Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
061920
Learn these profound principles of wisdom on God's grace. How to increase your knowledge and wisdom!
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” because grace is the policy of God when He deals with His children, you and I.
- Grace is not held back or withdrawn because of failure.
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 sin.
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.
TIT 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
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.
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.
Grace must always be based on purity!
Prin-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.
GAL 2:21 "I do not frustrate the grace of God;"
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."
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.
- 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.
Grace demands that 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,
The entire human race has been placed under the divine judicial sentence of sin.
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.
No divine obligation exists toward any individual.
- Grace is never the overpayment of a debt or a reward for trying hard.
Grace is treating a person "graciously" without the slightest reference to what he deserves.
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.
Under the principle of true gospel preaching, sinners are to be told that they may now stand forever pardoned before God.
For the believer, accepting this judicial forgiveness guarantees an unchangeable standing and position before God forever.
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.
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.
Those aspects of salvation are said to be immediate acts of His grace which includes 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.
- A seventh and final fundamental fact about grace is that 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.
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.
Protection is promised because of the advocate which we have at the right hand of God, TLJC.
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]."
It can be concluded that the word grace then 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.
Adam’s willful sin of disobedience was imputed to the entire human race without their consent or their permission;
Salvation - called 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.
Jon 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."
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.
Confidence in the glory of God is personal love for God the Father and occupation with Christ.
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.
No one can pluck them out of our hands.
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!
Yet people are so arrogant that they think they are greater than 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.
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 integrity of God is infinitely greater than any failure of man,
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.”