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“I do not frustrate the grace of
God: for if righteousness
comes by the law, then Christ is
dead in vain.”
[Gal. 2:21]
_______________
The great Apostle Paul, the apostle to the
gentiles and the one who wrote most of the New Testament Bible,
explains grace to the Galatians Church that badly wanted to go under
the Law in some vain way of perfecting their Christianity. He wrote
that the life he was then living daily was a life of being crucified
with Christ, which is a life of faith in Christ Jesus—a life of
daily becoming as Christ is, instead of observing the law.
In that Galatians letter he sternly chastised
those saints for favoring legalism and customs, instead of faith in
Christ. The foolish saints were trying to out-do the Jews in being
Jewish as if that aided in their Christianity. They were observing
days, times, foods, etc. Paul reasoned with them, saying that Christ
has redeemed them/us from all of that and from the very curse of the
Law itself. He tries to get them to understand faith and accept it
as sufficient, explaining that we are children of God by faith in
Christ and nothing else; in Christ there is no such thing as Jew and
Gentile, etc. The Law that these Galatians fancied so was just a
schoolmaster, an allegory, a shadow, a prophecy, a hollow reflection
of what was to come, not the image itself—Christ is the image that
cast the shadow, the prophecy that was to come! And Christ is God’s
grace demonstrated and revealed to man.
In trying to change their fascination with the
Law, Paul used Hagar and Sarah: the two could not live
side-by-side—they were antithetical one to another--the bondwoman,
Hagar, had to be cast out of the house. So it is with the Law
(Hagar) and Grace (Sarah). They cannot coexist; the Law must go!
Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness, and if one does a
little of the Law, he is obligated to do all of it. So Paul
explicitly says, “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whoever
of you are justified by the Law; ye are fallen from grace.”
But be it known that Christ is God’s grace!
And if one falls from grace he is no longer
within the grace of God! Even to play with portions of the Law is,
in fact, to fall from grace. Paul says that he has not fallen from
grace, but, to the contrary, he lives the life of Christ in his life
and to do otherwise is to void out or frustrate the grace of God. He
argues further that if righteousness comes by the Law then Christ
died in vain. Hence, to tilt toward the Law is to find ourselves in
it and to have fallen from grace and not receive the good that God
has for us; it is to frustrate the grace of God!
Last week, God gave me what I thought was just
a message, but as I thought on the thesis of it and God gave me more
illumination on it, I realized that this was not just a sermon but
it was a book. The book-size message God gave me was this: Many
Christians have frustrated the grace of God in not being what he
wants them to be, in not going where he wants them to go, in not
behaving as he wants them to behave, and in not receiving what he
has for them to receive.
I will here share a few of the illuminations of
this truth as I work to finish this book of thoughts God gave me.
The Grace of God
It needs to be
understood what the grace of God is. The grace of God, which Paul
talks about can be summarily understood in this way: Man sinned and
violated God's holy and precious word, and he continued a spiral
downhill in sin, offending God in so doing. But in spite of
mankind’s continuing offense against God, He decided that He would
show favor and kindness toward mankind anyway. God’s favor or
kindness toward mankind was not prompted by any good deeds,
thoughts, or behavior that man had done toward God or anyone else.
It was prompted only by the kindness and goodness of God. That is
grace in an abbreviated definition.
Allow me to expand on this abbreviated
definition and write, in part, the vision God has given me, making
it plain that all readers may run that read it. As a starter, I
posit this truth: The great God of the universe that has no
beginning and has no end; the God that defies all the systems of
human reasoning, always was; there was never a time or
circumstance when He was not God; He existed before his creation of
time and is, therefore, outside of it. He is from everlasting to
everlasting; even before there was a when or where, a then or there,
God is/was/will always be God. That God, who is God by himself,
created the universe and all things that are therein—systems that
are seen and not seen; elements, paradigms, configurations, powers
and authorities that are understood and not understood by man He
made and created; systems and layers of existence and entities that
defy the imagination and comprehension of mortal man, he made and
created. This very God of very God in his own counsel made man and
planted a garden, a special place for man to live in, a state
outside the constraints of time as we presently know it, and told
man to do certain things and not do certain other things. This God,
when seeing that man was lonely for companionship took of the man’s
rib and made man a companion to be by his side.
