About Jesus Steve Sweetman
Steve Sweetman
Chapter Seven
Law, Grace and the Spirit
At this juncture I would like to explain what I feel is Paul's understanding of law and grace, faith and works. I do not want to get bogged down with these points, but I do want to state what I understand to be the Biblical thinking in this area. It is vital to understand before we go any farther and before we get into the practicalities of our topic.
I take the chance here of maybe losing some of you. Hopefully I will lose none. Some modern Christians feel they don't need theology. They don't understand what the word theology means. It simply means the study of God. And we all need that. Some feel that because of discrepancies and differences between people it is not worth looking into certain topics. They also think that too much study is not practical. They want to get down to the nuts and bolts of life. Well, it is good to get down to where the rubber meets the road. My thinking is that before we hit the pavement we need Biblical understanding or else we will be skidding our tires and getting nowhere fast. Proper Biblical understanding is a prerequisite to a good Christian lifestyle.
This part gets a little difficult for me. It is hard not to spend fifteen chapters alone on these points. I would like to show you every verse that backs my thinking. I will try to keep it brief, and to the point. So here goes:
Let's look at the Old Testament law that was given by God to Moses for His people. Paul calls this law our schoolmaster, or teacher. (Gal 3:25) That means the law was there to teach us something. What did it teach us? The law taught us that we were sinners and in desperate need of help. Paul says this in Romans 3:19 and 20. "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law; rather through the law we became conscious of sin." This is quite clearly stated. The law made us know sin. It made us all stand guilty before God the Judge. And last of all, no one will be made righteous because they try to obey the law. It was never meant for that purpose.
Jesus said in Matt. 5:17 that He did not come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. What does that mean? This is what I believe it to mean. No one could live up to the standard of the law. That is, no one but Jesus. By living up to those high standards Jesus fulfilled the law. By dying on the cross the justice of the law was fulfilled. Sin had once and for all been punished on the back of Jesus. God once covered His eyes to sin, but the time had to come to deal with it. Jesus took the punishment for all sin of all men; past, present and future. I sure hope you understand this liberating truth.
Here is what Rom. 3:25 and 26 says, "God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus." These verses show us that Jesus did take the rap for all sin of all mankind on his back. The law was fulfilled in that no longer did man have to be punished. for sin. In that sense the law was taken out of the picture. The Law had a prophetic nature to it. That is why Jesus used the word fulfill when it came to the Law. In the same way that the prophecies of Isaiah were to be fulfilled, so did the Law have to be fulfilled. Jesus did just that.
Paul says in Rom. 3:21 "that there is now a righteousness that is apart from the law. The law and the prophets give testimony of it." This new righteousness is through believing in Jesus. "Therefore no one will be declared righteous through the deeds of the law."(Rom. 3:20)
Let me also quote Colossians 2:13-14 "He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us, He took it away, nailing it to the cross." This clearly shows us what happened to the Law. It was nailed to the cross when Jesus died. Jesus rose from the dead but the Law was buried forever.
This brings us to Hebrews 10. "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming - not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once and for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore Christ came into the world...by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin."
The above scripture tells us that the temporary means of atonement provided by the Law was set aside by the real thing. This is a great truth that liberates us in many ways once understood and digested into our spiritual system. I came to understand this years ago to a good degree. It thrilled my heart then and that thrill is still with me today as I think about these eternal truths.
You see in Hebrews 10 that the yearly sacrifices could not make men perfect. I would say that no sacrifice done apart from the Lord makes us perfect. It does not matter how religious they are. You can't get anymore religious than those blood sacrifices of the Old Testament. The Lord Himself said that they don't make you perfect. It's pure human effort, even though they were instituted by God Himself for a season.
I also like the phrase, "by one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy". It sounds a little paradoxical. It's no trick. There is a real point to the verse. The sacrifice of Jesus has made us perfect already in the sight of God. That was completely necessary in order for the Spirit of God to live within us, yet the verse goes on to say "for those who are being made holy", as if we are not perfect yet. There's two thoughts here. First can you see the love of God. He and we both know that in a real sense we are far from perfect, but He has figured out a way in the cross to make us perfect in His eyes in order for us to be reconciled to Him. The second thought is that in order for perfection and maturity to come we must realize the truth that He has made us perfect already. Without this knowledge in our hearts attaining perfection is tough, if not impossible.
