Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The new things that have come: The Divine power of God. Part 5.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Make sure that you don’t use this freedom or liberty as an excuse to do whatever you want to do because you will eventually destroy your freedom or liberty.
Rather, use your freedom and liberty to serve one another in love; that’s how it grows.
Everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence:
Love others as you love yourself.
That’s an act of true freedom.
There is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a the freedom and liberty given to us by means of the Holy Spirit, just as the freedom of the Spirit is incompatible with selfishness.
GAL 5:17, For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
JAM 4:6, But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
God the Holy Spirit sets Himself up to do battle against the arrogance of the indwelling sin nature, but He gives grace to the humility of the new nature.
1. Under the divine power of God the Holy Spirit we need to note that the grace of God is not held back or withdrawn because of the failure of the believer.
ROM 2:4, Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
MAT 28:20, “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
PSA 37:23, “The steps of a man are established by the Lord; And He delights in his way.”
PSA 37:24, “When he falls, he shall not be hurled headlong; Because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.”
It is the sense of defect or fault which impels a soul to cry out for the kindness and benefits of grace.
Prin – Under the divine power behind the ministry of God the Holy Spirit concerning the grace of God that most believers have no idea about is the fact that 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.
ROM 11:5, In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice.
ROM 11:6, But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.
Through the cross all questions of demerit have been banished and God is righteously free to exercise grace in every case.
2. Grace cannot be lessened because of failure or sin.
2TI 2:11, It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him;
2TI 2:12, If we endure, we shall also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
2TI 2:13, If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself.
God cannot propose to do less in grace for one who is sinful than he would have done had that one been less sinful.
EPH 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
EPH 2:9, not as a result of works, that no one should boast.
EPH 2:10, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Grace cannot be increased for it is the expression of God’s infinite love and grace cannot be diminished, for every limitation that human sin might impose on the action of a righteous God has through the cross been dismissed forever.
JOH 17:4, “I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do.”
The grace of God is therefore, exercised in perfect independence of human sin or failure.
A third important fact about grace is the fact that grace cannot incur or bring on a debt.
An act is in no sense gracious if under any circumstances a debt is incurred.
ROM 4:4, Now to the one who works, his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due.
ROM 4:5, But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness,
ROM 4:6, just as David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works:
ROM 4:7, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, And whose sins have been covered.
ROM 4:8, Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.
Grace must always remain unadulterated in its generosity and benefit.
Remember that a benefit cannot be called a gift if it is paid for before, at the time, or after the gift is given.
GAL 2:21, I do not nullify
the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.
All attempts to repay His gift, be they ever so sincere, serve only to frustrate his grace and lower the marvelous kindness of God to some form of creature credit.
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”.
Salvation is never conditioned on human faithfulness or on the promise of human faithfulness.
4. 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 than 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 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 or living the spiritual life.
COL 2:6, As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
Grace is God’s means of expressing to mankind His fantastic love through the divine power behind the ministry of God the Holy Spirit concerning the grace of God that most believers have no idea about is the meaning of the grace of God.
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, both Jew and Gentile.
All men have already been condemned according to
JOH 3:18 they are children of disobedience.
EPH 2:1, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
EPH 2:2, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
God has shut all in disobedience or under unbelief,
ROM 11:32, For God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all.
ROM 3:9, What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;
GAL 3:22, But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
ROM 3:19, Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God;
5. According to the divine power behind the ministry of God the Holy Spirit concerning the grace of God that most believers have no idea about is that the grace of God is never the overpayment of a debt or a reward for trying hard.
Divine grace is never decreased or increased… however, the experience of that grace depends on the believer’s fellowship with God.
6. 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.
This pardon covers all sins past, present, or future.
Prin-The forgiveness of God toward the sinner, then, 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.
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.
7. Grace is that grace is not the issue in dealing with the sins of the saved.
In GAL 5:16, the word for walk is the pres-act-imp of peripateo which refers to spiritual walking.
Spiritual walking is the line of action or the normal Christian life for the Church-age believer in executing the PPOG.
By way of analogy, in literal walking, you are moving forward.
In spiritual walking, you are advancing in the PPOG.
In literal walking, you are using physical energy.
In spiritual walking, you are using divine energy, i.e. the omnipotence of God.
The concept of walking in the light is found in,
EPH 5:8, For you were once in darkness [spiritual death], but now you are light in the Lord; Walk as children of light.
Just as walking in the darkness is incompatible with walking in light, so Christian degeneracy is incompatible with walking in the PPOG.
The command to walk in the light is a mandate to be filled with the Spirit and learning Bible doctrine under the filling of the Spirit.
The precedence for walking in the light is found in,
1JO 2:6, The person who says He abides in Him, He himself ought to keep walking in the same manner as He walked.
Spiritual walking describes the purpose of living in the PPOG which is to glorify God by using the power made available to the Church-age.
We are commanded in
1TH 2:12, So that you may walk in a manner worthy of God Who elected you into His kingdom and glory.
If we are going to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord after we believe in Christ, then we must walk in the integrity which can only come from being filled with the Spirit and expose ourselves to the teaching of the word of God.
And if we do all of this, then we fulfill 1JO 1:7, If we keep walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.
Walking in the light means problem solving along the way.
The challenge of walking in the light is also found in
ROM 6:4, Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism [of Holy Spirit], in order that as Christ has been raised from the dead, so that we too might walk in newness of life.
2CO 5:7 for we walk by faith and not by sight.
COL 2:6 As you have received Christ Jesus to yourselves, so keep walking by means of Him.
Walking is used for perception of doctrine, 3Jo 4, “I was very pleased because I discovered that some of your children keep walking by means of doctrine even as we have received a mandate from the Father.”
EPH 5:15 Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise.
All of these mandates to keep walking are commands to keep learning doctrine, to keep advancing spiritually in the Christian way of life.
EPH 2:10, For we are His creation, having been created in Christ Jesus for good of intrinsic value achievements, which God has prepared in advance that we should be walking by means of them.
We are to walk by means of the things prepared by God for us in eternity past, such as the problem solving devices.
Both the filling of the Holy Spirit and walking in the Spirit requires divine power.
Just as walking requires one step at a time so the Christian life requires one day at a time. This is the true meaning of GEN 5:22 Enoch walked with God. Or GEN 6:9, Noah walked with God.
1. Divine power brings glory to God, human power brings glory to man.
This is one of the reasons why the lord said what He did to Gideon in JUD 7:2.
JDG 7:2 And the Lord said to Gideon, “the people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands, lest Israel become boastful, saying, ‘my own power has delivered me.’