meant for it to be shorter, but I just couldn't stop talking about God and His Love in Christ!

Last night we saw from Romans 6 and 1 Cor. 13 that the Christian life is lived out on the basis of Agape Love. Paul's overall definition of Agape Love is action motivated and empowered by the Love of God at the cross of Christ that selflessly shares the riches of God we have in Christ with others for the sole purpose of building them up in God's Truth for today (Paul's distinct apostleship) (1 Cor. 8:1; 10:24, 33; 13:5) .

This is completely contrary to the worldly wisdom and human knowledge from the instruction manual of sin and death that most of Historic Christianity has embraced and teaches to its people. Historic Christianity typically teaches that salvation is our way to get God involved in our things, and that prayer is our way to get God to do what we want. They say that because we have the riches of God in Christ we should use them for our own selfish desires, promising us health, wealth and prosperity. This type of mentality is encapsulated in bumper stickers that say “God is my co-pilot” or “God is my business partner.”

Well, to those who think this way, I hate to break it to you, but God is most certainly not your co-pilot nor your business partner.

This mentality doesn't come from God's Word. It comes from the instruction manual of self, Satan, sin and death as explained Rom. 1:18-32). God's instruction manual, however, teaches the exact opposite. Paul explains in Rom. 6:6 and other places that believers today are not only taken to the Highest of Heights through Christ's death, burial and resurrection, but have also been taken to the Lowest of Lows through Christ's crucifixion (Rom. 6:3-6). Believers in the Body of Christ are identified as the crucified people of a crucified Christ. Therefore, the modus operandi, the instruction manual for life comes from the mind set that sent Christ from the Highest of Heights (as absolute Deity) to the Lowest of Lows (death, even the death of the Cross), to share His riches with others, namely, us, hopelessly lost sinners. This mind set is AGAPE LOVE. Contrary to Historic Christianity, Agape Love doesn't allow for the use God and the riches of His Grace in Christ for our own advantage and benefit. Rather it empowers us to share God and His riches with others under adverse conditions in this sin-cursed, death-decaying world. We are extenders of His grace and peace to a lost world where the great paradox of Christianity comes into full force: In the midst of our infirmities, when we are at our weakest and most powerless, God's power is released and put on display. Paul puts it this way in 2 Cor. 12:9: And He (God) said unto me (Paul), My (God's) Grace is sufficient for thee (Paul): for My (God's) strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I (Paul) rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (Paul). This is Agape Love.

The Christian Life is not us using God and His things for our own selfish interest and advantage. The Christian Life is God providing us with all we need to serve Him by serving others, freely sharing His things with others out of selfless giving motivated and empowered by the Love of Christ at the Cross, for the sole purpose of building up others in God's truth for today; not considering our own things but the things of others (Phil. 2:3-4).

This is most successfully accomplished not as individuals from our own little islands, but together as members of the Body of Christ, fellowshipping in an assembly of likeminded believers.

Sunday, we will continue our study in James, moving on to chapter 2. This is a passage that has caused much needless uncertainty because most of Historic Christianity has thrown away Paul's distinct apostleship, and therefore, cannot rightly-divide their Bibles, bringing in not only much confusion but much despair as well.

On Thursday we sprang off Romans 6 and went to 1 Corinthians to see Agape Love in action. Paul's working definition for Love is this: It is not considering our own things but considering the things of others for the sole purpose of their edification in God's truth for today (1 Cor. 10:23-24; 33). But how does that play out in the believer's everyday life? Paul doesn't just tell us how to walk by Love. He SHOWS us how to walk by Love. Paul didn't consider his own things. He wouldn't demand his own rights to his time and money, he didn't expect anything in return, he didn't demand fair treatment or anything else, if it meant the assembly would be built-up in Christ. And he did this easily and joyfully because he did it based on the super-abounding Love and Grace he had received freely from God in Christ: The infinite and eternal Riches of God in Christ. Because it is eternal he didn't need anything else ever again. And because it is infinite it would never run out, so he could share it extravagantly with all. That is the Christian life sharing the riches we have in Christ with joyful and wild abandon! Dispensing God's forgiveness and peace and patience and faith and hope and joy and gentleness and goodness and meekness and temperance, WHICH IS ALL SUMMED UP IN AGAPE LOVE, and we do it for no other reason than that God gave it to freely therefore we give it to others freely.

Last night we finished up our study of Pauline Grace's Agape Love.

Paul strove to base every decision he made based on Agape Love. He told the Corinthians to base all their decisions on Apape Love in 1 Cor. 16:14, and he told all believers to make their everyday decisions based on Agape Love in Phil. 1:1-8. This is the most freeing principle in the Christian Life. Anything done on the basis of Agape Love is always acceptable to God. God has adopted believers into His family as adult sons and daughters. He has given them the family name and the family riches and has told them what the Father's business is. Now, anything we do based in accord with these things and based on Agape Love, will always be acceptable to God. Of course, if we don't rightly-divide the Scriptures, we won't know about our family name or about the riches we have in Christ or about what God is doing today, then we can't participate in a walk in newness of life that pleases God (Rom. 6:4). That is why GBCRM stresses sound doctrine from the Word rightly-divided. We need to follow God's Agape Love edification plan as described in Rom. 6: We need to learn about these things, believe them, reckon or make our decisions based on them, and present the parts of our bodies for God purposes. And when that happens, it is always the new life in Christ. It is always acceptable to God.

FLASHING RED WARNING LIGHTS: The flesh will try to take this teaching and turn Pauline Grace into a more rigorous Law, more things for us to “do” to gain acceptance with God. But this is not true. Grace is not a more stringent Law system calling on us to perform and do things we can't possibly do. This is to miss the whole point. Earlier I used the analogy of pole-vaulting to illustrate that the Law was like a bar set at the one foot mark. It was the lowest level of human righteousness that God was right to demand from His human creation. But fallen humanity (as represented by the Nation of Israel) could not even do that because of sin. Pauline Grace is like a bar set at a million trillion miles high. The believer who on his own through the flesh couldn't clear the 1 foot bar now through Pauline Grace is catapulted by God over the million trillion mile bar, not by his own power and works but by the power and work of God. And this is done IN CHRIST, the measure of God's infinite divine righteousness. In Grace we don't “do” anything ourselves. Rather as Romans 6 explains, it is based on grace and faith. We believe and rely on all that God has done for us and given to us in Christ, and when we believe that and dwell on that and think more and more about Christ and reckon according to that, it is not the we “do” something. Rather it is that God the Holy Spirit “does” something through us. As Rom. 6:13 explains we are just God's instruments. God does all the work to accomplish His purposes of Agape Love. Agape Love is the most freeing principle in all God's Word. It is what frees us to serve God by serving others. If it is not doing that for us, then we are not understanding it.

One of the biggest mistakes we make when understanding Agape Love is that we forget its very first step: DO NOT CONSIDER YOURSELF. Our flesh always wants to consider itself, and if you look at yourself all you will see is selfish interests, failure, sin, shortcomings and defeat. That is why the very first step of AGAPE LOVE is DO NOT CONSIDER YOURSELF!! Instead of looking at ourselves, we are to look at Christ and all that He did for us on the Cross and all the riches He gave us based on that Crosswork. DO NOT CONSIDER YOURSELF! We must not look at the sin in our experience. We must look at the Righteousness of God in Christ. Don't look at the death we see all around us. Look at the Life we have in Christ Jesus. Don't look at the defeats that enter our experience. Look at the victory we have in Christ. Don't look at our selfish interests. Look at the selfless love of God at the Cross of Christ. The minute we look anywhere else but Christ, we forget the first step of Agape Love: DO NOT CONSIDER YOURSELF. Don't live by sight! Live by FAITH.