Law has passed on. It was nailed to the cross. We have looked at the word Law. Now we need to look at the word faith. As Paul says in Gal. 3, the receiving of the Spirit came through faith, came through believing what was preached. There was nothing that we could do to earn salvation. There was nothing we could do to receive the Spirit of God. It all comes as we believe, put our trust and faith in. We trust in Jesus. We do not trust in Law, whether it was the written Law of God, or our own man-made rules and regulations.
So what is faith. Another word for faith is trust. Another word for faith and trust is rely upon. Billy Graham once said, "every time we sit in a chair we exercise faith". By that he meant we believe, or we trust that the chair will hold us up and we won't fall to the ground. We are relying on that chair to hold us. This is how it is with the Lord. Jesus did certain things when he was on earth and when He was on the cross. He told us that salvation could come to us if we had faith, or if we relied on what He did for us. This is not just a mental recognition of the facts that Jesus presents us with. That is not true faith. Faith is a trust in Jesus that comes from our heart. That is, there is something within us that causes us to believe His message, and we say 'yes" to Him. We rely on Him alone.
It is no longer trying to do and keep God's Law that saves us. It really was never that way in the first place, even though many believe it was. Jesus did all that was necessary to be saved. We accept that fact and say, "you did it for us Lord and now we know we are righteous before you because of what you have done". Now since we believe and since our sins are forgiven and we are righteous in God's sight He can give us His Spirit. And so He does. We ask, and we believe He will answer. We rely on Him to keep His word. He does keep His word and as a result we receive His Holy Spirit and we are born again.
This is a brief description of what the Old and New Testament is all about and how they relate to each other. These things Paul would have told the Jewish Christians who opposed him.
In summary, the Old Testament external Law is done away with. It has been replaced by the internal Law of God that is in our hearts by the Holy Spirit's indwelling presence. Salvation does not come by obeying any written code. Jesus' perfect life satisfied the obligation to the written code. Jesus' death satisfied the need for God to punish sin. Therefore we are perfect in His eyes if we truly believe this, and as a result His Spirit can live within us. This changes the whole situation with us. Because the Spirit of God is within us Jesus can get to the heart of the matter concerning us and our sin. He can change us from within. He knows that without a change of heart there is no change at all.
To clarify and make sure you understand what I am saying about the passing of the Law, let me say this. The Law as given to Moses is gone. That law was an expression of the Character of God. I would dare to say that it was a partial expression since I doubt that you can express the nature of God on paper. The character of God remains. The law was replaced and His Character seen in Jesus. Paul says in Colossians 2:9. "for in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in a bodily form". This means that the Character and Life of God once seen dimly in the Law has been seen extremely clearly in Christ. The totality of God's Character is in Jesus. We now have Jesus within. I am not suggesting that we have no obligation to attain a greater degree of maturity in Christ. God forbid we think that. We have an even greater obligation now because we have a way to attain to maturity. So the moral Law of God remains. The way in which it is administered to us has changed. Once again this is the crux of the New Testament. I hope this point is clear. I make no excuse for sin.
Now we take this one step further. We don't just become a Christian by faith and not by works. We also live out our Christian life by faith and co-operation with the Holy Spirit, and not by good works or human effort. This was what Paul was trying to say to these foolish Galatians.
Let me quote Romans 14:22 and 23 at this point. "So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, and everything that does not come from faith is sin."
Paul plainly says that anything we do that does not come from faith is sin. You may say that he is just talking about things like eating and drinking and Sabbath days here. I say no to that point. If a simple thing like eating food can be done in faith then surely more important things should be done in faith. Besides Paul does say that "everything" that is not done in faith is sin.
Chapter Eight
Unbelief Is Sin
We need to ask a question about the above Romans 14 passage. To put it simply, just what does that verse mean?
Well, here is what I believe it doesn't means. Some might say that it means, whatever is not done in the context of The Faith is sin. That would suggest any Christian activity is good and you can't call it sin. As long as it is done within the realm of the Christian Faith it is not sin. I think that there have been many things done in the name of faith, or by the church that were definitely not good. Just look at the dark ages of our history and anyone can see the church was full of sin. So I don't believe this interpretation is what Paul was talking about here.
We need to stick with our original definition of faith. Paul is saying that whatever you do, if you do not do it from your heart and trust that the Lord will help you then that is sin. There should be something deep in our hearts that looks up to the Lord in faith, and in trust, relying on Him for whatever it takes. So as I teach the Sunday school class I do it in the presence of the Lord. I look to Him in my heart. I expect Him to be with me as I teach. I do it in co-operation with Him. I just don't go running off in my own strength and do it on my own. This would be sin. It wouldn't be done in faith.
