From Law to Grace in a Person
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This past Thursday evening, I had the humble privilege of teaching our Law & Grace lecture to our five advanced discipleship students. This Rest Stop presents a part of this teaching.
We can already see from our key verse above that the law was something given but grace was Someone who came.
Grace is a Person and His name is Jesus.
We can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through grace, but we can never have a relationship with Him through the law. The law leads us to have a love relationship with Him, not a legal relationship with Him.
LAW
The law system that pervades the minds of each person born into our fallen world originated with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I also refer to this tree as the Tree of the Knowledge of right and wrong.
With any law system, a person seeks what is right so as to then do it, and to know what is wrong so as then to not do it...all on their own, independently of God. Therefore, a law system is an achieving system.
The ultimate law system is God's Ten Commandments, the heart of the Old Covenant (Testament). This is the ultimate achieving system.
The LORD God said,
"If you obey My commands I will bless you;
if you disobey my commands I will curse you."
(Deuteronomy 28:2, 15)
We all are born disobedient to God's holy commands, totally incapable of achieving any one of these commands.
However, Jesus came from glory to be born under the law with us so that He could became a curse on the cross for those of us who receive by faith His salvation.
When the fullness of time has come,
God sent forth His Son,
born of a woman,
born under the law.
(Galatians 4:4)
Christ has redeemed us
from the curse of the law,
having become a curse for us.
(Galatians 3:13)
Jesus came to rescue us from being under the law and to raise us to be under grace!
for you are not under law
but under grace.
Romans 6:14)
Grace did what the law could not do, provide us forgiveness of our sins.
For what the Law could not do,
weak as it was through the flesh,
God did by sending His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh
and as a offering for sin.
(Romans 8:3)
Salvation includes forgiveness, but also includes a miraculous heart transformation! Through your union with Christ on the cross, you died to the Law so that you could be married to Christ! This is the intimate relationship you can only have by grace!
You were made to die to the Law
through the body of Christ,
so that you could be joined to another,
to Him who was raised from the dead.
(Romans 7:4)
CLOSING
Because of the profound law-mentality we are all born with, it is a challenge to teach law and grace. Some people initially hear that I am throwing out God's holy law when I say We are no longer under law but under grace (Romans 6:14).
God's Word says that our striving to live under a external law system has been transformed through the cross of Christ to be an internal "law system" of grace, whereby God's holy law, His character, is now written on our hearts.
We no longer need to strive to live up to external laws. We are now free to live out of the law of love inside our hearts in the Person of grace -- the indwelling Jesus Christ.
Where the law is an achieving system that has done is job to lead us into grace, a miraculous receiving system...receiving all the resources of Christ through our marriage union with Him!
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