Grace Bible Church
Basic Training in Doctrine
Guest Speaker: Pastor Joe Sugrue
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Grace is never increased and never advanced by any function of the old sin nature, whether sin or good or evil.
As a divine policy, therefore, grace cannot motivate to sin or carnality. Grace cannot motivate to good or evil.
To the legalist grace always appears as a license to sin. To the antinomian grace always appears as an excuse for sin. Neither position is correct.
Only the divine provision and the divine support of logistical grace can exploit the positional victory over the old sin nature.
This is the basic concept of life. You must understand authority in life, and the extent to which you buck authority in life is the extent to which life destroys you.
Jesus Christ came into the world to save the world and to establish the PPOG as the authority over the believer’s life. But unlike Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ gives us a choice.
At salvation the Church-age believer receives a double portion.
All believers in history receive the first portion at salvation, the righteousness of God the Father and the eternal life of God the Father.
Only believers in the CA receive the second portion, the righteousness of God the Son and the eternal life of God the Son.
We share everything that Christ has, but righteousness and eternal life are involved in the second portion of the double portion for royal family.
2 Cor 5:21
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
We have something no one ever had before the Church Age began, a double portion of divine righteousness. This is very significant because it means that our blessings are concentrated.
This double portion is a challenge to find the authority which is doctrine, to find the one who communicates it as our own right pastor, and to stay with it until we have cracked the maturity barrier.
If God doesn’t promote you, you are not promoted. If God doesn’t provide the success, you are not successful. If God doesn’t provide the happiness, you are not happy.
The purpose for slavery is obedience. You are at someone else’s disposal. But the greatest happiness in life is being at someone else’s disposal because it is the source of blessing and refreshment in human life.
True freedom lies in submission to the one who is the source of all blessing and whose policy is always grace.
The believer who does not exercise his options for placing himself under orders to God is the believer who fails to adjust to the justice of God after salvation.
The believer who continues under the rule and authority of the old sin nature after his positional deliverance at salvation is under that category beyond carnality called reversionism.
The analogy: a form of slavery called marriage (chapter 7:1-6).