The more and more we focus on Christ and His things from Paul's Epistles, the more and more the Holy Spirit teaches us these things, empowering us to live them out in our daily lives. So that more and more we can grow in our Christian life that leads to a walk that more and more pleases God in Agape Love.

Thursday night's Bible Study Fellowship from Romans 6 was a night filled with many highlights. Here are some of them.

1. In the first 13 verses of Romans 6, Paul explains the amazing things that God did for us the moment we believed the Gospel and were saved. It is the complete antidote to the plight of fallen humanity as recorded in the last half of Romans 1. These are things that we would never know had they not be supernaturally revealed by God to Paul. They can't be determined from human wisdom or worldly knowledge. Nor can they be felt inside nor can they be seen in external appearances. If we are going to know them, God had to reveal them to us in Paul's Scriptures.

   Paul explains that we died with Christ, freeing us from our previous Master, Master Sin, his power and authority. And that we were buried together with Christ, giving us the honor of being brought into the family of God, and then He raised us up together with Christ, freeing us from the dominion of Death. And, as if this wasn't high enough, in Eph. 2 Paul says God also seated us together with Christ in the Heavenlies. In short, God takes the believing sinner to the Highest of Heights where everything that belongs to Christ belongs to us. WOW!

   But how do we live out this new life in Christ? For that, we need to know that God also crucified us together with Christ, taking us to the Lowest of Lows, stamping us with the mindset Christ had when He went to the Cross for our benefit. We call this Agape Love. This is the principle our new humanity in Christ operates on. When we operate according to Agape Love, it counteracts everything that was true of us in our old humanity in Adam. Instead of selfishly fulfilling the lusts of our evil hearts by the power of sin and contaminated with death, we can now selflessly produce fruit by the power of God that always leads to righteousness and life unto the building up of others.

   So, putting this all together: We need to know and believe these things, then we need to reckon upon them, putting these things into the calculations we use to make the decisions of everyday life, and then present our bodies as instruments for God to use to carry out His purposes.

   Then, it is as though Paul gets us to the point where our arms are outstretched to do God's bidding, we have one foot in the air to go where God leads, and have our mouths open to speak God's Word, but then he suddenly says: Hold on. Stop right there! Freeze-frame!

   He does this to warn us about something. We can fall into a trap at this point. We get to this point, and we want “to DO” something. What should I DO? And it is here that Paul stops us dead in our tracks to warn us about the biggest mistake we can make as believers, and that is: GOING BACK TO THE LAW INSTEAD OF GOING ON IN GRACE!

   Operating on the basis of a Law System is the very opposite of operating on the basis of a Grace System for many reasons that we will be looking at over the upcoming weeks. But I will mention just one here. The instructions of the Law tell you to look at yourself and see how you are DOING. When I do this, I will respond in one of two ways.

   1. Out of pride I will think that I am DOING pretty well! God's lucky to have me on His team!
   2. Or, and this is much more likely, I will look at my “self” and see there all too clearly sin and failure and shortcomings and missed opportunities and despair. Neither of these responses will lead to the victorious Christian Life.

   Agape Love that comes from the Instruction manual of Pauline Grace, however, starts with the exact opposite, telling us to NOT LOOK AT YOURSELF! LOOK AT CHRIST! Paul's going to explain that going back to the Law throws us off course right at the starting gate.

2. And this brings us to the second highlight of the evening. Paul freeze-frames us here to explain that we are not to really to DO anything at all. The Christian Life is God DOING everything. It is God using our bodies merely as His instruments for what He is DOING. The Law called on the flesh to DO things but gave to power to DO them. Israel's 1500 year failure under the Law proved once and for all that this system doesn't work. The Christian Grace Life is not just another higher Law System calling on us to do things we cannot do. Rather, it is God DOING everything in and through us.

   So, the real question we should be asking at this point in Romans 6 is not WHAT SHOULD I BE DOING? But WHAT IS GOD DOING TODAY? We looked at the Scriptures about the raising up of the Apostle Paul and saw that what God is doing today is not what most of Historic Christianity says He is doing. It is not going to be what your flesh or the world thinks He ought to be doing: Fixing the world's problems, including human suffering. Rather, God's revealed will for today is that He is deliberately NOT fixing the worlds problems. And we should be very glad for that because in order to fix all the world's problems, He will have to return in His wrath and judgment to destroy sinners, destroy His enemies, beginning in the House of Israel, beginning with Saul/Paul and especially the Gentiles (that's us)! But God didn't do that. Instead, out of the Riches of His Longsuffering Kindness, Christ returned in His Grace and Peace to save His enemies, beginning with the Jews, beginning with Saul/Paul and especially the Gentiles!

   Now, that you know this, and if you believe it and put it in the calculations you use to make decisions, and you present your bodies for His use ... What are you going to be “DOING?” Knowing that God is not fixing the problems of the world today are you going to spend all your time waiting on Him to fix the problems of the world? Are you going to spend your prayer life pleading with Him to do something that He has revealed He is not doing that today? Are you going to try to use Him to get physical and material things when He has said He is not giving special physical and material blessings today? No, you won't. That would be at best foolish and at worst rebellious!

   Instead, in the light of the fact that God is now letting the fallen world go on its way a little while longer (so far about 2000 years) not because He doesn't care about sin or because He likes to see people suffer, but because He is being longsuffering for the benefit of sinful humanity, so that as many as possible might be saved spiritually BEFORE He returns in His wrath and judgment to destroy them. Knowing this, we won't be paralyzed by the world's problems. We will jump in and dispense God's Grace and Peace in the midst of those problems. We won't spend all our time in prayer trying to get God to give us more physical blessings. We will spend our prayer time thanking Him for the infinite and eternal spiritual blessings we have in Christ that more than adequately, super-abundantly, go beyond anything that comes along in the sin-cursed world. We will talk to God about being the instruments, sharing forgiveness and joy and longsuffering and peace and kindness and patience and goodness and faith and love and hope with others. And when you “DO” that, you are not really “DOING” anything at all. It is God “DOING” it in and through you. And that is the real-deal, the one-and -only genuine Christian Life.

3. Finally, we had some excellent questions in our discussion time one of which being:

What Is The Relationship Between Rightly-Dividing and Agape Love?

What if you have a believer who knows nothing about rightly dividing the Bible (which would be the state of most believers today). First, it is important to realize that while this person doesn't know the principles of right division, he or she is rightly dividing. If she is truly saved, then she believed Paul's Gospel, the Good News of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. Therefore, she is rightly dividing even if she doesn't know it. L. S. Chafer put it this way: If you went to church this week without a lamb flung over you shoulder, then you are a dispensationalist whether you realize it or not, whether you admit it or not.

Now, what if this person in thankfulness for her salvation, shares Paul's Gospel with someone else for their benefit? That is Agape Love. Let's say she hears a Bible teacher and learns the additional Pauline truth that all her sins are forgiven and out of gratitude for that she eagerly forgives others? That is Agape Love. We could go on and on, but I think you get the point. If she lived out her whole life based just these two points of doctrine, she would live a life completely acceptable to God, a life based on Agape Love.