I often think of the last verse in the book of Mark. It says, that the disciples went forth preaching the good news and the Lord confirmed their words with signs following. This shows the spirit of co-operation between us and the Lord. We do the manual labour and the Lord provides the spiritual assistance. It's based on a relationship we have with Him. That is where faith comes in. Faith presupposes the idea of relationship. We trust because of our relationship with Him. We just know that He will come through and be there for us. When we first become a Christian faith is based on relationship, even though it is little. At this point maybe it is based on relationship hoped for. Even when we first meet the Lord, as we look into His face in a spiritual sense we have the beginning of a relationship with Him. Out of this relationship we do things with Him, not for Him. You then say that we do these things in faith.
Our faith then is a result of the relationship we have with Him. As our relationship grows, so does our faith and trust in Him, and so does true Christian activity. Now anything we do that is not based on this is called sin. Anything we do apart from the Lord is sin. Anything we do in our own human effort is sin.
You thought that sin was confined to lying, killing, cheating and things like that. Did you not realize that a person can teach a Sunday school class and it could be sin? Did you not realize that a person could visit the sick and it can be called sin? Did you realize that a person can preach a sermon and that too can be sin? Any Christian activity that is done outside your relationship with Christ is sin.
This sin is a little different than that of murder and stealing. Those have bad consequences. Religious sin does have better results and lots of them are very good, but it is still sin. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he told the story about those who cast demons out in his name, and did many wonderful thing. He told them to depart from him because they work iniquity. You say, how can those things be called iniquity? Anything that is done apart from Jesus is not done in faith and it is sin.
This is the very point that Paul was making to these Galatians. Circumcision was one of the sins these people were committing. You say, how can circumcision be called a sin? It was something the Lord Himself established. You are right. He did just that, but He made a change. Circumcision no longer had anything to do with salvation. The Lord made a change. The Galatians did not recognize that change. They still said that a man had to have faith and then be circumcised before he could be called a Christian. Circumcision was definitely a religious activity, wasn't it? Paul called it sin. He was certain of that. It was sin because when the Galatians circumcised someone and said, "now you are a Christian", they did it on there own. The Lord had nothing to do with it. They did that outside of faith. It was merely a dead work. It meant nothing to the Lord.
There is the number one example of human effort in the early church. Let us look and see if by chance we can find a similar example in our modern church today. I bet we can find a couple anyway.
Chapter Nine
Modern Day Circumcision
In today’s world circumcision has become a medical term. For the most part it has lost all of its original religious meaning. The church obviously got over the problem of having to be circumcised in order to be saved. The underlying problem presents itself in new ways for our generation of Christians.
The underlying problem once again is human effort. That is, we as Christians serve God in our own way, relying on our talents only and not the Lord Himself. The sin of self reliance is very much with us in our modern church.
I would dare to say that in the modern mainline denominations, most things are done in human effort. This is only my opinion as an observer from a distance. Take their stand on homosexuality not being a sin. This is far from Scriptural. The Lord has clearly been left out of this way of thinking. Take the teaching on the Bible as being the Word of God. In many mainline denominations that is no longer the case. The Bible has become a good book. It is a book elevated beyond other books, yet the Word of God being inspired, well that is a different story. As a result they get to pick and choose what they like from scripture and lay aside the rest. They say it is not relevant to modern social needs. Obviously they have left the Lord out of this thinking as well.
One modern so-called Christian that I met years back had this little saying that he used to say. He excitedly would say, "when it comes to scripture you take the best and hop over the rest". That pretty well sums up modern mainline Biblical inspirational theology.
You can see this thinking in the board rooms. In many mainline churches the smoked filled board rooms seldom differ from the smoke filled back rooms of politics. There is dissention. There is back biting. There is no sense of the presence of God with them helping them to make the right decisions. Everyone has their agenda and the strongest opinion wins out in a seven to five vote. If there is prayer before the board meeting then it is prayed to the walls, maybe a statue, or maybe even to a "she god".
Sunday morning in many mainline churches is a room filled with ritual. Everything is read from a book. Everything is done by habit. Everyone knows the format because it's been done that way for decades and is all written down nice and neat in the program. A matter of fact, program is a good word. It really just is a program. Jesus once said to the religious leaders of His day that they honoured Him with their lips but their hearts were far from Him. This is what is happening in the mainline church for the most part today.