And the principles of self-governance that God
had given to Adam to live by in the garden were resident in Eve,
since she was made of the very essence of Adam. And when God spoke
to man/Adam, he spoke to the very essence of man. Also, God’s speech
penetrated the very sum of man and all the earth upon which he
dwelled and all things that were put under his authority by God.
Thereafter, God, whose very words are with the power of God and
cannot fail to achieve what they say, hence He cannot lie, was the
object of their focus and affection. But then they were
intellectually challenged in their affection and focus by the god of
this world, Satan, whom God had made earlier and also cast out of
His divine realm unto the earth because of Satan’s untoward
behavior; he posited another idea and object of affection in Eve’s
mind, and she transmitted it to Adam. Namely this, that God had lied
to them and that they should focus on themselves, which, of course,
is the same action that got him thrown out of heaven, the divine
realm of God. As an aside, Satan’s behavior has not changed since
the Garden of Eden. It need not change because it works well on most
human beings. I ask that you study Satan’s behavior and you will see
deception, half truths, self absorption and pleasure orientation are
his bread and butter techniques that he uses time and time again.
Satan proffered this notion to Eve: contrary to
God’s word, you will not surely die if you eat of the tree of
knowledge of God and evil. Instead, he argued, your eyes will
become open, contrary to what they are now, and you will become as
gods, knowing good and evil. [Gen. 3:1-7] And with that argument,
Eve was mesmerized and saw things differently from God. That, of
course, is the purpose of Satan, to convince God’s creation to see
things different from God. And to that end, he has been very
successful, as this book will show.
Eve had never thought of such a notion as
presented by Satan, namely that God actually lied to them and held
back something that could help them grow and become better! And with
Satan’s words she became enthralled and looked upon the tree
differently, seeing it as pleasant and good for food. Then she took
of the tree and did eat, oblivious of the great consequences of her
action. Hence, sin was born! She was, as many are today, oblivious
of her actions and how they defy the will and word of God. She moved
into the moment and realm of Satan and left the moment of God’s
word, not knowing that the moment of Satan is a moment of death and
the moment of God is eternity. It was a notion that Satan knew but
he was not sharing with any of those he deceived. And today, in
America, he has seduced millions to live in his moment and realm of
death, as they live for the moment.
Eve did not see that to accept the words of
Satan was to call the most Holy God a liar; it was to dismiss the
very creator of the universe and all things therein on the word of
one of his untoward creatures; it was to plunge man and all his
descendants into a downward spiral of sin and away from the only
life and source of life there is in the universe; it was to take a
creature whom God made in his image and make him into an image
unlike God, perpetually offending God’s holiness; it was to mar
God’s creation, and throw the entire foundation of the earth off its
course; it was to bring pain, suffering, misery, confusion and
eternal death upon God’s creation and call God no God at all!
These were some of the far-reaching
consequences her act threw God’s creation into. Satan did not share
with Eve that he was/is a liar; contrarily, he said that God’s word
could not be trusted and that God was holding something back,
implying that that something was good. He did not share the fact
that their disobedience would anger God; nor did he talk of the
harsh anger of God. His was and still is half-truths and deceptions;
a little here and a little there until the little fox has destroyed
the whole vine.
This is the situation that mankind was in and
it could not simply be dismissed—it was an offense the great God who
made mankind and all things that are. But God did not want his
creation to be destroyed. So He looked down upon mankind to see if
any were worth saving, He saw no one worthy of redeeming or capable
of paying the price for Adam’s/our redemption from the sin we had
gotten into.
And as man had further degenerated downward
into sin and had become a stench in the nostrils of God, He
concluded that man had altogether gone back and away from His word. Yet
even though man had gone further away from obeying God’s word—an act
that angered God and became a stench in His nostrils, God decided to
save mankind anyway. He decided to be kind and gracious to man
anyway; even though there was nothing good that mankind did to merit
or earn God’s favor toward them. That good favor of God to a
creature that did nothing to deserve it is what grace is—the
unmerited/unearned favor of God toward mankind.