But, of course, she won't because she will be blown off course by every wind of doctrine that comes from man-made religious and man-centered theological systems, not to mention her own thoughts and desires. These systems will deceive her into questioning this doctrine, questioning God, questioning her forgiveness, etc. They will get her side-tracked into doing things from the world or from the Bible wrongly divided with regard to Israel's Prophetic Program. She will spend most of her Christian life down here not walking in a way that pleases God and not living by Agape Love.

Agape Love is not based on how much knowledge you have but on what you do with that knowledge. So, let's go to the other extreme. What if you have a believer who has extensive dispensational teaching, understanding it in all its details, knowing a countless list of blessings he has in Christ, but He uses this information to boast and puff himself up when dealing with others. That is NOT Agape Love, and it is not acceptable or pleasing to God. Agape Love always benefits others and builds them up.

So, what does rightly dividing accomplish, and why is it so important?

1. Rightly dividing clarifies the basic salvation message for sinners by referring them to Paul's distinct Gospel.
2. Rightly dividing brings the believer into a greater understanding of what God is really doing today so that he or she can operate accordingly.
3. Rightly dividing provides for the stabilization and establishment of believers.
4. Rightly dividing gives us a fuller understanding of all the blessings we have in Christ.
5. And growing in the full-knowledge of Paul's distinct apostleship leads to increasing Agape Love that is always acceptable, blameless and well-pleasing to God.

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment;
that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ;
being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God.
(Phil. 1:9-11)

Last Thursday we discussed what I consider to be the second most important truth of Pauline Grace, and that is Agape Love. Agape Love is the way we bring the “sanctification” we have positionally into our everyday lives, whereby God redeems the time, one moment at a time. So I will briefly summarize this topic. Please read to the end of the summary because there is a mistake we can make with Agape Love, in fact, it is the WORST MISTAKE A BELIEVER CAN MAKE!

1. In Rom. 1:18-32, Paul explains that fallen humanity has been handed over to the evil lusts of it own foolish and darkened hearts whereby everything it does is by the power of sin and is permeated with death. That was our hopeless predicament. We could not do anything that pleased God.
2. But in Rom. 5-6, that all changes. Believers have been given the Holy Spirit, who is now overflowing in the their hearts with the Love of God displayed at the Cross of Christ or what we call Agape Love (Rom. 5:5-10). Because of Agape Love we can now obey God from the heart (Rom. 6:17), freed from the power of sin and death (Rom. 6:1-10), leading to service in our bodily existence permeated with Righteousness and Life. Believers have the opportunity to operate according to faith (know, believe, reckon based on God's truth to us—Rom. 6:6-11) and present our bodies as (living) instruments for God's use, whereby we don't succumb the lusts of our own evil hearts, but succumb, yield, present ourselves to the Agape Love that God is overflowing our hearts with. Anything we “do” based on Agape Love is always acceptable to God because it is not really us “doing” it, but God “doing” it in and through us. And anything God “does” is obviously acceptable to God and, therefore, will be of infinite and eternal value.
3. We participate in Agape Love by having the same mindset Christ had when He went to the Cross to save sinners. He didn't consider His Own things as something to be clung to for His Own use but to be used for the benefit of others. He didn't demand the rights He had but was willing to not exercise them if it would build up others. In doing so, even though He was absolute God in the Highest of Heights, He willfully and joyfully went down to the Lowest of Lows, death, even the death of the Cross to benefit, save, ungodly sinners on enemy status before Him.
4. This mindset is outlined as follows:
   • Although believers have real and perceived rights ...
   • They will NOT demand and exercise them if it tears down others ...
   • But will instead think about Christ and His Cross and the rights He gave up there to benefit us, which gives us the motivation and power to set aside our own rights to serve others from the heart unto their building up. And when that happens, Paul says: I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20; 22 Cor. 5:14). And that is always acceptable and pleasing to God!
5. Paul defines Agape Love in this way: Do not look or consider your own things, but look or consider the things of others by looking at and considering Christ and His Cross unto the building up of others (Phil. 2:1-8).
6. The biggest mistake we can make with Agape Love is to take it out of the Pauline Grace System and put it into a Law System (Rom. 6:14-15). We do this when we use Agape Love to evaluate things we have done in the past. Agape love is not to be used after the actions have occurred. It can only be used correctly the way God intended BEFORE the action is taken. It is not to be used for judgment and condemnation. Rather, it frees us, empowers us and motivates us for service in the present. What is past is past.
7. Agape Love is being misused if it causes us to ponder over the things we have done in the past and determine whether they were really based on Agape Love or not. That is how a Law System works, and it will only result in defeat and despair. Instead we must follow Paul's example and leave what is behind in the past and reach ahead into the present and future (Phil. 3:13-14). For the believer, every moment is a fresh start, an opportunity to include more and more Agape Love into more and more of the calculations we make in our daily walk.
8. The reason we must not place Agape Love in a Law System is that the first step in a Law System is to LOOK AT OURSELVES and see what WE HAVE DONE. The first step in the Pauline Grace System, however, is the very opposite. It starts with: DON'T LOOK AT YOURSELF!! LOOK AT CHIRST AND SEE WHAT HE HAS DONE!!! To place Agape Love in a Law System is to shut it down at its very starting point! If we use it to evaluate past actions, we are looking at ourselves and the result will always be defeat, disappointment and despair. We must just look at Christ in the present and going forward.
9. Agape Love can only flow out of God's Pauline Grace System: Faith in God's truth for today being brought into our lives by Agape Love. It is something to be used BEFORE we engage in actions not after. It is a great blessing of Grace that gives us the opportunity to participate in the things of God unto His Glory.

In last night's Bible Study Fellowship on Romans 6, we continued to grow in our understanding of Christian living by making Agape Love real. This has been a bit of a rocky and rough journey because this truth is only supernaturally revealed. It is not anything we would come up with on our own. It is completely contrary to the way we naturally think, and it won't be found in any form of human or worldly wisdom. If God hadn't reveal it to the Apostle Paul, we wouldn't know it. So, it takes a little while to penetrate into our thinking, and it needs to bounce around a while before we can get a good handle on it.

Let me show you how far we have come in this summary in making Agape Love Really REAL!. This summary is longer than usual, but I think it is worth it.

1. Rom. 1:18-32 tells us that fallen humanity's most fundamental problem is not that it commits sins. It is that it is enslaved to Sin. Because of its rebellion against God and rejection of His Word, God gave them over to what they wanted. He handed them over to the selfish lusts of their own evil, foolish and darkened hearts under the power of Sin and Death.
2. Therefore, fallen humanity's problem isn't that it needs to commit fewer sins (that's the lie of man-made religious and theological systems). What it needs is to be set free from Sin and given a new heart. To illustrate this, we used the example Blue Bunny Ice Cream's listeria crisis a few years ago. At that time, some people eating Blue Bunny Ice Cream began getting very sick and many died. They traced the listeria contamination back to a factory in the Northwest US. Neither the government nor the company's officials cared about the containers of ice cream. All they cared about was where the containers of ice cream came from. By outward appearances the containers of ice cream looked “good,” and tasted “good,” and millions of people ate the ice cream and never got sick. But none of that mattered. All the officials cared about was where the ice cream was produced. If it was produced in the factory that was contaminated with listeria, it was automatically contaminated and condemned to destruction. That comes from Rom. 2.

Similarly, God isn't fooled by appearances. He doesn't look at the external “good” deed we do. He looks at where that “good” deed came from. And if it came from the factory of Self and Satan, which runs 24/7 on the power of Sin, it is automatically contaminated with Death and condemned to destruction. That is the plight of fallen humanity. No matter how “good” they try to appear on the outside, it all comes from the heart of Sin and Death on the inside. This is why Paul says in Rom. 8:8 that the sinful flesh can DO NOTHING THAT PLEASES GOD. And again in Rom. 3:23 he says of fallen humanity: All have sinned and are coming short of the Glory of God. Paul explains all of this in Romans chapters 1 and 2.