You may say that I am being too critical. I say that if Jesus were visiting a mainline church in His flesh today He would tell it's leaders the same thing He told the leaders in His day. He would say, "I am reading your lips, but I can't read your heart. It is not speaking to me."
It is hard for me to understand just why some people go to these churches. I suppose the idea of going to church is traditional. That is what they have grown up with.
One resulting problem from leaving Christ out of the church is that the church has lost its youth. There are too many more exciting things that can be done on Sunday morning, the least of which is sleeping.
Then to remedy the problem of no youth and children they give away free Big Macs, hoping to lure the kids away from their Nintendo games.
That seldom works. Most kids are tired of Big Macs, and the fast pace of Nintendo is too exciting when compared to the slow pace of Sunday morning church.
Even the Big Mac is a man made solution for a spiritual problem. Some board member thought he had a good idea so it was discussed and voted on and passed. I wonder if anyone ever thought about praying for a suitable spiritual solution.
If you are an Evangelical and not a Mainline Christian you are probably feeling quite good at this point. You are probably happy that you aren't one of those mainline guys who have left the Lord out on the sidewalk. Don't gloat too much. I am afraid that you (I include myself in this as well) have the same problem. It is not so obvious as those mainline guys. We do pray. We do believe in the inspired Word of God. We even invite the Lord into our meetings. At the beginning of each service we pray, "Lord be with us today", but way too often once you say "amen", it's all over. We carry on in our own strength. Sure we are less formal. Sure we don't have all of the religious trappings. We say that we aren't traditional. Not so. The only difference is that our tradition is only fifty years old instead of five hundred years of age.
We believe in the idea that there are windows of opportunity for the Lord to come and visit us. We believe that revival comes once a year when we have a special evangelist speak for a week. Then there is that once in a decade fantastic revival that comes. The Lord moves and the pastor doesn't give his sermon because of the intervention of the Lord. Maybe it carries over to the following Sunday. Once again there is no sermon. Then things die down and become normal by the following Sunday. It's a good thing because the Sunday morning message is the "Ark of the covenant" of the evangelical church.
I wonder if the evangelical world realizes that the Lord might want to come and visit His people every Sunday morning, and maybe even Sunday night as well.
We evangelicals pray our famous little prayer. We must believe that it is actually found somewhere in the Bible. It's probably hidden in some obscure Old Testament passage. It's way back there, deep in some book that we can't pronounce the name of and never read. The prayer goes like this. It's quite simple. "Lord bless what we do today." It's like a grace. "Lord bless this food." Maybe that is where it first originated. We ask God to bless our meeting, bless our food, bless our children, bless the building fund, and especially bless this offering this morning. Maybe the offering prayer in our churches is the most intense prayer we pray. Really, for the life of me I can't figure out why we need to pray over the offering anyway.
I wonder at times when I visit a nice conservative evangelical church who they sing to. They open their hymn books, and then they sing. One might wonder after fifty years of singing these hymns why they'd need the book to sing from. Sometimes I stand in amazement and ask myself, "are we singing to the Lord or just to the book, or to each other". I don't particularly feel any special presence of the Lord as we sing. Oh right, I am suppose to sing by faith not by feeling. I forgot. I remember being told that as a youth when I asked some older Christian why we didn't feel the Lord with us in church. "Faith son. It's all faith." I just left and shook my head and said, "I thought true faith produced some type of reality at times."
We all know about the white knuckle club. These are evangelicals who are holding on to their salvation for dear life in case they lose it, or worse of all in case they misplace it somewhere. We're using all the human effort we can to hold on. That is why our knuckles are so white and our cheeks so red. We are enduring until the bitter end. Hopefully we can hang on until the Lord's return. That's why most evangelicals like believing in a pre-trib rapture. They figure they can make an early escape and save their knuckles from totally caving in. Personally I hope they are right with the pre-trib rapture. I don’t particularity wasn’t to go through the Great Tribulation either.
We have all of our rules to live up to. Don't go to dances. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't play cards. Don't hang around non-Christians. Don't watch TV. Don't, don't, and don't again. The only "do" that we can remember is, "do tithe".
Somehow I think that we have majored on minors. We don't do a lot of things. The real question remains, "just what should we do"? We should look for a good answer. We certainly have a lot of time on our hands since there are few things we can do.
Then there are the Pentecostal Churches. They preach the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They get you to speak in tongues. Then once that happens they go on to the next guy because you have reached the ultimate in Christian experience. You have it all. So you leave the meeting and carry on in your life in your own charismatic human effort.