That favor of God is so vast, mankind can
hardly comprehend it even those who call themselves Christians. But
to really understand grace, one must first understand Calvary.
Second, one must understand the consequences of Calvary.
Calvary Understood in Understanding Grace
The
mystery, the majesty, and the wisdom poured out on Calvary have
always fascinated me since I began seeing things through the eyes of
God. Whenever I begin to contemplate Calvary, I linger on the
subject in amazement at the deep wisdom, grace, and love of God.
Calvary is
a familiar, even common theme on the lips of many, but because it is
common does not mean it is understood by the many who hold it
commonly, not understanding or appreciating what vast wisdom God
demonstrates here. But when you understand it, it is so godly
beautiful that it simply takes your breath away. And I will delve
into it further, while God's spirit is still illuminating it in my
heart.
Jesus
taught his disciples privately and publicly that he had to go
Jerusalem and be tortured and killed at Calvary. One day while He
was teaching this truth publicly, Peter, under the prompting of
Satan, rebuked Christ of this future reality—Satan was then
beginning to see the wisdom of God and did not want that wisdom to
be carried out. Note Satan’s act was the same as in the Garden of
Eden—deception and half-truths. Unbeknown to Peter, his rebuke
projected a human and Satanic form of reasoning and wisdom; it also
projected a sense of protection for his messiah.
[Mat. 16:21-23; Mk.
8:31-33].
Hidden in Peter's conscious human wisdom was Satan's subtle attempt
to deny him the sight and wisdom of God. Through Peter's words Satan
also attempted to blind Jesus to and divert Him from the very
purpose for His coming to this world.
But as
quick as Satan was to work upon Peter's human blindness, Jesus was
quicker to call him out and tell Peter and the other disciples that
human sentimentality was at work, not godly wisdom; that Satan was
attempting to deceive. Peter had unwittingly allowed Satan to move
him into a passion that clouded his understanding of what Jesus had
taught him and the other disciples. This mistake is all too common
among too many of us. It is clear that in rebuking Peter, Jesus was
talking to all his disciples and us; noted in Mark's gospel is this
comment: "But when he had turned about and looked at his
disciples...." He looked at all of them, but rebuked Peter
and called Satan out.
[Mk. 8:33] The failure on
our part today is our failure to be like Jesus and call Satan out,
identifying him and his teaching where it is. It could be that many
are so blinded already that they cannot see Satan when and where he
is; it could be that many are so concerned about not offending man
that they allow Satan to masquerade as if he is concerned about a
person’s well being when, in fact, his is the way of death.
The very
purpose of Christ coming into this world would have been voided if
Satan could have, through human sentimentality or any other means,
gotten Jesus to merely go about the countryside preaching, healing
the sick, doing miracles, and then die a peaceful death in some soft
bed after many years of his ministry. Such a life was not the
reason God disrobed Himself of His eternal glory, veiled himself
with the likeness of sinful human flesh, and came to the earth. He
could have had prophets to preach, teach, do miracles, etc. But
after seeing the horrid conditions of sinful man, only He could do
what had to be done to bring salvation and the full bloom of his
grace to His creation. And it was for purposes of Calvary that He
came into this world.
[Psa.14: 2-4; Isa.53:5;
59:16; Rev.5:5]
The
Garden of Eden
Many preach Calvary and some preach of it excellently, but we need
to stress why there is a need for Calvary's cross, a need for Jesus
to die. And to understand Calvary we must first understand Eden, as
we have discussed above; the conditions and the expulsion from Eden; we need to understand man’s longing for the nurture of Eden again.
Only then can we begin to see Calvary in its full light, in its true
sense of God’s grace, and in the full wisdom of God.
Man is a
created being; we did not come into being or evolve autonomously of
God. We were made by Him. Furthermore, everything that is made was
made by Him. [John
1]
Genesis 2,
indicates that after God had made all things, he made the beast of
the field and man in the sixth day. The Bible says He formed man
out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living soul. A living soul made
in the image of his creator. Thereafter, He placed the man in a
garden He had planted for him. This indicates that man was made
outside of the Garden of Eden and placed inside of it thereafter.
