Grace and Law—What Does the Bible Say?

Alright, well today we will be continuing and hopefully wrapping up our series of sermons on the subject of grace in the Bible. This is sermon four, part four of a four-part series on that. So far, to give a very brief recap, we have covered the biblical words translated as grace, the Hebrew word kain, C-H-E-N, and the Greek word karis, C-H-A-R-I-S. And what they mean, we've seen how grace is mentioned in the Old Testament period. So it's not just a New Testament concept, the first time grace shows up in the Bible, is with Noah. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and was spared during the flood. We've also covered how we are reconciled to God through grace and what that means, how that comes about. And then last time, two weeks ago, we talked about grace in action through the example of Jesus Christ, how he demonstrated the kind of grace that God wants us to show in our lives. And if there is one thing that is very evident, and today we'll be talking about another aspect of grace, which is grace and the law. What does the Bible have to say about that? And if there's one thing that should be evident in what we have covered so far in this topic, that is that grace personifies the nature and the character of God. Grace personifies the nature and the character of God. What do I mean by that? Well, three things. Grace is who and what God is. As God is love, God is also grace. Grace is how He thinks and how He acts toward us. And grace defines and characterizes Him. Grace defines and characterizes Him. And we should all be very grateful for these things. So, we've covered in the previous three sermons what grace is. And today, to kind of flip that around, we'll focus mostly on what grace is not in the context of a major theological misconception about grace. And that is how it relates to God's law. And many people over many centuries have been confused in their thinking about this. And they have not really critically examined what the Bible says about that to realize that they're actually holding inherently contradictory thoughts about God and how they view the subject of God in relationship to grace and God's law. So, many people, based on misunderstandings of the writings of the Apostle Paul, have been mistakenly concluded that God's law is a kind of curse or a kind of punishment. And yet Paul very clearly states in Romans 7 and verse 12, the law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good. So, Paul certainly did not view the law as any kind of curse, as many people twist his writings to say.

A few other—Paul also wrote just a few verses down in the same chapter in verse 22, I delight in the law according to the inward man. Or as a New Living Translation puts this, I love God's law with all my heart. I love God's law with all my heart. So, these really should tell us that obviously Paul did not view God's law as a negative thing, certainly not as any kind of curse. And what I want to mention now is that just as grace is a perfect reflection of God's mind and character, so is God's law a perfect reflection of God's mind and God's character.

God is perfect and holy, and His law is perfect and holy, because they reflect who and what He is. They reflect His thinking and His desires for us. We see this brought out in Psalm 19 in verse 7 here on screen, that the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. Because when we live by God's law, it changes us, it converts us, it changes the way we think, from loving self to loving other people, and loving God above everything else.

Another way to say this would be to say that God's law reveals His thinking and His way of life. And we see this brought out in Deuteronomy 4 in verse 40. This is part of the instructions there as the Israelites are preparing to enter the Promised Land. And what does God tell them through Moses? He says, You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

So through Moses, God told Israel that if they obey His law, they will be respected and admired by the nations around them. And we see this brought out in the same chapter near the beginning, verses 5 through 8, where Moses, again speaking for God, tells the Israelites, Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess.

Therefore be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding soul. For what great nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him?

And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I have set before you this day? So this is a famous passage where Moses tells the people that, hey, if you obey these laws, you're going to make such an impression on the other nations around you that they're going to want to be like you.

And this is one reason I've talked about this in sermons before, why God placed Israel there where He did in the Holy Land at the crossroads of three continents. He sent them there so there would be an example to all of the peoples around them. And through Israel ran some of the major interstate highways, you might say, of the ancient world so that word of their laws and the blessings that would result from those laws would be known throughout that whole region, those continents surrounding them.

So God is very specific. This is what He wanted them to be. He wanted them to be a showcase of what of the great blessings His laws would bring. And that would be an example to other nations around them. We won't turn there, but you might write down in your notes Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. And these are the famous blessings and cursings chapter where God lists the many great national blessings that would come on nations that obeyed His laws, as well as also the flip side of that, the curses that would come on the nations that rejected and disobeyed those laws. So again, it reinforces the fact that God gave Israel and gives us, by extension today, these laws as a blessing for us to produce blessings in our lives.

So in light of that fact that God intended the laws to be a blessing to people, how did they come to be viewed so negatively, even among churches and denominations that call themselves Christian? Well, the short answer to that is found in Romans 8 and verse 7 from the New Living Translation, where Paul writes, the sinful nature is always hostile to God.

It never did obey God's laws, and it never will. We see here what we refer to as human nature. The innate human nature doesn't want to be told what to do, doesn't want to be told how to live, what we can and can't do. We want to be a law unto ourselves. And as Paul put it, it's hostile to God. It doesn't want an authority over us to tell us what we need to do.

And it never will be. It will never grow out of that without the help of God's Holy Spirit. That's the only way we overcome that, is through the gift of God's Spirit, which again is an outgrowth of God's grace, as we've talked about in earlier sermons.