3. Then, in chapters 3-4 of Romans, Paul explains that on the based on what Christ accomplished on His Cross, God provides forgiveness by grace through faith for the “sins” we commit. That's great! But it still doesn't solve our most fundamental heart issue of being enslaved to Sin.
4. He begins doing that in Rom. 5:1-11, and it all begins with God commending His (Agape) Love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us! And it is this (Agape) Love that the Holy Spirit, who is given unto us, sheds abroad in our HEARTS! The Holy Spirit re-creates our hearts by overflowing it with His super-abounding (Agape) Love. HEART PROBLEM SOLVED! Now we can serve God, not out of selfish interests under the power of Sin and Death, but out of the selfless love of God under the power of Righteousness and Life, solely for the benefit of others, just like Christ did when He went to the Cross for us.
5. Now that we have hearts overflowing with Agape Love and can serve God based on that, in Rom. 5:12-21 we learn that God has made us participants in His super-abounding Grace. God brings us into His family under the Headship of Christ where everything that belongs to Christ because of what He accomplished on the Cross automatically belongs to us. Paul sums these things up with under the terms: Righteousness and Life.
6. And in Rom. 6:1-12, we see that this opens the way to a whole new sphere of bodily existence. Having been placed into Christ, God identified us with His death, burial and resurrection, taking us to the Highest of Heights. This freed us from the power of Sin and Death and made it possible for us to serve Righteousness and Life. He also identified us with His crucifixion, taking us to the Lowest of Lows. This stamped us with the same modus operandi that Christ had when He went to the Cross: Agape Love (Phil. 2).

When we receive the things God has graced to us by faith; when we know them, believe them, and put them in the calculations we make for daily living, God will give us the desire to be His instruments, His tools. Of course, we are living instruments and tools. We have a role to play, and that role is to simply BELIEVE. Have FAITH. A pastor once said: Faith is the only thing we can “do” without “doing” anything. Faith is the setting aside of our own “doing” so that we can rely on the “doing” of someone else.

Once the believer begins to see His riches in Christ and all that God has made him to be in Christ, once he believes it and reckons according to it and desires that God use him His Own purposes ... at that very moment ... we can make the BIGGEST MISTAKE A BELIEVER CAN MAKE! That mistake is to return to natural thinking by assuming that the Christian Life is something that we “do.” We are all excited for Christ and ready to go into action and we think we need to “do” something. We ask: How “do” I become a super-saint? How do I pray? How “do” I serve? How “do” I worship? What does God want me to “do”? I need to “do” something! Notice, everything is about I, I, I. But the beginning point of Agape Love is not I, I, I. The beginning point of Agape Love is Christ, Christ, Christ! It instructs us to NOT TO LOOK AT OURSELVES BUT TO LOOK AT CHRIST AND HIS CROSS! All these “I” questions are the wrong questions to ask.

The right question to ask is not: What must “I” “do”? But to ask: What is God “doing” today? You see, if we are just God's instruments, living instruments whose only role is to believe, then we don't really “do” anything. God “does” everything in and through us (Phil. 2:12-13)! And when that happens that is the true Christian life, which is always of infinite and eternal value.

7. So, what is God “doing” today? Rom. 1-4 tell us that today God is not “fixing” the problems of the world. He is not providing material and physical blessings. To “fix” the world would require that He return in His Wrath and Judgment to destroy sinners. He will do that one day when He restarts His Prophetic Program with the nation of Israel, and it is called the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord. BUT NOW, through the apostleship of Paul, He is holding back His Wrath and Judgement against sinners and is instead extending His Grace and Peace to sinners so that as many as possible might be saved BEFORE He returns to destroy them. That is what God is doing today. He is dispensing His Grace and Peace to a lost, sin-cursed, death-decaying world. This is the Father's business, and this is what He has left believers on earth to participate in. We are to be God's Ambassadors, His Dispensers of His Grace and Peace to a lost world.
8. So, when we receive God's grace by faith, and yield up the parts of our bodies for His use, what will we see Him doing? Will we Him fixing all our problems, making us healthier and wealthier? Will we see Him smoothing out the bumps in our road and removing the hurdles from our lives? All you have to do is look at the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 11:23-30) to see that the answer is a resounding NO! When He works in and through us, it will be to make us dispensers of His Grace and Peace, empowering and equipping us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places to share with others while we remain in trials, difficulties, tribulations, etc.
9. Before, as members of fallen humanity under the Headship of Adam, we were instructed to focus on self, and do what's best for ourselves, what's best for #1, no matter what! That comes from Self and Satan's Instruction Manual of Sin and Death. But now, as members of the new humanity under the Headship of Christ, we are instructed to not consider ourselves, but consider what is best for others by looking at Christ and His Cross. When we look at the Love of God at the Cross of Christ, the Holy Spirit overflows our hearts with that Love, which God uses to do His will in and through us. THAT IS THE CHRISTIAN LIFE!
10. So what does this life in action look like? For a few of us it might mean leaving everything and becoming missionaries or preachers. But for most of us it means continuing our daily lives. Engaging in the things we have always engaged in except for one large difference. Now instead of viewing the difficulties in life from the standpoint of the selfish desires of our evil hearts. We can view the difficulties in life from the standpoint of the selfless Love of God at the Cross of Christ!
• Before, you would go to work to climb the ladder of success, not caring if you trample others underfoot. Now you can go to work to succeed, but remembering how Christ didn't climb the ladder of success if it meant hurting others. Instead He descended the ladder of success so that He could help others. If the God of the universe can do that, I can set aside my right to ascend the ladder of success if it means building up rather than tearing down others. That is God working in and through us.
• Before, when someone insulted you, you got angry and wanted revenge. Now someone insults you, and you think, well, Christ was insulted far more than that when He went to the Cross for me, empowering to forgive. That is God working in and through you.
• Before, you visited people in the hospital out of a sense of duty. Now, remembering all that Christ died for sick sinners on the Cross, you are empowered to give up your time and sit patiently sharing God's grace with them. That is God working in and through you.
• Before, when difficulties arose you withdrew from the scene to protect yourself. Now, remembering that Christ left Heaven to enter into the difficulties of this sin-cursed world, you are empowered to jump into the midst of difficulties as dispensers of God's Grace and Peace. That is God working in and through you.
• Before, you viewed adverse circumstances as attacks on the self and something to be avoided or conquered at all costs. Now, remembering all the Christ accomplished on that Cross, adverse circumstances are turned into opportunities to present ourselves to God for Him to dispense His Grace through us when and where it is needed the most.
• Before, you hated to go to family reunions because of difficult relatives. Now, remembering that through the Cross God brought you—an ungodly sinner on enemy status before Him—into His family, you will be empowered to receive everyone in your family.
• Before, you wanted to get married because you thought that your spouse will meet your needs, make you happy, cook your dinners, provide status among your friends, etc. Now, remembering that Christ didn't require others to meet His needs, but went to the Cross to meet their needs, you are empowered to get married so that, having all your needs already met by God in Christ, you can meet the needs of your spouse by bringing God and His riches to them.

I could go on and on, but hopefully these examples can give you ways of thinking about Agape Love. In short, the world tells us to seize the moment for ourselves. Agape Love is the way we let God seize the moment for Himself! Redeeming the time from darkness to light one moment at a time in these evil days (Eph. 5:16). It changes everything in our lives!

