Law & Grace

Lord, we read these promises in your Word that sin shall have no dominion over us.
We look at our own track record, and many times, Father, we fail you, and many times we
fail ourselves, many times we fail each other, and we wonder how you can ever really present
us before your glory without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
We pray this morning, Lord, that You will give us a whole new understanding of what it
is that we are under grace and not under law, and help us to believe, Father, that You who
began a good work in us will really bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.
Bless your Word, O Father, give me liberty and freedom to share it with Your people, with
authority and with anointing and with conviction of Your Spirit.
Give us ears to hear, hearts to receive it.
This Father, that can truly give glory to you through Jesus Christ in whose precious
name we pray, amen.
Since, as Paul in verse 14 of this chapter, we'll have no dominion over you, since you
are not under law, but under grace.
If you look at that verse in its context, you'll see that what Paul is talking about in
this passage is the process of sanctification.
You might recall two weeks ago, we looked at that together.
We saw that Paul's overall argument in this whole passage of Romans chapter 6 is that
if we're in Christ, it's impossible for us to continue to live the old way.
Rather if we are in Christ, God gives us grace to put off the old, to put on the new.
He says, "Let not sin therefore, reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passions.
Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God
as men who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments of
righteousness."
You've ever tried doing that.
If you've ever really tried to take seriously the biblical mandate to live a holy life,
to turn your back on scene and to live obediently before the face of God, then you'll know
that continues to be a very difficult thing because even though Paul explains it again
and again and again, it's almost like it's hard for our hearts to really grasp it and
to start living it out.
And it's almost like Paul anticipates that kind of question, almost like he anticipates
that kind of objection when he says in verse 14, "Sin will have no diminute over you
since you were not under law, but under grace."
Gerald Swart here was telling me the other day that his wife, Grace, keeps telling him
all the time that he's under grace.
If you look at this passage, you'll find it to be a very interesting one because notice
what Paul does not say.
He does not say sin should have no diminute over you.
Notice he say, "Don't let sin have dominion over you."
He says that in other places, but he doesn't say that in verse 14.
Rather he says, "Sin will have no dominion over you."
He says, "If you're in Christ, it is impossible for sin to continue to reign in your life and
to hold you in its power, it is inevitable," he says, "that you're going to turn your
back on that which is evil and you're going to embrace that which is good.
Sin will have no dominion over you and then he goes on to give us the reason."
Why that is.
Because you are not under law, but under grace, notice that.
You are not under law, but under grace.
And the reason Paul gives us that our lives cannot remain the same is that we are no longer
dominated by the reign of law, but we are dominated by the reign of grace.
And you'll find that to be an emphasis of the Apostle Paul throughout the book of Romans
and throughout many of his epistles, the law he says is always a tool of condemnation.
Always makes you feel badly, always makes you guilty, always makes you fail.
But he says, "Grace is what we need to get to where God wants us to get and the reason
we can now live new lives in Christ is because we have died to the law and we are under the
reign of grace."
For that reason, if we are to live successful Christian lives, if overcoming sin in our daily
life is to be more than just a theory, we need to very clearly understand the difference
between law and grace.
On grace, if you look at them superficially, a very close together.
It's almost like they're twins.
But if you look at them more closely, you discover their miles and miles apart because
they are an entirely different way of approaching God.
The law says, "If you want to get along with God, you've got to be what the law tells
you to be."
And under the realm of law, God reveals to people how it is that he wants them to live.
For the unbeliever that often takes the place of the voice of his conscience or what has
often been called natural law, the law written in their hearts and the natural common grace
as we often refer to it in our circles.
Even unbelievers know the difference oftentimes between right and wrong up to a certain point.
For believers, it means that God gives us revelation through the pages of Scripture,
whereby he spells out in more detail how it is that he wants us to live.
And the law says, "Here is the standard, and if you will measure up to the standard, you
will experience the blessings of God."
But if you fail, you will experience the judgment of God.
And the problem with law, says Paul, is that it can help us understand what it is that
we are supposed to be, but it doesn't help us to live the way we're supposed to be.
And so for that reason, anybody that lives under law becomes more and more miserable because
the more you know what it is that you're supposed to be, the less you discover in yourself,
the ability to be what God wants you to be.
That's why in Romans chapter 7, Paul goes on to point out that all the law every does
is brings us under condemnation.
The very presence of law begins to stir up in us a desire to be rebellious.
You'll notice what happens when you put a wet paint sign on something.