Eden was also made by God especially for man.
It was in
Eden that God gave Adam, which means man, instructions for living
and His commands concerning his behavior in the Garden. In verses 16 and
17, God specifically instructed man and prohibited certain actions.
And the LORD
God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and
keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, of every tree
of the garden thou may freely eat; but the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, thou shall not eat of it; for in the day that thou
east thereof thou shalt die.
[Gen.2:16-17]
It was after
Adam was put into the Garden of Eden that God observed that it
was not good that he should be alone. Out of the ground, God
also created the beasts of the field and birds of the air and took
them to man to be named and to see if they were suitable for him.
They were not. God gave Adam the command above: Don't eat or
touch the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and if you do, you
will die in the day you eat of it.
Adam in
Context:
To really understand the significance of this Genesis 2:16-17
command, Adam must be placed in a proper context. Adam was not just
another human being. Adam was the first and only man made directly
by God out of the ground; Adam was the first Son of God;
[Lk. 3:38]
therefore, Adam was the head of humanity. When God spoke to Adam,
God spoke to all of mankind because he was the federal head of
humanity, much like a national leader or head of state is the
spokesperson for a nation. When that leader acts, he/she acts for
the entire nation; what he/she does, the nation is burdened with.
God's command
given to Adam was a command given to all of humanity and it was a
command with consequences for all of humanity. God's largess to Adam
was the largess to all of mankind. If Adam rose or fell, humanity
rose or fell.
Paul stated at
Athens that of one blood made He all nations to dwell on the face of
this earth. All of us have one earth origin: Adam; God made him and
then Eve of him. From them we are he multiplied.
[Acts 17:26]
The fate of
Adam descended to his children. Indeed, there was a proverb that
spook to Adam's fate and ours: "The fathers ate sour grapes and
the children's teeth are set on edge."
[Jer. 31:29; Ezek.18:2-3]
So we were tied to Adam's fate and his standing with God.
Time was not a
factor or barrier that prevented the extension of God's command to
Adam upon us even today. Time did not exist, as we now know it when
Adam was formed and placed into Eden. God inhabits eternity,
[Isa. 57:15]
and that is a different time-space and frame of reference from
our time and concept of time. Peter said that a day is as a
thousand years and a thousand years as a day with God.
[2 Pet.3:8]
The
dimensions of time were not as we now know them. Indeed, God's ways
and thoughts are not like man's ways and thoughts.
[Isa. 55:8-9]
While in Eden, God walked among them, talked with
them, and had regular fellowship with man, but in Genesis 3, we see
a change of man's relationship with God. Instead of the fellowship,
an abrupt end came.
In symbolic
gesture, but real events, the Bible describes how man came to an
abrupt end of fellowship with God. Even in Eden Satan came to
intrude into the affairs of God. The Bible says, it was the serpent,
representing Satan, who came to Eve, the mother of us all,
questioned what God had said to Adam--Eve intuitively knew what God
had commanded Adam--she was of the very essence of Adam's body when
the command was given. After Eve was in dialogue with the serpent,
Satan contradicted God's word. What and how Satan acted at his first
appearance is how he acts even today, an observation made 25 years
ago in a small book I wrote entitled, We Wrestle not Against
Flesh and Blood: "Satan need not change his tactics because
the old ones still work." After his contradiction of God, he
offers rationalization for his contradiction: For God knows that
to eat, your eyes will come open and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil. It was that rationalization that brought the
woman to accept Satan's reasoning and accept God as a liar.
After Satan
had said God was a liar, and the woman accepted God as Satan
mischaracterized him, she viewed the tree differently. It became a
tree good for food and pleasant to the eyes to make one wise; then
she took of the fruit and ate and gave to her husband who,
strangely, the scripture says was there with her but did not stop
her, and he ate too.
[Gen. 3:1-4] Paul argues, however, that Adam was not deceived.
So the only ways we can understand this complexity in his failure to
act against Eve's disobedience to God’s word is to assume that Adam
had not perceived the significance of her act, or that Adam
had never seen an angry God and knew nothing of the terror of God's
anger, or we may understand that all of this was within the eternal
sovereignty of God.