One final note. When God brought us into His family, He brought us in as adult Sons and Daughters. This Pauline concept is call Sonship or Adoption. Paul will enlarge upon this in Rom. 8. Rom. 5 and 6 provide the groundwork for this Sonship position. God has placed us in His family as adults, where we learn the Father's business and are given access to the Father's riches (in Christ). This means God is not going to make your every decision. That is what you do with toddlers not adults. God tells us that now that we know His business (dispensing His grace to a sin-cursed world) and having access to His infinite riches through Christ and thinking according to the mindset of Agape Love Christ had when He went to the Cross, NOW GO AND LIVE YOUR LIFE! God can dispense Grace through you in marriage of in singleness, in health or in sickness, in wealth or in poverty, in Illinois or in Florida. You make those decisions.

One more very important final note. The believer's job is to just dispense God's Grace and Peace. Our job ends there. We are not responsible for whether or not others receive it. God doesn't force others to receive the Grace He offers them, and neither should we. We are just His dispensers of Grace, not His enforcers. What the other person does with God's Grace is between him and God. Our job is just to dispense. Period!

THE AGAPE LOVE EXISTENCE IS THE MOST EXHILARATING, LIBERATING AND JOYFUL EXISTENCE OF ALL!

One of my goals for all of you is that you would come to know Paul's Letter to the Romans like you know the back of your hand. Together with Ephesians, they make up the core of Pauline Grace Christianity. It is the core of all that God is doing today. And it is the core of all that we should be participating in today. Here in Romans 6 we find the antidote, the cure, the solution to fallen humanity's most fundamental problem: Separation from God and EXCLUSION FROM GOD'S GLORY (Rom. 3:23). Romans 5-6 gives us the amazing message that now we as believers are united to God and participate in His Glory through Christ. To really appreciate this, we need to remember how fallen fallen humanity really is: It is completely and fully and hopelessly fallen (Rom. 1:18-3:20). If we read Rom. 5-6 without keeping Rom. 1:18-3:20 in mind, we will not appreciate the revolutionary content of its amazing message.

In Romans 1:18-3:20, God and Paul explain that fallen humanity, because of its rebellion against God and rejection of His Word in UNBELIEF, has been HANDED OVER to the unclean SELFISH LUSTS of their foolish, darkened, hardened and unrepentant HEARTS under the power of SIN AND DEATH (1:21-32; 2:4-5) and, therefore, those who belong to it can do nothing acceptable to God. For all its work and time and busyness and effort and money and talk and rushing about and everything else all together, for all of that, it is all just vanity, a barren, FRUITLESS existence. When everything is said and done, it is just an explosion of lust that misuses others to fulfill their own selfish desires. I know, this is not a pretty picture. But that is the true position of fallen humanity before God. They are completely and hopelessly lost and can't do anything about it. With this in view, it is evident then that fallen humanity's primary and most fundamental problem is not that it commits sins, but that those in it are enslaved to Sin. They are slaves in the Factory of Self and Satan, which runs 24/7 on the power of Sin, contaminates everything inside with Death. Fallen humanity doesn't just need its sins forgiven (as important as that is!). It needs to be freed from the factory of Sin!

Ok, that is the first 2 1/2 chapters of Romans. Then from Romans 3:21-4:25, Paul explains that God has forgiven our sins through the redemption Jesus Christ procured through His death on the Cross. We have the forgiveness of sins (Rom. 3:25-26, 4:7, 25). That is great! And I thank God for it every second of every day. But that is not enough. Man-made religious and theological systems stop here and get believers to live in a continual state of confession of sins...committing sins, thinking about sins, confessing sins, asking forgiveness of sins ... whether in a Catholic confessional in a church or in a Baptist confessional at the foot of your bed each night. But this would be a MUCH LESS salvation. I suppose God could have saved believers by leaving them in the Factory of Sin and Death but forgiving all the sins they commit there. I suppose that is possible but that would a MUCH LESS salvation. God didn't stop here, and we must not either. We must go on to Romans 5-6!

As we enter into Romans 5, Paul begins using terminology that he hasn't used since Romans 1-2. Note the highlighted words in all capitals above as we work our way through chap. 5-6. Having been justified by FAITH/BELIEF (5:2) we have a new standing before God that makes us PARTICIPANTS IN GOD'S GLORY (Rom. 5:2), which results in a MUCH MORE salvation that saves us from condemnation and wrath and gives us the LIFE of Christ (5:9-10)! A MUCH MORE salvation that abounds God's Grace to us and makes us participants in His RIGHTEOUSNESS so that we reign in LIFE by Jesus Christ (5:15, 17)!! A MUCH MORE salvation that removes us from the evil reign of Sin and Death and places us under the benevolent reign of God and His super-abounding Grace!!! Now fallen humanity's most fundament problem has been solved. Believers have been removed from enslavement to Self and Satan's Factory of Sin and Death and placed into the service of God and His Grace in Christ's Factory of RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LIFE!!! WOW!

On the basis of FAITH/BELIEF, God the Holy Spirit doesn't just deal with our external sins (as great as that is!), He goes far deeper than that. He goes all the way to our innermost person, all the way into the HEART and re-creates it by pouring, avalanching, waterfalling, overflowing it with the SELF-LESS (Agape) Love of God displayed at the Cross of Christ (Rom. 5:5-8), HANDING US OVER to the teachings of Pauline Grace (6:17). And having done all that through Christ and His Cross, God freed believers from slavery to selfish lusts of our evil hearts (6:12), freed believers from slavery to Sin and Death (6:7-18), and freed believers from the slavery of a barren and fruitless existence (6:20-23). And having done that, He HANDED BELIEVERS OVER TO PAULINE GRACE (6:17), enslaved (to use the terminology of men (Rom. 6:19)) them to the SELF-LESS LOVE CHRIST DISPLAYED WHEN HE WENT TO THE CROSS for them, and enslaved them to His RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LIFE! And now for the first time, the believer's existence BEARS MUCH FRUIT UNTO GOD (Rom. 6:21-23)! What a glorious message!

Last night in our Bible Study Fellowship from Rom. 6 we looked at an important component of the Christian Walk: FAITH.

Rom. 6 tells us some of the most amazing things in all the universe. According to Rom. 1, as sinners in fallen humanity, we were handed over to the lusts of our darkened hearts under the power of sin that leads to death, which produces a barren existence that bears no fruit (Rom. 1:18-32). But in Rom. 6, Paul says believers have been freed from the power of Sin and Death so that we are no longer enslaved to the selfish lusts of our evil hearts. How can this be? It is because we have now been handed over to a new Master that we can obey from a heart re-created with Agape Love (Rom. 5:5; 6:17), which is under the power of Righteousness and Life, producing a fertile existence that bears much fruit (Rom. 6:1-17).

This new Master that we have been handed over to is the form of doctrine called Pauline Grace Teachings, which are identified in Rom. 16:25 as Paul's Gospel, the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the Revelation of the Mystery (6:1-17). Pauline Grace is a Grace/Faith operational system, NOT a Law/Works operational system. In a Grace/Faith System God does everything in and through the believer. He freely “graces” believers with everything in Christ, and they receive and enjoy His things by FAITH, which allows Him to powerfully work in and through them (Phil. 2:13). In a Law/Works System, however, sinners are called on to do everything themselves through their own power. If they obey, then they will receive the blessings of the Law. But if they don't obey, they will receive the curses of the Law.