The very presence stirs up this desire within almost everybody that walks by to do why.
You've got to find out, is the paint wet?
The sign says it's wet, but you don't believe the sign until you're tested for yourself.
And law puts you under condemnation.
It's like a wife who has a husband who is very, very particular and very, very demanding.
He wants his supper right on time, he wants the house clean, just so, so.
And the whole routine has got to be just the way that he wants it to be.
I see some of you wives recognize your husbands here.
And all he can ever do is point out what she hasn't done and what she ought to be doing.
Some of you have lived that way.
But he never bothers to reach out his own hands or to provide the help or the encouragement
to make the work be done.
And so she lives under a constant sense of abuse and a constant sense of failure and a constant
sense of condemnation because she can't measure up to what his expectations are of her
life.
That's the law, says Paul.
When God comes to you and tells you what it is that he wants you to do, under the law,
he doesn't help you to do it.
And the harder you try, the more you discover how impossible it is to be good and to be obedient.
Now Paul says, we're not under law because as long as we try it on our own under the law,
we're in trouble.
But Paul says, in Christ we are not under the law, we are under grace.
In grace means that the standards are still there.
Please don't ever make the mistake of thinking as many people do.
But under the realm of grace anything goes, that's what people are always afraid about.
And that's what Paul is dealing with in this whole chapter you'll recall.
He begins with a question, does it mean then that if grace abounds we can continue
sitting at it all?
Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you
will never enter the kingdom of God.
Don't ever think that God doesn't want you and me to live lives that are conformed
to His standards, He does.
But under grace God not only tells me what it is that He wants me to do.
He gives me the wherewithal so that I can begin to do it.
If law is that husband who can only dominate, who can ever help his wife, then grace is
a husband who not only has high standards of what ought to be done, but who takes it
upon himself to make sure the work gets done.
That's what God did in Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ.
God took your place in my place.
Lived our life, was born under the law, fulfilled all the demands of the law, paid the penalty
for your failure and my failure, was raised from the dead to give me new life, comes to
live within my heart by the power of His Holy Spirit, begins to change me from the inside
out, renews my desire, renews my will, pulls me out of the darkness into His light, and
then He places me in the context of the Christian community.
And in the context of that Christian community, God raises up men and women whom He gifts with
the power of His Holy Spirit to be able to help me with my struggles and with my problems
so that I can learn to put off the old, I can learn to put on the new and I can become
a new creation.
And when Paul hears his sins, he'll have no dominion over you.
His argument is that because we are in Christ, and God is working for us to produce changes
within our lives, we're going to make it because we are not under the law.
We will not have dominion over you because you are not under law, but you are under grace.
And so the big question for the Christian, the big question for the person who wants to
live an overcoming life, who really wants to change from the core of His being and get
rid of the bad habits and to embrace the new habits is the big question, am I living
under law or am I living under grace?
And how do I know if I'm living under law or living under grace?
My experience has been that while a lot of God's people intellectually confess to living
under grace, the fact remains that many, many people in very deep areas of their hearts
are in fact living under law.
And the only way that you can sort of try to figure out which is which is to try to list
the characteristics of what happens when people live under the law and what happens when
people live under grace.
So on the time that remains, let me try to outline for you, first of all what happens to people
that live under law?
I want to give you a couple of characteristics of those.
And then the reverse of those characteristics will be true of those that live under grace.
And the degree to which either of these are present in our lives will indicate the degree
to which our hearts need to be pulled out from under the law so that we can live in the
liberty of the freedom of the grace of Jesus Christ.
What happens then when people live under the law?
How can you spot them?
Well, the first characteristic that you will find under people who live under law is an
abiding sense of insecurity, guilt, and condemnation.
I cannot begin to tell you this morning how many people I meet every year, many of which
are good church-going folks who in their heart of hearts are never really sure that God
loves them.
People who in their heart of hearts don't really believe that God loves them and wants
to answer their prayer.
And who in their heart of hearts are not at all convinced that should they die, they'll
go to be with God.
And when you talk to people like that intellectually they'll try to reason it out and intellectually
they'll try to argue it out, but in the whole of their life there is this constant
sense of, I'm not worthy.
I don't think I'm really good enough.
I feel badly because of who I am.
No people like that?
Where does that come from?
Comes from living under the law.
Remember now and this runs through and through every fabric of the human being and it's part
of a whole philosophical system the book of Colossians tells us that has as its origins
the power of hell.
The law says if you want to be accepted you got to measure up.
