Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
062120
Because of the Cross, GOD's grace is offered to all mankind.
We have been given so many blessings from the Lord that it would be blasphemy to say we can give back the gifts our Lord gave to us.
ROM 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
Even though Adam and the woman were not given the Mosaic Law or the Ten commandments to follow, physical death still functioned or reigned from the first man Adam until the Law given to Moses.
“the gift by grace” = Grace is the policy of God when He deals with His children, you and I.
Our first Original principle;
- Grace
- Approaches.
- Grace is not held back or withdrawn because of the failure or failures of the believers who seem to become more occupied with each other than they are with themselves.
It is our failures and faults which usually compels us to reach out for the kindness and benefits of grace.
Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human failure or sins.
It’s not real grace if there are conditions attached to it that one must meet to receive the grace that is needed when we need it.
Grace cannot be exercised where there is the “slightest degree” of human merit to be recognized.
- Grace cannot be lessened because of failure or sin.
God cannot to do less in grace for one who is sinful than He would have done had that one been less sinful.
Grace cannot be increased because it is the expression of God's infinite and unconditional love.
Grace cannot be diminished because every limitation that sin might impose on the action of a righteous God has been dismissed forever through the cross.
HEB 8:12 "For I will be merciful to their iniquities, And I will remember their sins no more."
Grace does not mean that God ignores or overlooks sin, grace means that God has dealt with sin perfectly in His Son on the cross.
The grace of God is exercised in perfect independence of human sin or failure.
The Lord could speak to us in grace even though there may be some sin and failure we need to overcome.
When you think of grace I want you to think of the freedom that God has to express His love to all mankind.
- Grace cannot incur or bring on a debt.
An act is not gracious if under any circumstances a debt or an obligation is incurred.
Grace must always remain pure and uncompromising in its' generosity and benefits.
Grace must always be based on purity or that which is pure and clean!
Pure God -- Nothing whatsoever to do with man.
Through grace, God is glorified and sinners are saved.
Whatever God does, He does in grace and therefore He presents it as a gift.
He doesn't give things and take them back.
He doesn’t give things with strings attached.
He doesn’t manipulate the decisions of others.
He doesn’t allow the weakness of man to push Him in the decisions that He desires or the directions He desires us to go through, but He honors the free will of man.
A benefit or a blessing cannot be called a gift, if it is paid for before, at the time, or after the gift is given.
Any attempt to compensate God or to pay Him back for whatever He does is totally incompatible with the grace of God.
These attempts, although many times made in sincerity, exhibit such a lack of understanding and appreciation for the love and grace of God.
This is the true meaning of frustrating the grace of God, GAL 2:21 "I do not frustrate the grace of God;"
All attempts to repay God for His gifts, even though they are sincerely made, serve only to frustrate His grace and lower the marvelous kindness of God to some form of creature credit.
How faithfully we should serve him but never to repay Him.
Because of grace, we do not owe God a thing.
What He did for us, He did with no strings attached.
Service is our means of expressing our love and devotion to Him....but it is not what we owe Him.
As God expressed His love to those whom He saves by the gracious things he has done, Christian service for God should also be based upon "grace.
The grace of God is too often denied by well-meaning attempts to compensate God for His benefits.
Salvation must be understood and treated as a gift from God and Christian service and faithfulness must be the expression of the believer's love and gratitude to God.
Salvation is never conditioned on human faithfulness or on the promise of human faithfulness.
- A fourth fundamental fact about grace is that grace is not something that God owes the human race because of the cross.
If God was indebted to the human race because of the work of the cross, then the payment of an honest debt could never be an act of grace.
The offer of salvation to the human race is not something that God owed the human race, nor is it something God had to do.
Grace = every form of human merit shall be set aside completely so that pure grace may be exercised not only in the salvation of man but also God's policy for the individual after salvation.
COL 2:6 As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
How did you receive TLJC?
By grace, through faith.
Grace is God's means of expressing to mankind His fantastic love for all mankind.
The entire human race has been placed under the Divine Judicial Sentence of the condemnation of the Sin Nature.
It is obviously true that all men are sinners both by nature and practice.
God has pronounced an equal and absolute sentence of judgment against all members of the human race.
All men have already been condemned, not on the ground of their own sinfulness but on the ground of their federal headship in fallen Adam.
All human merit has been disposed of absolutely and forever.
No divine obligation exists toward any individual.
If He treated us like we deserve to be treated than we would all be destined for the eternal lake of fire.
- Grace is never the overpayment of a debt or a reward for trying hard.
Grace is neither treating a person "as" he deserves, nor treating a person "better" than he deserves.
Grace is treating a person "graciously" without the slightest reference to what he deserves.
Grace is infinite love expressing itself in infinite goodness.
Through the unlimited atonement, grace is free to save anyone who believes on TLJC in every case and only grace can save mankind.
EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Grace is never decreased or increased, however, the experience of that grace depends on the believer's fellowship with God.
- Grace did not appear in the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the world.
Grace did not judge our sins, justice and righteousness did.
Under the principle of true gospel preaching, sinners are to be told that they may now stand forever pardoned before God.
COL 2:13 He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
For the believer, accepting this judicial forgiveness guarantees an unchangeable standing and position before God forever.
The sin issue has been dealt with once and for all and unless you understand that you can't even begin to understand the grace of God.
In faithfulness, God will correct and chastise His child who sins, but as we have noted before, there is a tremendous difference between judging and chastising.
