Tuesday, September 11, 2018 – Ephesians 6:23

Faith, Peace, and Love in Your Life are from the Grace of God, Pt. 2, Grace VS. Legalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1kT6s24q4A

Grace Fellowship Church
Pastor/Teacher, Jim Rickard

www.GraceDoctrine.org
www.facebook.com/gracedoctrine 

5. The Encouragement, vs. 21-24.  

Eph 6:23, “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The grace of God means that none of us can earn or deserve even one blessing from God. God does all the work; we do not earn or deserve anything from God. We are not blessed because we do something. We are blessed because God has done and continues to do something in us, through us, and for us. We never earn or deserve anything from God except condemnation.

God is the aggressor in establishing a relationship with man; when man is the aggressor that is works or what we call legalism. Therefore, grace is the policy of God in providing everything necessary for the believer to execute His plan, purpose, and will.

Legalism is the enemy of grace. Legalism includes any system by which mankind claims blessing from God through his own merit, his own ability, his works, or his service. Legalism derives its name from human beings trying to be saved by keeping the Mosaic Law or by doing some other form of works as a way of salvation. Legalism is refuted in both the books of Romans and Galatians.

Gal 3:1-5, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? ²This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? ³Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? ⁴Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? ⁵So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?”

Legalism exists in many forms, such as salvation by works, spirituality by works, crusader arrogance, and human plans substituted for the Divine plan of God.

Grace and legalism are mutually exclusive. They cannot and do not coexist. No system of human merit or ability is ever a part of God’s grace policy, and therefore is never a part of God’s Plan. Grace at salvation is the work of God. It excludes human merit. Grace inside the Plan of God for your life is the provision of God. It excludes any form of human ability or merit.

Legalism is the intrusion of human works, thinking, opinions, and ideas on God. We superimpose on God our stupidity. Legalism is always finding some way of its own to superimpose on God and says, “God, accept my works, my emotionalism, my experience, my humiliating self‑effacement.” That is your way, not God’s way!

Talented believers have a difficult time because they associate their talent with some sort of spiritual advance. We often cling to some talent, morality, ability, program, plan, or gimmick which conflicts with the principle of grace. This only postpones blessing.

One of the major problems of the believer in time is to sort out the difference between grace and legalism, e.g., the Galatians. God’s Word in the soul is the basis of learning to distinguish between grace and legalism. In cracking the maturity barrier, you eliminate legalism from your life.

Legalism creates problems and excludes Divine solutions. Grace provides Divine solutions and excludes legalism. In other words, we cannot squeeze grace into the narrow confines of human viewpoint and human action. But under the Plan of God, we can utilize grace through the wide expansion of Divine viewpoint. We can only attain this wide expansion of Divine viewpoint through perception, metabolization, and application of the mystery doctrine of the Church Age.

In post-salvation grace, God provides everything necessary to keep us alive in the Devil’s world as a part of logistical grace and provides escrow blessings for time and eternity. There is nothing you can do to change the fact that you have eternal life. Grace is far more powerful than works. The virtue of God rationale is that we cannot cancel God’s faithfulness and love toward us. The unfaithfulness of the believer does not change the faithfulness of God, 2 Tim 2:13, If we are unfaithful, (and we are), He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.”

Under the Divine policy of grace, all of our blessings come from God. Under the function of our own volition, all of our failures come from ourselves through the law of volitional responsibility, which means that we must take full responsibility for our own bad decisions. Yet, because of who and what God is, His grace is greater than our failures, our sins, our flaws, our self-righteous legalism, our human good and our dead works.

There is no limit to God’s grace. God’s grace is not limited by human reason. The believer who is full of himself is quite empty and limited, but the believer who is grace oriented from Bible doctrine is quite powerful. We cannot squeeze grace into the narrow confines of human viewpoint, but we can and should live by grace through the wide expanse of God’s thinking.

We must not and cannot distort grace to comply with the lust pattern of our sin natures, but we expand our grace horizon through spiritual skills; the filling of the Holy Spirit, cognition and inculcation of Bible doctrine, and execution of God’s plan. Grace does not give us what we want, but grace gives us what God wants, which is far better for each one of us.

Consistent grace is the Church Age believer who is saved by grace and living by grace. God is consistent. There is no legalism in salvation; therefore, there is no legalism in the Christian way of life.

God provides the means for eternal relationship with Himself. The grace policy of God provided blessings for believers in eternity past before man was created. What God provided for man in grace in eternity past cannot be earned, merited, or deserved. That includes our Portfolio of Invisible Assets, escrow blessings for time and eternity, the Problem Solving Devices for each believer in the Church Age, the blessings of dying grace, the blessings of resurrection, and the blessings of the eternal state, Eph 2:7ff.

Eph 2:7, “That He might show you in the coming ages (Millennium and eternal state) the surpassing riches of His grace in generosity toward us in Christ Jesus.”

God’s act of kindness / generosity is solely an act of His grace. The marvelous feature of this kindness is that it was done when we were in rebellion to God, Titus 3:3-4. That is truly GRACE!

Titus 3:3-7, “For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. ⁴But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared. ⁵He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

If God’s grace so operated in regards to our salvation, it must operate as such post-salvation on into eternity.

1 Tim 6:17, “Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.” That is GRACE!

Six principles:

1. In grace, God works and man benefits. In grace, God provides and mankind receives apart from any form of personal merit.

2. Grace is the policy of God in establishing a relationship with mankind both in time and for the eternal state.

3. Grace is the policy of God in providing everything man needs in two categories.

  a. Relationship with God in time and in eternity.

  b. Fellowship with God in time only.

4. Grace provision for relationship with God forever includes not only salvation the instant we believe in Christ but also eternal security.

5. Grace provision for fellowship with God in time includes your very own Portfolio of Invisible Assets, which God prepared for you in eternity past. Your portfolio includes your very own spiritual life.

  a. Included in the Portfolio of Invisible Assets are: your spiritual gift, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Pre-designed Plan of God for your life, Equal Privilege and Equal Opportunity, unique Royal Commissions, unique Mystery Doctrine of the Church Age, Indwelling of the Trinity, 100% Availability of Divine Power,  the Spiritual Skills, and the Problem Solving Devices.

6. With the Problem Solving Devices circulating in your soul, there is no problem too great. They have capacity for everything.

Eph 1:2-3, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”