But the problem is when you start trying to measure up you discover that you can't measure
up and when you can't measure up you got to do one or two things.
You either live under guilt all the time and feel like you're falling short and you don't
really dare look anybody else in the eye or you bring down the laws of God and you begin
to justify your behavior and you begin to say well everybody else lives that way and
then you don't have any trouble with your conscience.
But the law says you want to be accepted you got to measure up and when you discover
that you're not measuring up there is this uncertainty in your heart that says I don't
really think I can face God because you see we know intuitively that God is a judge and
that he's going to hold as accountable for all of our sins.
And oftentimes what people like that will do then is they'll try to make it up to God
in other ways.
They become real hard workers they begin to specialize in certain areas of obedience
and they're always striving and they're striving to belong.
They're not striving out of the security of being children of God who want to please
God but they're fighting for their place in the kingdom and they think that if only
they're better Christians and if only they work harder then God will love them more
and then they can't understand why God doesn't seem to be impressed.
And people like that you can spot them because they don't like to be criticized.
Have you ever noticed that?
A person who is striving to belong and who is trying so hard to prove that he or she
is OK when you come along and you begin to criticize their behavior they think you're
criticizing them and the criticism of their behavior is a personal rejection of who they
are and they are just devastated they think you're their enemy because they're trying
so hard to climb the ladder and I'll hear you are and you're stopping on their hands
and they become angry.
You can also spot people like that because when push comes to shove they have a hard time
admitting that they're wrong because you see to admit that I'm wrong means that I failed
and under the law if I fail I get thrown out of my ear so I can never be wrong the world
is full of people including a lot of good Christian people who think whenever they run into
a problem it's everybody else's fault but there's the law produces an ongoing sense of
condemnation number two the law produces an external righteousness as opposed to an
internal righteousness an external righteousness as opposed to an internal righteousness have
you ever noticed there are people whose Christian behavior is a learned behavior they know
they've read they've studied they've heard of how Christians are supposed to act and
by sheer force of their will and of their character they try to leave it out but while
on the outside they are living the right kind of life and they smile sweetly and they forgive
their enemy and all that other kind of stuff in their hearts they're full of anger and
their full of bitterness and when the pressure is off and they have expended all their energy
acting it out their miserable rotten self still hasn't changed and comes out with vengeance
you know how to spot people like that they're unreal there's something in you when you meet
those kind of people that will tell you you're acting it's like you can't really reach
their souls it's like they're too good it's like they're too proper and you want to shake
them and give them a good kick in the you know where and say hey just be real don't give
me this pious external platitudes of how good Christian lives let me hear what really
lives in your heart let me see what you're really like you can spot that kind of a person
because because of their public life and their private life our miles apart publicly they
can give you this whole appearance of being very righteous and very holy and very good but
when nobody's watching when the pressure isn't on to perform what comes pouring out is
the junk that lives within their hearts and that's always the works of the flesh if it
hasn't been crucified by faith in Jesus Christ some of you recall the story that I've
told a number of years ago years back when I was in school they have this thing called
Seminary Sunday where they take all these seminarians and they inflict them on the churches
you know you got to do services and one year in Seminary Sunday a whole bunch of us hopped
in the car and they sent us out to Iowa to preach in churches there and on the way down
I recall the guys were all stayed and proper and you know fairly apprehensive about doing
well and all this kind of stuff and on the way back and I say this without judgment or
condemnation but it is a true story some of the guys in the car really let down their
guard and occupy at least a portion of their time telling off-color jokes and all kinds
of other stuff and I remember thinking to myself the terrible inconsistency of having
stood in the pulpit in some days the following day letting go with stuff that ought not
to be proceeding out of the mouths of the children of God and I think it's a good illustration
of what happens when the pressure is on and the pressure makes us perform but when the
pressure is off if our hearts have not been changed when the pressure is off what is
really inside will come out Jesus is but what comes out of your mouth you'll know what
lives in your heart and the measure of our sanctification in Jesus Christ is not determined
by how we live publicly but what we think and what we do and how we act when nobody
is watching the law makes hypocrites out of people because the law puts pressure on me
how to perform but it doesn't help me to do it and so I got to try to do it in my own
strength one final way in which you can tell this whole thing of external obedience versus
internal obedience is that it makes people really tired because you see when your own
energy goes into trying to uphold a Christian lifestyle you're burning the the wick instead
of the wax and it becomes such a tedious job to always be on guard and always try to act