The Pauline Grace/Faith System tells us to look beyond ourselves and everything going on around us and focus solely on Christ and His Cross, asking: What is GOD doing? The Law/Works System doesn't look at Christ and His Cross, but focuses on the self and what is going on around it, asking: What am I doing? The former always leads to patience, hope and victory. The latter always leads to anxiety, despair and defeat.

The Christian Life can only be lived out on the basis of FAITH: When we believe (OUR FAITH) in the revelation of God's Truth for today found in Paul's Epistles (THE FAITH), which is based on the Person and Work of Christ on the Cross (THE FAITH OF CHRIST), it is then, and only then, that we have obedience of faith (OUR FAITHFULNESS), which translates into a walk that pleases God.

Some FAITH facts:

1. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by God's Word to us (Rom. 10:17). Today this is found in Paul's Epistles.
2. Faith looks at Christ and His Cross, sees the invisible things of God procured for the believer there, which stabilizes the believer for ministering God's Grace and Peace to a sin-cursed, lost world under adverse conditions (Heb. 11:1). Believers have invisible things like peace with God, a gracious standing before God, access to the infinite Riches of God and participants in God's Glory and Love, and all by FAITH through Christ (Rom. 5:1-5). And they have things like being placed into Christ, identified with His death, burial, resurrection and crucifixion, which frees us from the selfish lusts of our evil hearts under the power of sin and death, and enslaves us to hearts re-created with God's overflowing Agape Love that motivates and empowers us to serve Christ in Righteousness and Life, and all by FAITH through Christ (Rom. 6).
3. Faith is the only thing we can “do” without “doing” anything. It is the setting aside of our own “doing” so that we can rely on the “doing” of Someone else, and that Someone else is the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 4:5; Jn. 6:29).

The Christian Life is the result of God faithfully working in and through believers based on Christ and His Cross and the Agape Love displayed there.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave himself for me.
(Gal. 2:20)

Last night we brought together the things we have been looking at in Romans 5-6, which are some of the most important truths in Pauline Christianity: For instance, God brought us into His family under the Headship of Christ where all the things that belong to Christ through His Work on the Cross belong to us. God made us the recipients of His infinite and eternal Riches of Grace: His Righteousness and Life, His Agape Love displayed at the Cross of Christ, His Holy Spirit. We are united to God through Christ. God raised us to the Highest of Heights by placing us into Christ, identifying us with His death, burial and resurrection, freeing us from the power of Sin and Death. And God took our old humanity and crucified it together with Christ, bringing us into His new humanity under the operating principle is Agape Love, freeing us from the lusts of our own evil hearts. In doing this, God handed us over to a specific form of doctrine, the teachings of Grace, Pauline Grace (Rom 6:17). WOW! If that is not enough to get you to jump and shout for joy, I don't know what is.

Now that God has done all of this for us by grace through faith, Paul immediately warns us that our service to God is by grace through faith as well. The believer doesn't “do” anything to get saved positionally. And the believer doesn't “do” anything to bring that salvation into his or her experience. God is the one who “does” everything in and through us. Paul explains that we are God's instruments, albeit living instruments. The only responsibility believers have as God's living instruments, is faith, faith in what He has done for them in the past, what He is doing with them in present and what He will do with them in the future

Someone has said that Faith is the only thing a person can “do” without “doing” anything. It is the setting aside of our own “doing” so that we can rely on the “doing” of Another, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said this in His earthly ministry: The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent (Jn. 6:29). Faith works in this way: When we believe (OUR FAITH) God's Truth for today as found in Paul's Grace teachings (THE FAITH), our eyes will be focused on the Good News of Christ and His Cross (THE FAITH OF CHRIST), which leads to a walk that is well pleasing to God (OUR FAITHFULNESS).

Why is it so important for believers to cling to Pauline Grace? Because Pauline Grace proclaims the Good News of Christ and His Cross and the Love of God displayed there for us, and this is what opens the flow of Agape Love in our hearts, which motivates us to serve God by serving others selflessly, and this is nothing less than God working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). This is faith working through (Agape) Love (Gal. 5:6). Therefore, the worst question we can ask as we begin to learn about all that God has done for us in our salvation is: What should “I” be “doing?” “I” NEED to “do” something! But that is the wrong question to ask! That is just your flesh where sin resides talking.

What you should be asking instead is: What is God “doing” today? And the only way you can know what God is doing today is by rightly-dividing the Bible. That is the only way to discern what God is doing today in the Body of Christ's Mystery Program from what He had been doing in the past and will be doing again in the future in the Nation of Israel's Prophetic Program. In Israel's Prophetic Program, God is displaying His Glory by manifesting the Righteousness of God in Saving His Friends (believing national Israel and friendly Gentiles) and destroying His Enemies.

But that is NOT what God is doing today through Paul's apostleship! Today, God is displaying His Glory by manifesting the Righteousness of God in Saving His Enemies because He has no Friends! Today, God is dispensing His Grace and Peace to ungodly sinners on enemy status before Him, to those who only deserve His wrath and judgement. This is the Riches of God's Grace in Christ. That is what God is doing today. So, guess what God will be doing with you when He is working in and through you as His instruments? He will be dispensing His Grace and Peace through us. That is the true Christian Life. That is our great privilege. That is the most important thing in the universe!

Anytime we turn away our eyes away from Christ and His Cross and look at ourselves--our thoughts, our feelings--or we look at the things around us and at external appearances; or we listen to human reasoning or worldly knowledge or man-made religious and theological systems, or even if we turn to the things in Israel's Prophetic Program in the non-Pauline Scriptures without rightly-dividing the them: When we look at ANYTHING other than Paul's Gospel, the Good News of the Cross of Christ, the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the Body of Christ's Mystery Program, ANYTIME we turn from that we will instantly be thrown off course and lose our bearings, resulting in fear, defeat, and despair. But when we keep our eyes focused like laser beams on Christ and His Cross, the Love of God at the Cross of Christ continues to overflow our hearts, motivating us to serve God by serving others our of selfless Agape Love and that always results in patience, victory and hope. That is nothing less than God working in and through us, making us His dispensers of Grace and Peace to a sin-cursed, lost world, under adverse conditions on enemy territory. And when we participate in that, IT IS ALWAYS WELL-PLEASING TO GOD!

Last night we began our transition from Rom. 6 to Rom. 7-8. We had sailed our boat out to the deep waters of Rom. 6, threw the anchor over the side and spent a while taking in the sights and the sounds. But last night, we pulled the ancho back up and prepared ourselves for sailing again that will lead us through Rom. 7 and into the deep waters of Rom. 8 where we will once again throw the anchor over the side, giving us the opportunity to take in the sights and sounds.

Some of the main highlights from yesterday:

1. In Rom. 1, we learned that the biggest mistake humanity made is thinking that in declaring their independence from God that they actually became independent; independent entities, autonomous beings, their own little gods of their own little universes. But this was the utmost of folly: Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools (Rom. 1:22)! This is just the vain imaginations of a foolish and darkened heart. This is literally the oldest lie in the Book. This is the Lie that Satan used to deceive Adam and Eve at the Fall. The truth is that in declaring their independence from God and His Word, humanity didn't become independent! They were just handed over to another Master, Master Sin and Death (Rom. 1:18-32).

You see, God didn't create humanity to be an independent creation. He created humanity to be a dependent creation, dependent upon Him, the benevolent Master God. So, when they rebelled against God and rejected His Word, God, after much struggling and stiving with them, handed them over to the only other Master in town, the evil Master Sin and Master Death. In withdrawing their dependency on Master God, they just became dependent on Master Sin.