The forgiveness of God toward the sinner is made possible only through the cross and never an act of immediate grace.
Forgiveness cancels every debt before God whereas justification declares the sinner to be forever judicially righteous in the eyes of God.
Of the various divine undertakings then, some are acts of divine justice, and some are acts of the immediate grace of God.
Those acts which deal with human unworthiness and sin are "acts of justice."
These include forgiveness, justification, death to the law, freedom from the law, and the whole new creation.
On the other hand, those aspects of salvation wherein God is revealed as imparting and bestowing His benefits are said to be immediate acts of His grace.
These include the gift of eternal life, the imputed righteousness of God, and all of your escrow blessings.
This is one of the reasons why a believer "loses rewards" at the Judgment Seat of Christ.
- Grace is not the issue in dealing with the sins of the saved.
What God does in forgiving us experientially in time is based on the cross and all that was accomplished!
By His death, Christ provided the sufficient ground for both the salvation of the unsaved and the restoration of the saved.
According to the scriptures, certain fundamental elements enter into the divine forgiveness and cleansing which takes place when a believer is restored.
There must be confession, this is the one and only condition on the human side.
There is absolute forgiveness and cleansing which is promised on the divine side.
Then protection is promised because of the advocate which we have at the right hand of God, TLJC; Heb 7:25.
He acts in strict faithfulness to His covenant and promise concerning forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness of sin is based upon the righteousness and justice of God not the grace of God.
1JO 1:9 "He is faithful and righteous, with the result that He forgives us our sins [known sins] and purifies us from all unrighteousness [unknown sins]."
Grace does not appear in the forgiving and cleansing of sins.
The word grace represents the uncompromised, unrestricted, unrecompensed loving favor of God toward sinners.
Grace is the limitless, unrestrained love of God acting on behalf of the lost.
Grace always gives credit to God!
Satan hates when God gets the credit.
Adam’s willful sin of disobedience was imputed to the entire human race without their consent or their permission.
Here is where our Lord turned the curse into a blessing; as the principle of Deu 23:5 states.
ROM 5:17 For if by the transgression of the one [Adam], death (that is spiritual death) reigned or ruled through the one [Adam], much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
The gift of salvation = the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness that will reign, not be lost, but reigned or ruled in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
This is all because “salvation” is from the Lord; Jonah 2:9 But I will sacrifice to Thee With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the Lord."
Notice, the five last words in Jon 2:8, which says, “Salvation is from the Lord."
The character and nature of God guarantees that God cannot cancel the forty things that He gives you at the moment of salvation because of our faith in Christ.
God cannot cancel His gifts. When God gives, He does not take it back. He has given us His righteousness and His life, so that we are qualified to live with Him forever.
Our relationship with God does not depend on our integrity, morality, virtue or failure -- it depends on His holiness and integrity.
We have peace with God because He gave us His righteousness. We do not have peace with God because of our self-righteousness.
When we “stand in grace,” this does not refer to our morality or self-righteousness, but the virtue of God.
Virtue is infinitely greater than morality, but virtue can only be produced by the filling of the Spirit and the perception of doctrine.
Morality can be produced by human self-determination and the energy of the flesh.
It is God that provides the grace and our standing.
We don’t stand on our own strength, if so, we would collapse.
Confidence in the glory of God is personal love for God the Father and occupation with Christ.
You can’t lose your salvation because it is strictly the work of God.
You did nothing to gain it or maintain it; it is the work of God.
God never gives His righteousness without putting it in a permanent container: our eternal security.
You cannot lose what the integrity of God gives you.
Eternal security is defined as an unbreakable relationship with the integrity of God, depending on the integrity of God.
It is an unbreakable relationship because God will not break the relationship regardless of what we do or fail to do.
Demons cannot cancel those forty things.
We cannot cancel them by renouncing God or our faith.
You have to be arrogant to think that you can commit a sin or make a renunciation of God that can cancel the work of God!
You don’t have the power or ability to cancel it, no matter how evil you are.
People are so arrogant that they think they are greater than God.
The dumbest people are those who think they can reject eternal security and who attempt to cancel the grace of God.
It motivates you to want to know this wonderful God who has provided such fantastic things for you because of one non-meritorious decision you made in a few seconds; Tit 2:11-12.
Man’s failure does not abrogate the integrity of God.
Man’s weakness does not cancel God’s strength.
Lack of integrity in the believer cannot cancel the integrity of God.
Failure to execute the PPOG does not cancel your eternal salvation.
Yet we are more impressed with our failures than with the integrity of God, and that’s one of our problems.
We need to be more impressed with the integrity of God and less impressed with our failures.
Salvation through faith in Christ results in receiving one-half of divine integrity, the righteousness of God.
The possession of the righteousness of God forever eliminates the possibility of losing salvation by any failure on our part.
Our righteousness breaks down because we have an old sin nature.
We stand before God, not on the basis of our righteousness, but on the basis of His righteousness.
It is the quintessence of human arrogance to assume we can do anything to cancel or abrogate our eternal salvation.
The forty things received at the moment of faith in Christ cannot be canceled or nullified by any failure on our part after salvation.
The integrity of God is infinitely greater than any failure of man, 2Ti 2:11-13.
Joh 3:16 “For God loved the world so much that He gave His Son [deity of Christ], the uniquely-born One [humanity of Christ] that whosoever believes in Him shall never perish but have eternal life.”
Note that no conditions are added to “shall never perish.” All you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ; nothing is added to faith.