righteously so that as I said earlier when you get tired then and the guard comes down
you discover you haven't any resources left to keep on going not all people not all
people by any stretch of the imagination but some people who suffer from depression and
fatigue suffer from depression and fatigue because they are trying to live up in their
own mind to impossible standards of what God wants them to be and what their neighbor wants
them to be and what everybody else wants them to be and they haven't got the resources
to be those things and they wear out because the law is a cruel taskmaster and it waged
out with a sense of condemnation so number one the law makes you feel guilty and condemned
the law will make you act like a hypocrite and then very quickly number three the law
will make you resentful towards those who are living in grace Paul talks about that
you might recall in Galatians chapter three when he tells us the story of how Ishmael
used to pester his little brother Isaac and he draws out of that the story that people
that live under law will always persecute those that live under grace and without going
into detail about his argument it's really quite simple under law your position is determined
by your hard work and so you're always striving and you're always striving and you're always
trying to accomplish something and you want everybody to take note of what it is that
you're accomplisher because that's what makes you a worthwhile person but under grace
your position is not determined by who you are or by how good you are but rather by
God's acceptance of you in Christ Jesus now if you can picture this if you're the kind
of person who thinks your position is determined by your age by your upbringing by your culture
by your faithfulness by your loyal day as did the elder brother in the story of the
prodigal son and now the prodigal son comes home the guy that's wasted at all and isn't
half worthy of any of the father's love and attention and the father throws a party
for him and gives him everything that you haven't got even well then understandably
you get kind of put out and that's why in the scriptures Kayan kills Abel Ishmael
tries to get rid of Isaac Esau can't stand Jacob and the Pharisees can't stand Jesus
because he is a friend of sinners the law will make you angry at how easily other people
escape the consequences of their actions and if you wonder if that applies to you ask
yourself the question how do you feel when somebody who was a notorious sinner turns
to Jesus Christ I've been reading in newspaper and magazine articles just the last little
while there's a lady down in Florida a lesbian prostitute as I recall who has been guilty
of killing a number of these men that she would pick up you've maybe read the story but
the newspaper stories don't tell you is that there's a Christian couple in Florida that
have taken her under their wing and that have let her to face in Jesus Christ she's just
been sentenced to die in the electric chair and the people that have taken her in report
getting this avalanche of male of self-righteously indignant people castigating them for extending
mercy to this woman because you see if you live under the law a sense of right and wrong
in your own life then everybody's got to be paid to the last farthing for the crimes
they have committed and so it makes you very self-righteous and very judgmental but people
forget that if God were to apply the same standard of judgment to your life into my life
read all be in lot of trouble so what the law does number one it makes you feel condemned
number two it makes you hypocrite and number three it makes you self-righteous and it
makes you angry at those who live in grace that's how you can spot somebody that lives
under the law and under the law you will always fail but you say how do I know then if
I'm under grace well it's the opposite if I'm under grace the number one I experience
the security of being a child of God Paul talks about that in the next chapter Romans chapter
eight when he says you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear you've
received the spirit of sonship when we cry out of father it is the spirit himself bearing
witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs ears of God
and fellow heirs with Christ the spirit bears witness with my spirit that I'm a child
of God how do I know if I'm a child of God have I come to Jesus have I embraced Jesus Christ
as my righteousness if I have then I am righteous before God regardless of the sin that continues
to live in my life and so if I am under grace my position with God is not determined by
my obedience of the law it is determined by my position within his family in Galatians
again Paul compares it to the difference between a slave in a son try to get hold of this
analogy a slave status with the master is determined by his usefulness to the master and
his position is secure only as long as he is delivering for the master so he always
lives under the labor of knowing that if he begins to fail he can be thrown out in his
ear and taken to the auction walk and sold off but a son is born into your home may not
be any better than the slave as a matter of fact if he's a little boy a little girl falls
far short of what the slave can perform but your son has a right to being in your family
even though he may fall far short and when he goes out and he blows it you're not just
going to take him and auction him off to the nearest neighbor because even if you wanted
to do that sometimes you can't because he's yours and I know a few of us have had parents
that have threatened to do all of that and a whole lot more they you know used to threaten
to send me to reform school but here I am anyway you can't do that very easily with your
kids okay your kids are your kids and when they fail what you do is you take them and you
discipline them and you correct them but it's always out of a position of I belong one
of the most foundational issues in life out of which everything else flows is the conviction