2. In Rom. 6, Paul picks up this point. Humans either obey as the servants of Sin unto Death. Or they obey as the servants of Righteousness unto Life (Rom. 6:16). Because humanity's problem was that in their rebellion against their benevolent Master God, they were handed over to the evil Master Sin then what humanity needs most is to be freed from Master Sin by being handed over to another Master, a benevolent Master. And that is exactly what Paul says happened in Rom. 6:17: But God be thanked, you were (in the past) slaves of sin yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine (Pauline Grace Teachings) to which you were delivered (handed over to) (Rom. 6:17).

The answer to being handed over to Master Sin in Rom. 1 is being handed over to Pauline Grace in Rom. 6. Pauline Grace is the pure antidote to the Satanic Lie of Master Sin. Pauline Grace takes our eyes off ourselves and focusses them on Christ and His Cross and the infinite and eternal Agape Love of God displayed their for us, which the Holy Spirit takes and overflows our hearts with, creating within us a new heart for selfless service of God to others. The Satanic Lie, however, focusses my eyes on myself, and commands me to do whatever I need to do to look out myself, for #1, so that everything I do springs from the evil lusts of darkened hearts without concern for others.

3. Therefore, the most important thing the believer needs to realize is that the Christian Life only happens under Pauline Grace. In a Grace System, the believer receives all of God's blessings up front freely by faith through Christ and His work on the Cross through God's power. In a Law System, however, the believer tries to gain or maintain blessings or escape punishment by his own works through their own power. The former always leads to victory. The latter always to defeat.
4. Therefore, we must not ever, for any reason whatsoever, leave Pauline Grace and go to a Law System, and Paul demonstrates why In Rom. 7. The Law, he explains, puts sin into motion. It tells me to take my eyes off Christ and look at myself and what I am doing. It tells me to look at myself as an independent, autonomous “I” that can do something for God by my own work and power. And when it does that, it exposes, magnifies and energizes indwelling sin, laying bear my own sinful selfish heart (Thou shalt not covet!) and then, it slays me, puts me to death, and I find myself in a very lonely and despairing place indeed: O wretched man, that I am (Rom. 7:24)!
5. No, the answer to Christian Living is not to go to a Law System as the Galatians thought to do. But to go on in the Pauline Grace System. For it is only there that our eyes remain focused on Christ and the Work He did on the Cross for us ungodly sinners on enemy status before Him. There we access the infinite Agape Love that the indwelling Holy Spirit uses to create within us new selfless hearts that can serve Him in Love.

Pauline Grace destroys the Satanic illusion of an independent and autonomous “I” and sweeps us into the “we” life of the whole Triune Godhead (Rom. 8:1-4) where “we” are returned to the truly human status of creaturely dependence upon the one true and benevolent God. We are restored to true human existence. Everything else is a deception and a lie. Our salvation does not come from God fixing up the old selfish “I” made up by human religious systems that follow Satan's Lie. Our salvation comes from God creating us anew in Christ, sweeping us up into life of the whole Triune Godhead and uniting us to all other believers with joints and ligaments of Agape Love (Eph. 4:15-16). That is Pauline Grace. That is true human existence. That is victorious Christian Living.

We began by noting that Romans 5-6 especially solved the problem of fallen humanity as described in Rom. 1:18-32. And Rom. 7-8 especially solved the problem of fallen humanity in relation to law as described in Rom. 2.

In Rom. 1:18-32, humanity in its rebellion against God in unbelief, threw away God's uncorruptible Glory, Truth and Design, and descended into the pit of dying creation under the power of Sin and Death. Sin penetrated into every detail of their lives, ruining their relationship with God, others and self. Their existence became barren and fruit-less. The problem with fallen humanity is not that they commit sins and need to try to commit fewer sins and do more good works. The problem with fallen humanity is that they are enslaved to Sin that results in Death. The real problem of fallen humanity is that it has an internal heart problem, a foolish and darkened heart full of evil lusts under the power of Sin, which leads them into a shameful bodily existence.

God and Paul give the solution to this problem In Rom. 5-6. First Paul explains that God the Holy Spirit solved the heart problem by overflowing the believers hearts with agape love, the Love of God at the Cross of Christ. Then Paul explains the mechanics of it all. God places believers into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. Christ died for sinners, redeeming them from everything Sin had against them. When sinners receive His death by faith in the Gospel of Grace, God places them into that death, thereby freeing them from Master Sin and making them the servants of Righteousness. But God didn't stop there. He also identified them with Christ's resurrection, thereby freeing them from the dominion of death so that they can now live unto God by walking in newness of His life. And how was all this accomplished? By handing believers over to a law system or even the Mosaic Law System? No, it all was accomplished because God handed believers over to a grace system, the Pauline Grace System!

But what about the Jews and those Gentiles associated with them who had been under the Mosaic Law? They may think that Pauline Grace may be good enough for the Gentiles, but surely the Jews needed to continue on with the Law as well. And it is this false reasoning that Paul addresses in Rom. 2. One of the first things fallen humanity will try to do when it is confronted with its hopelessly sinful state is to try to deny it and cover it up (like Adam and Eve in the Garden after the Fall) with a law system that would make them look better than other sinners and, therefore, make them good enough for God. Everyone, Jew and Gentile, is susceptible to this, although it reaches its pinnacle with Israel under the perfect and divinely originated Mosaic Law System. The Gentiles had their moral laws, ethical codes and philosophical systems, lists of virtues by which they fooled themselves in thinking they could produce on their own “good” lives acceptable to the “gods.”

But none of these things law and code systems actually solve their hopeless and sinful predicament of fallen humanity. All they can do is provide decorative veneers that try to cover underlying sin but really just reveal their sinful hearts. In fact, the ultimate disaster in resorting to these man-made law systems is that they not only do not solve the sinful heart problem, they actually make it worse because they fool the sinner into thinking that they do not need the Riches of God's longsuffering kindness that He is extending to them so that they could have the opportunity to repent of their sinfulness and fall on His Grace. These appeals to laws and codes to make one a “good” person only accomplish one thing: They transform what was the foolish and darkened hearts in Rom. 1 into the unrepentant and hardened hearts of Rom. 2 that are treasuring up wrath unto the day of wrath (Rom. 2:1-16)!

And then The Mosaic Law entered and was given to the Nation of Israel. Certainly, that would provide the basis for fallen humanity to produce righteousness before God! But no, Israel just fell into the same trap that the lesser laws and codes of sinners produced. They assumed that just having the Law put them in a privileged position before God that removed them from His wrath. But having the Law wasn't the important thing, nor was even teaching the Law the important thing. What mattered was DOING the Law! But Israel broke the Law, dishonoring God, which brought them under the Curses of the Law, which caused God's Name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles (Rom. 2:12-24). The nation that was supposed to be a light to the Gentiles under the Law brought only darkness to the Gentiles. The Mosaic Law just made the condition of the heart worse than before. The foolish and darkened hearts of Rom. 1:21-24, became the hardened and unrepentant hearts of Rom. 2:5, which became the uncircumcised hearts under the Mosaic Law that cannot please God of Rom. 2:28-29. Such is the descent of the sinful human heart.

