Bible Lesson 203

Understanding Law and Grace. Galatians 4:4-5

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God set forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” “We do not break the Law of God, instead we break ourselves and are ground to dust by God’s Law. We don’t break the law of gravity when we jump off a tall building, or leap from an airplane, instead what we break is our necks. Franklin said, ?He who spits against the wind, spits in his own face. The grace of God transcends all of our feeble efforts to describe it. It cannot be poured into any of our mental receptacles without running over.”

Havner

The law of God is not obsolete it is absolute! It stands today as the teacher of those who have any fear of God. Those who have received from God, His Grace, through Faith in His Son, are born again new creatures, created unto newness of life, and are no longer under The Law.

That does not mean that the law was set aside, but that for the true Christian, that one who is obedient to Christ, is now living their lives by faith in Christ and are seen as ‘In Christ’ who was and is perfect. The law will be the basis for the Great Assize (The Great White Throne Judgment), (Revelation 20:11-15).

Grace is God’s undeserved mercy, shown to sinners who were radical enemies of God. Of course none (at least most of us) ever openly declared war against God; however the fact that we were friends of the world and its hedonism, we made ourselves enemies of God. (James 4:1-10). God gave us His law, written in stone, as a Teacher to show us how we should live and to warn us against trespassing against our Creator God.

The people who are not under God’s grace, and that means everybody that does not know Jesus Christ as their personal savior, and have been born again by God, and are obedient to Christ, are under the law.

They may not think that they are; because God has substituted His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ to redeem a people (Those who are obedient to Christ) (Hebrews 5:8-9). Doesn’t matter what people think, because the Bible makes it clear that only those who have been born again, born from above, recreated in Christ and obedient to Him, are the only ones who have been saved, and justified and glorified. (Romans 8:28-30).

The question becomes are we under the law or not’ The answer is Yes and No! We are not under the penalty of the law, which was being stoned to death; however Jesus Christ reminds us that we are under the duty of the law, which was kept for us by the Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus answered the Lawyer who asked Him, what is the great commandment of the Law. And His answer was, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all of the Law and the Prophets.” I don’t know whether you caught it or not but Jesus just told them that if they truly loved God and their neighbors, they would be keeping all of the commandments.

If you love God like you will, if you know Him, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, you have kept the law. If you love God you will keep the first four commandments of the Decalogue: and if you love your neighbor as yourself, you won’t break the last six of the commandments of the Decalogue. (Matthew22:35-40; 1st John 4:7-8; Romans 13:8-10). The Decalogue was written on stone tablets, by the Hand of God and they were binding on God’s people. to break any one of them was to break them all and the penalty for intentionally breaking any one of them was to be sentenced to death. Perhaps if we, as nations and communities, were to make laws that were dangerous to break, we might be a lot better off and there would not be as many arrogant law breakers as there are today.

Instead of supporting the law we have made it almost unheard of to really punish law-breakers. How many pseudo-Christians do you know who steadfastly harp on not using the death penalty’ God instituted the death penalty directly after the flood. (Genesis 9:5-6; Exodus 21:28). God has not removed that requirement for murder, which is killing with the intention to kill. John 19:10-11; Acts 25:11; Romans 13:4). God expects His people to be strong enough and holy enough to influence the system in which they live; and we should make certain that our judicial system is cleared of deceit, ignorance, and political influences, so that when a man is sentenced to death, he receives his punishment quickly and publically, so that those who see it, will think several times before they commit the same crime. (Ecclesiastes 8:11-13; Deuteronomy 21:21-23).

We can think of the Law of God as a fence or a demarcation line. It shows us what pleases God and what He hates. In the Old Testament, The Law was given so that the people would always have sign posts that tells them what they should and should not do. That does not mean that God did not show His Grace (undeserved mercy) to some even as they lived under the law. God has always been a gracious God, and He showed favor to those who obeyed Him. The problem in our society is that we have made the term ‘obey’ unacceptable. We have made up idols in our mind that have convinced us that we are too smart, too good, too refined and too favorable to God, for Him to ever demand obedience from them. That is the perfect sign of a people who do not have enough sense to deserve God’s mercy and grace. God created us to be a people who listen and learn, listen to the voice of God’..at least Adam was to listen to God; but he turned away from obedience to God and listened to his wife and put the world’s entire population in deep trouble. (See Genesis 3:17-19).

God did not give His Law to save people; but to guide them to Himself. As long as people know the law and are guided by it, we close the gap between ourselves and God. God gave His Law to train a people to obey until the fullness of time had come and God established a time of Grace, where the penalty of the Law (death by stoning) was set aside in favor of God’s undeserved mercy, which we call Grace. Grace did not set aside the Law, but it did push back the penalty of death (both physical death and spiritual death, which is separation from God).

People in our day like to think that because the Bible tells us that we are not under the law; but under Grace, that somehow we will escape hell, even if we continue in sin; however that is not the Bible in context. Remember that Jesus tells us in His Sermon on the Mount, that He did not come to destroy the law; but He came to fulfill it (Mathew 5:17-20). Jesus also set us all under the law when He answered the lawyer concerning the great Commandment (see Matthew 22:35-40). Every Christian in the world has a duty to God to obey the law in love, and if we love God and our neighbor we have fulfilled the law. (Galatians 5:13-15; James 2:7-13). As we have said before, it is impossible for one in the flesh to keep the law, but one who has a spiritual connection to God (Salvation), can and does keep it because They are in Jesus and Jesus kept it Perfectly (Romans 8:1-11).

So, how does anyone find that place where they are able to be righteous before a Holy God’ We only find it when God acts to call those who will be conformed to the image of His Son Jesus Christ. We are saved by Grace through faith and that not of ourselves, It is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). The only thing that any of us can do to move toward God is to be courageous enough to see ourselves as God sees us, and that is to own our sin and our deserved wrath from God for that sin. Christ came to save sinners, not pseudo-Christians, not simply people with a problem, or an illness, but sinners dead in trespass and sin (Ephesians 2:1-3; John 3:16-21;Matthew 1:21).

Notice now, there in Matthew 1:21 that the Scripture says, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners ‘from’ their sin, not ‘in’ their sins. Grace is that touch of the Masters’ hand that does that supernatural work of completely changing those who receive it. It is not something that we deserve, or something that we can decide to do on our own, it is something that God has decided to do and does! First God calls, or moves on us by his Spirit to bring us back to Spiritual life, and God calls us for His Purpose, and we know that that purpose is for us to become one in Him and Christ. Everyone whom He calls, he also justifies, and whom He justifies, He also glorifies. (Romans 8:28-30).

How can a sinner dead in trespass and sin, under the wrath of God, an enemy of God, become a Saint, a new creature in Christ, with the Spirit indwelling them, with the old things passed away and all things new’ It is by God’s Amazing grace and nothing else. Have you received that supernatural rebirth’ (Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21).Only God knows but if you are not interested enough to find out whether what I have told you is true, He probably won’t. I think that God can do anything that He wants to do but I think the Bible give us evidence that He has a way and that way is that He saves those who have tried sin and are sick and tired of it.

Until next time,

may God bless and keep you

This is Bro. Bob