that I belong to God and God loves me and God will bless me and God will stick it out with
me not because I'm good not because I'm worthy but because I am in Jesus Christ you understand
what I'm saying because it'll change your life in Christ God spirit bears witness with
my spirit I am a child of God number two God writes his law on my heart you'll notice Paul
talks about this later on in Romans chapter 6 when he says in verse 17 things be to God that
you who are one slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the teaching to which
you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness
later on he says in chapter 7 and in in second Corinthians as well as in Galatians he talks
about the law being written on my heart when I come to Christ and he begins to live within
me he's not just standing out there telling me do this do that don't do that and and here
in my own natural self I have to somehow try to do that when that's not what I want to
do now if I'm in Christ and his spirit lives in me then he changes my heart he lives
within my heart the seat of my personality the seat of my emotions he changes my will
he changes my emotions he changes my thinking he changes my life and I now begin to want
to do what God wants me to do not because I have to do it not because I'm afraid somebody
is going to hit me over the head with a big stick because I've been to subedia but because
I want to I want to because I've come to understand that serving God and doing the will of
God is not burdensome it is a joy because it's the only way to live because God's laws
are good and their righteous and they're for my well-being and a person who lives under
that kind of grace is a person whose public and private life increasingly come closer and
closer together because you see that kind of a person isn't trying to be something that
they're not then I try to be holier than thou and righteous and do all the right learned
Christian things it flows from within their hearts because the Scripture says Paul writing
to the Thessalonians he puts it this way he says concerning love for the brethren you
have no need for anyone to write you for you yourselves have been taught by God to love
one another God's law is written on my heart and when God's law is written on my heart
there is this ongoing process of transformation where where God's there with his grace and
with his love and he keeps bringing me back and and he helps me to see that living for
him and doing his will is the most delightful and the most wonderful and the only appropriate
response that I can demonstrate in my life for the praise of his glory and the number three
of them under grace my life will continue to bear fruit Jesus put it this way in John
chapter 15 when he said I am divine you are the branches he will bides in me and I and
him he is that bears much fruit for a part for me you can do nothing and if you go on
here in Romans chapter six as the Lord willing someday will do you'll discover that Paul
begins to talk now about all the transformations that will take place in my life as I yielded
to the Lord Jesus because you see the big concern that the people had to whom he was writing
is if you let up on the law if you no longer crack the whip and make people fall into
line the argument is then people will go all over the place and they live terrible Christian
wives and Paul's whole argument you will recall is that if you're really in Christ that can
ever happen because if you're really in Christ his grace and his power flows in you and that
law is written on your heart you'll want to resist sin and you'll want to embrace righteousness
the more you resist sin and the more you embrace righteousness the more you'll move away from
that old way of life and the more you will embrace a new way of life and the more the Lord
will receive glory because your lives are being transformed because you are a branch that
is abiding in the vine and God's vision God's dream God's hope for your life and for my
life and for the Christian community is that understanding the reality of that grace we abide
in Jesus Christ and the Christ who lives in us from glory to glory will transform us until we
stand before him on that final day without spot or wrinkle or any such thing since his
Paul will have no dominion over you because you're not under law but under grace may God grant
us an ongoing revelation of who we are in Christ and may he give us confidence to press on until
that day and the grace of God will have triumphed every vestige of sin and evil will have been
removed we stand before the presence of his glory with rejoicing to the only wise God or savior
through Jesus Christ be the glory forever and ever amen let us pray father we sit here from
Sunday to Sunday we hear your word we hear the teaching we see the call that you have on our
lives to be all that you would have us be then Lord sometimes we look at how stubborn we are
we look at how deeply rooted in our lives some habits are and Lord we look at all the world
is to offer the things we've been involved in and there's something in us that just says it's all
talk can ever really be true in my life and my experience forgive us Lord for considering our
own sin and stubbornness weakness to be greater than your grace forgive us for thinking that we're
bigger than you are forgive us for thinking that we can fight you and still win father we pray
this morning more than anything else you will help us to understand that if we are in Christ we are
in grace help us Lord not to reject that grace help us Lord not to take it for granted help us
Lord to seek you with everything that is within our heart and help us Lord to believe that the
things we cannot change in our own lives can be changed by you because in Jesus Christ you
have come down to us you've overcome and you now live in rain and heaven to intercede for us
and to work out your salvation in our lives or to make us a people over whom sin shall have no
dominion because we are not under law but under grace thank you for hearing us in Jesus' name
Amen