[Mark 16; Lke. 24; 1 Tim.
2:14]
Once Adam and
Eve ate, their eyes were opened, but what did they see and know?
Satan had said that they would be like gods, knowing both good and
evil, yet they simply knew they were naked, a state they
had been in since God had made them, only then their focus was on God, not
themselves. But contrary to becoming like gods, they were already like
the only true and living God--they were made by him in his image;
they were His children. When Satan told them they would know good
and evil, he did not define or make clear the word know;
he simply said it, and they were not operating on informed knowledge
but half truths, withheld definitions, and no knowledge of the
nature of the speaker. The knowing of evil they received as a result
of eating was God's curse; they became the recipients of evil
for their disobedience. But Satan glorified that knowing of
good and evil, so that Eve thought it was a good thing. The
word know has with it experiencing; remember, Adam knew
[only the past tense of know] Eve and she conceived--that was
an experience. That truth Satan withheld from her.*
Resultantly,
when Satan tricked Eve into disobedience, he actually absconded with
God's creation and fashioned them in his image through a lie--that
is one of the effects of accepting a lie.** When he said they would be
like gods, he meant they would be more like him than God; he
considered himself a god of sorts—the god of this world is not
really a god. God created man; apparently, Satan has no creative
powers until the end time, but he does have transforming powers.
Once God, creator of all things had created man, Satan absconded
with God’s creation and transformed it into his image.
Further
evidence of Satan's inability to create is that God created the
angels that were in a confederation with him. And they were thrown
out of heaven with him. Satan seems to have the ability to entice
others to follow him, but he has no power to create or else he would
have created his own man and his own angels.
Notice the
method of Satan's deception: questioning of God's word to tempt
disobedience; contradiction and rationalization of that
contradiction; deceit; finally, veiled lies, half truths, which are
whole lies. After that process is implemented, and man accepts it,
then Satan absconds with man.
Second, notice
man's offense: Adam, humanity's federal head, accepted Satan's
mischaracterization of God, who cannot lie, as a liar.
[Heb. 6:18]
Adam and Eve rejected God's word and accepted Satan's lie about God
and His word. In so doing, man rejected the special place God had
for him to accept the lowly station of Satan. How offensive!
This matter of eating or not did not seem large or significant to
them at the time, but it was grave and of significance to God. After
their act, they could no longer stand in the presence of God because
sin had separated man from God; from the start of man’s disobedience
even unto today, the situation has been the same.
[Isa. 59:1-2]
Being
sinful, they hid themselves from God, and God had to call out to
them: Where are you?
[Genesis 3: 8-9]
God made
temporary
coats of skin as covering for their nakedness, but He was so
angered by this affair of man with Satan who came through the
serpent, He cursed the serpent above all animals, He put enmity
between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed--the serpent will
bruise her seed's heel, but that seed shall bruise the serpent's
head; and to the woman, He said her sorrows will be multiplied
along with her conception, and when she has children from those
conceptions, the birth will be in sorrow. She will also look to her
husband, and he shall rule/have dominance over her. To Adam
He said, because he had disobeyed His word, the earth/ground would
be cursed and said that man shall eat of it in sorrow; the earth
will be hard to work and through man’s hard work of it would he eat
bread. Also, man would return back to the earth, since man was
nothing more than dust without God--death.
That was the
curse that God placed upon man as a result of his sin. But more was
to come still: because of man's sin, God drove man from the garden,
a place where man once walked and talked with God, and God placed
cherubim (angels) and a flaming sword at the east side of the garden
to keep all away from the tree of life.
[Gen. 3:23-24]
This
represented a breach in man's relationship with his creator, his
father, his God. That break was cemented with cherubim and the sword
being placed at the entrance to the Garden. That break also
represented man's death because the tree of life was inside the
Garden of Eden, and man was outside; God had said that in the
day that man ate of the fruit they would die. They did not die
instantly, but within God's day they died, which is evidence that
God's time is different
from our time. But as man is continued we see that he died more
rapidly.