Remembering that the heart problem was solved by God the Holy Spirit overflowing the believer's hearts with Agape Love (the Love of God at the Cross of Christ) in Rom. 5, and that being placed into the death and resurrection of Christ freed the believers from the power of Sin and Death in Rom. 6, now in Romans 7 Paul explains that having been placed into the death and resurrection of Christ means that those under the Law not only died to sin (Rom. 6) but also died to the Law, delivering them from it (Rom. 7). Being identified with the death and resurrection of Christ not only freed all believers from Sin and Death so that they could walk in newness of life and bear fruit unto holiness (Rom. 6), but it also freed those believers with a Jewish background from the Law so that they could serve in newness of Spirit and bear fruit unto God (Rom. 7:4-6)!

In short, all believers today in the Dispensation of Grace have been handed over to a Grace/Faith/Spirit System, God's form of doctrine or teaching for today that is based on the Good News of the Death and Resurrection of Christ. We call this Pauline Grace! Just think, The Roman believers had been idol worshipping pagan Gentile sinners on enemy status before God. Yet in Rom. 1:8 Paul says this about them: I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. They were already participating in and displaying God's Glory throughout the whole world! Yet a few verses later in Rom. 2:23-24, Paul explains the ruined state of national Israel in this way: Thou that make thy boast of the Law, through breaking the Law you dishonor God. For the Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you (Rom. 2:23-24). What a contrast.

Whoa! How can this be? How was it possible that a group of idol worshipping pagan Gentiles in the center of Satan's rule could be made to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time through Paul's co-workers what national Israel could not be made to accomplish after 1500 years under the Mosaic Law? That is really the million-dollar question of Christianity. Are the Romans bearing fruit unto God because He handed them over to a law system, even The Mosaic Law System? That is what man-made religious and theological systems sat. But that is absolutely wrong. If the Law didn't work for Israel with all her divine advantages, privileges and benefits, it wouldn't have worked for the Gentiles who had far less. No, they were producing fruit unto God because He handed over to a Grace System, the Pauline Grace System, whereby God the Holy Spirit does everything for, in and through them by grace through faith. This is the only way we can be made instruments of righteousness through which God produces fruit unto holiness in and through us as well.

In Rom. 6, Paul explained that before believers (Jews and Gentiles alike, who had been under Sin that leads to death) could walk in newness of life and bear fruit unto holiness they had to die to sin and be made alive to Righteousness. This was accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ. And in Rom. 7, Paul explained that before believers (especially those associated with Judaism who had been under the Mosaic Law) could serve in newness of Spirit and bear fruit unto God, they had to die to the Law and be delivered from it (Rom. 7:1-6).

This would have shocked the Jews. They would have naturally thought the exact opposite. To bear fruit unto God one must go under the Law. But God and Paul say, no, the only way to bear fruit unto God is to die to the Law and be freed from it. Of course, God and Paul are right, and it is proven by Israel's history under the Law. After 1500 years of being under the Law, even though God gave them bountiful divine privileges, advantages and benefits, even with all that, Israel only broke the Law, dishonored God, and fell under the Curses of the Law, blaspheming His Name among the Gentiles (Rom. 2:23-24).

Of course, the point of this trial was to demonstrate that if even Israel couldn't produce a righteousness of her own that was acceptable before God based on the Law, even with all her innumerable divine privileges and advantages, it is obvious that no other nation on earth who had far less would be able to do so either. God allowed Israel in her rebellion against Him to enter into the Mosaic Law System to demonstrate once-and-for-all that sinners cannot relate to Him on the basis of a Law System because of indwelling sin (Rom. 3:19-20)!

The Mosaic Law System set the righteousness bar pretty low. All it called for was basic human righteousness from Israel's sinful flesh. Unfortunately, it provided no power to produce it. Contrary to religious teachings about the Law, the Law is not something hard to do. In fact, it is God setting the bar in the lowest rung. It is just the mimimum human righteousness that God could rightfully expect from His human creation. You know: Love others as yourself. Or treat others the way you want to be treated. But of course, no one could do even that not because the Law was difficult but because of indwelling sin of fallen humanity. And Israel was no exception, resulting in her falling under the curses of the Law rather than its blessings. God ran this trial to prove that you cannot grow human righteousness in the land of fallen humanity. Its impossible. It would be like trying to grow pineapples in Canada. Impossible!

If there is going to be any hope for fallen humanity, it would have to be through a Grace System, the Pauline Grace System. In the Pauline Grace System, God does everything based on the Person and Work of His Son on the Cross. The only thing the sinner is called on to “do” is the only thing you can “do” without “doing” anything: It is to believe, to receive this Grace freely by Faith. And in “doing” so, God gives believers all His blessings up front, thereby equipping and empowering them for Righteousness and Life. Where the Law demanded the production of basic human righteousness and failed because of Sin, Pauline Grace through the Person and Work of Christ on the Cross brought believers into the very Righteousness of God and that always succeeds! For He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (Christ)(2 Cor. 5:21)!

Wow! Try to wrap your mind around that astounding fact! Let me close by illustrating with a dream I had many years ago. In the dream, I was together with the Body of Christ in the Heavenlies, worshipping and serving the Lord Jesus Christ there. Several times a day the heavens would suddenly ring out with the voices of angels asking God to show them His Righteousness. And He responded by pointing at us, the Body of Christ, headed up by the Lord Jesus Christ, saying: If you want to see the Righteousness of God, look at them! You see, God demonstrated His Righteousness in saving ungodly sinners on enemy status before Him, and then making them the displayers of His Glory forevermore, and He did it righteously because it was through the Person and Word of His Son on the Cross, where He redeemed fallen humanity in a way that fully satisfied the infinite holiness of the Triune God (Rom. 3:23-26).

If that's not enough to put a skip in your walk, I don't know what is!

Yesterday, we saw the difference between the Mosaic Law System and the Pauline Grace System:

The Mosaic Law System provides conditional blessings based on the sinner's own person and work, but gives him no power to accomplish it, resulting in the sinner falling under its curses.

The Pauline Grace System, however, provides unconditional blessings by faith and gives them all of front freely based on the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ, completely equipping believers all they need to walk in a way that is well-pleasing to God!

The Mosaic Law System demanded basic human righteousness from the sinful flesh, but fallen humanity couldn't even do that; NOT because the Law is hard but because of indwelling sin (Rom. 3:19-20).

The Pauline Grace System, however, makes believers the Righteousness of God in Christ, where they display His Glory forevermore (2 Cor. 5:20)!

The Mosaic Law System demanded low level human love: Just love others as you love yourself. Treat others the way you would like to be treated (Rom. 13:9).

The Pauline Grace System, however, gives us the love of God at the Cross of Christ, divine love, Agape Love, and overflows the believer's hearts with it, empowering them to love others more than themselves in order to build up others (Rom. 5:1-11; Phil. 2:3-4).

Because Grace accomplishes far more than anything the Mosaic Law called for, we must never, ever, even for a moment, think we need to relate to God based on a Law/Flesh/Works System. It will always fail. The Israelites went under the Mosaic Law and spent the next 1500 years under its curses. The Galatians tried completing by the flesh what was begun by the Spirit and Paul's response was: Oh, foolish Galatians: Who has bewitched you (Gal. 3:1)? Who cast a spell on you to get you to do such a foolish thing?

No, we must remain steadfast in relating with God on the basis of a Grace/Faith/Spirit System that relies on the God and His Word rightly-divided to do everything in and through us, making us into the people He wants us to be (Gal. 2:20-3:1)!

IT IS NOT GRACE AND LAW. IT IS NOT EVEN GRACE OR LAW. Contrary to what man-made religious and theological systems sat, today God is not even offering the option of entering a Law System with Him. Today, IT IS GRACE OR NOTHING!