Hasn't anyone ever preached a sermon from a verse beyond Acts chapter two. The book of Acts really does have more than two chapters.
Have you ever heard some Pentecostals pray. Here's an example. "Lord, thank you for being with us today Lord. God help the sick today Father, and Lord bless the Sunday school class God. And God bless me God and Lord bless the pastor Father God. Lord we ask this in your name God. Amen Lord God." Now if you are a young Christian this prayer is excusable but I've heard lots of old timers pray this way.
It would drive me crazy if you talked to me this way. Lets say I am talking to John Brown. I say, "good day John. John how are you today Brown? John did you see the game last night Brown? Brown wasn't that great John. John did you think they'd win John? Brown I am sure glad they did it John".
It's pretty clear once you think about it that this kind of talking is strange. There's just something not natural about it. I wonder, I really wonder if a person praying in such a way is really aware of who he is praying to. Maybe, just maybe, he's not praying to the Lord. Maybe he is just saying words for the congregation to hear. At least he can't really be too much aware of the relationship he is supposed to have with the Lord. If he was aware of that relationship and that he was actually speaking to the Lord I doubt if he could pray that way. Some people call this the anointing.
I think we have all heard the odd sermon in the middle of a prayer. You know how it works. There are certain things that you want others to hear and you don't have the nerve to tell them, so instead you say it in a prayer, supposedly to the Lord. Really you're praying it to someone else that you know needs to hear the message.
I wonder after saying all of this, maybe the Galatians had less problems than we have. I haven’t even begun to mention the individual self effort sins we have.
We get up in the morning. We may pray or maybe we don't. We just carry on our daily routine as if the Lord isn't apart of us. He is within us, yet we carry on as if He lives only in the church meeting. Maybe every so often we think, "oh I'm a Christian, I better acknowledge the Lord at this moment before I forget". What does the Proverb 3:6 say, "in all your ways acknowledge the Lord". That means to know that He is with you. Talk to Him. Think your thoughts to Him. Recognize His presence and walk with Him.
We see our children slipping away and so we manipulate events in order to get them to church. We give up on the Lord concerning our unsaved friend and so we take matters into our own hands and clobber him with the gospel gun. He gets really turned off and you lose him. We sit and think of all sorts of little Christian things we can do. We decide to visit someone in the hospital. We do this and we do that. We run to and fro doing our Christian thing. We have our ministry, and I mean "our ministry". There's a good chance it wasn't the one the Lord picked out for us, but we love the ministry and so we go out and minister.
There is something else I wonder about at times. I think we love the ministry of the Lord more than the Lord of the ministry. We simply like doing the work of God. We get all caught up in it and we tend to lose sight of the Lord Himself. Our ministry grows. We get famous. That feels so good. We buy full page adds in the biggest charismatic magazine going. It's a great picture of us and our new building. Man the Lord's work is so great. Do you see the picture? It's entirely possible that a charismatic person can be caught so much up in the work of the Lord that his relationship with Him has long gone by the board. I am sure this can happen. I believe it has at times.
We tend to do things from our head. We know what the Bible says and we store it in our head. There is no heart- felt attitudes any longer. The reason why the church has things down so pat is because our lives are structured the same way.
A Bible School President once told me that the hardest thing for him to do was to keep up his daily devotional Bible study and reading. He knew the Bible backwards and forwards. Was there anything new to learn? Besides most of his time in the Bible was spent preparing lessons. And it is possible to study the Bible merely from your brain and not from your heart. The Bible should be studied, yet not always from a purely intellectual standpoint.
Need I go any farther. I don't think so. Do you get what I am saying? Do we know what human effort is? Human effort is doing anything apart from the Lord. We need to do more than just ask the Lord to bless what we do. The plan needs to originate from Him. We need to let Him work with us as we carry out what He wants us to do.
Another way to put it is that our doing must be a result of our being. The things we do should be a result of who we really are, not just what we think we should do. And who are we. We are Christians possessing the Lord Himself via His Spirit. We are people who talk to the Lord. We are people who walk with the Lord. We are people who live with the Lord. We are people who co-operate with the Lord. He is very much the soul and fabric of our being, our personalities, our character. So why not walk in the Spirit. Why not drop the human effort as the Galatians were prodded to do.
One last note before I end this chapter. I know that I have been a little harsh on us all, but I do include myself in all I say. I am an Evangelical, a Pentecostal, a Charismatic, and more. I find it hard to put myself into just one group, but I too need to learn more of what it means to move away from human effort to live in the Spirit.