That was the breach of man from his creator, and it did not get
smaller, but it got larger; it separated sinning man from the face
of a holy God; it stopped God from active fellowship with His
creatures. But from time to time God would look down from heaven to
see the state of man. He did not like what he saw. The Psalmist
wrote that God looked down to see if there was any righteous among
man and found that they had all gone astray; there was none
righteous, no not one!
[Psa.4; 2-4]
Man has gone totally astray since being driven out of the Garden and
evil men and seducers are waxing worse and worse. The state of man
is wicked, and he has stabilized himself in that wicked state.
Hence, God's back is turned away from man. Isaiah said that man's
iniquities have separated us from God and our sins have hidden His
face far from us that He will not hear. Indeed, the 59th Chapter
of Isaiah depicts a total state of man that is repulsive to God's
dignity. Seeing the behavior of man, one would have a problem
believing that God is our maker because of how vile our behavior has
become. But that vileness is the direct result of our separation
from the face of God and our listening to Satan's voice.
[Isa. 59; Rom.
3:10-18] This vileness is present in those who do not know Christ
Jesus.
Looking at that breach that God's prophets spoke and wrote of, Paul
said that by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death
by sin. So that all have sinned and come short of God's
glory.
[Rom.3:23; 5:12]
The Psalmist said that humankind, after Eden, was
born in sin, we were shaped in iniquity. Indeed, Adam and Eve had no
children in Eden, only after Eden were children born to them.
Outside of Eden was a state of sin. David said in sin did my
mother conceive me.
[Psa. 51:5]
This was the state and fate of all mankind. Furthermore, David
attributed his birth state to his condition of sin.
Whereas God
desired truth in man's inward parts, David argued that man could not
produce that God-desired truth because of man’s present birth
condition--a condition of sin. In so arguing, David is putting forth
the notion of Job that one cannot bring a clean thing from that
which is unclean, therefore since we were all born into sin, there
is no way we are going to find a sinless and pure man. Our condition
has fated our behavior and relationship to God.
[Psa. 51:6-7]
The great Apostle Paul discussed that conflict of the old nature
that David asked to be washed from, in saying, ".... When I would
do good, evil is present with me." So tormented was man, implied
by David's Psalm 51 request to be washed with hyssop, that Paul
exclaimed in Romans 7, "Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?"
This human
torment of having gone from God, after listening to the voice of
Satan, and having had the gates of heaven closed to human contact
continued for years; only a few prophets would get a word here and
there from God to his people. This condition of man was much like a
father who has cut off his son because of some horrible wrong that
son has done. The father watches over his son from a distance,
sending a word to his son every now and then through an
intermediary, but seldom directly. Sometimes that father would make
disguised visits, but always veiled and clouded in secrecy because
of the hideous nature of his condition and that condition’s
repugnancy to him.
As God's
people distanced themselves from Him more and more, their longing
for him, although abstract, grew more intense. The small group of
people God called out to get His word to the world through them
[Jews] was increasingly growing anxious and lonely. They traveled
the dusty shores and vacant lands, asking themselves, their prophets
and their wisdom, "When will Shiloh come? When will God turn his
face back to his people? When will He hear us again? When will we be
reconciled to our maker?" []
This is part the introductory chapter of the book-size concept God
gave me. In about six months this book should be published.
________
* John K. Gailbraith, in his Anatomy of Power,
wrote that we often use words loosely, assuming we know their
meaning and therefore take no time to carefully define them. That
was the case of Eve when discussing know.
**Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem,
Ulysses, has a profound line that helps explain this truth: "I
am a part of all I've met." The great old warrior was longing to get
back to the sea, that which he knew and that which had made
him who he was, a warrior; hence he realized that although he sat as
king, that would not satisfy him because he had become something
else through his many experiences.
Indeed, if we are not careful in digesting the wrong things we will
become those things which we meet and take in. And taking in we
allow others to fashion us in their images, and we become as they
are. That is why we must be careful to have God as our
standard, not man. For those who compare themselves by
themselves and measure themselves among themselves are not wise. The
learned Apostle Paul said, let a man examine himself to see if he be
in the faith. Measuring is by the word of God--Not a man!
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