So because of this innate human hostility to God, many people, even those who view themselves as deeply religious, will try to rationalize around a need to obey God's laws. And this is nothing new. Jesus Christ warned of this very same thing in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verses 17-19, Do not think that I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does, and teaches them, shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus Christ is very clear he did not come to do away with the law. And yet, what do most churches today teach? That Christ came to do away with the law. Teach the exact opposite. They think the exact opposite of what Jesus said. Don't think. Don't think this.

So, what was their rationale or reasoning that led them to this conclusion? Or the common way the law is viewed today? Well, one way that people tried to do away with any need to obey God's law, and this is how it ties in with grace, is they came to believe that grace makes obedience unnecessary. And since God's grace brought forgiveness, which is true, we've talked about that in this series, no question about it that God's grace does bring forgiveness and repentance.

They reasoned, though, that somebody could continue sinning and God would always be there to forgive. But that is obviously not true. That actually makes a mockery of God's grace, the concept of grace. Let's notice something that Jude, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, wrote in Jude verses 3 and 4. This is from the New International Version. I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.

For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men who change the grace of God. So this started very early on, started as early as the first century, within a few decades at most after Christ's crucifixion. They changed the grace of our God into a license or permission for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord. So Jude tells us here they changed God's grace into license to sin.

This has been a major theological construct of traditional Christianity going back to the very beginning. So by viewing God's grace as permission to continue a lifetime of sinning, these false teachers were abusing God's mercy and His grace and forgiveness. By continuing in sin, this made a mockery of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. That's why Jude says, as he does here, denying Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord, who had given His life for them.

By denying the meaning and the implications of His sacrifice, they deny Jesus Christ. They deny why He came, why He gave His life for us here. That's what that means. It doesn't mean they're denying Him as Christ because they're justifying continuing sinning by His grace. It means they deny His whole point and purpose in coming and giving His life for us.

By God's grace. Let's look now at the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 10, verses 26 through 29. I'll read this from the English Standard Version. Here it gives a scathing condemnation to those who would think that grace would allow them to continue in a life of sin. And Paul, presumably Paul writes this, For if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified, and has outraged the spirit of grace? Interesting choice of words here. Has outraged the spirit of grace. What that means is it is an outrage to reason that because of God's grace we can continue to sin, and God will always forgive us there.

Clearly, God's grace does not allow that. It does not allow a person to continue in sin. What Paul, presumably Paul here, says that that is an outrage. It's just outrageous to think that, or conclude that. It's just utterly unthinkable to believe that way, and yet that is the way a vast percentage of traditional Christianity views the subject of grace. So where did—we've seen kind of where the mental attitude came from—where did it become officially enshrined in doctrine, this idea?

Well, a major theological phrase that emerged from the Protestant Revolution 500 years ago was solo fide. Solo fide. Have it up here on screen. S-O-L-O-F-I-D-E. Solo fide. Solo, you probably know, means alone. Fide means fidelity or faith. And this was a phrase that the Catholic monk, Martin Luther, kind of the one who set in motion the Protestant Revolution, came up with, and it means by faith alone. By faith alone. Martin Luther had some things right. He was a Catholic monk, a teacher. He opposed a lot of the unbiblical and corrupt practices by which the Roman Church taught that people, if they gave certain amounts of money or did certain deeds and so on, they could lessen their punishment or the punishment of their loved ones who were supposedly in purgatory, which is totally not a biblical concept at all. But they believed that they could lessen by giving money to the church—bottom line—they could lessen their punishment in the afterlife.

Through these payments are gifts given to the church. This is called indulgences. You may have heard that term. If you paid a certain amount of money to the church, that would abolish a hundred thousand years of punishment in purgatory for your dear departed mother, this kind of thing. That was the Catholic practice at that time. And Martin Luther rightly opposed that. And his goal was to reform the Catholic Church and some of its teachings and practices there, which were money-making schemes to be blunt. But what started fairly small, nailing his 95 theses on the door of the church there, really took off and took hold among many thousands more people. And the more the church tried to stamp that out, the greater and the stronger that movement grew. And that became the Protestant Reformation. And out of what used to be one universal church, which is what the term Catholic means, the universal church, out of that came hundreds of other—over the following centuries came hundreds of other denominations of Christianity here. But his catchphrase of Sola Fide, by faith alone, summed up his opposition to those Catholic practices that were unbiblical and that presumed that salvation could be bought by a certain amount of money or gifts or actions to benefit the church. And this, in Martin Luther's mind, is what he called works. That's what he kind of read back into the scriptures where where Paul and others wrote of works and James wrote of works. He equated those works with what the Catholic Church was teaching and doing 1500 years later, which of course is very, very different to totally, totally different things. So he read this idea back into the Bible from 1500 years earlier and ignored what Paul's writings meant to the original first century audience there.

So out of Martin Luther's concepts and thinking and teaching came the unbiblical idea that grace is the opposite of law and law is the opposite of grace. That grace is the opposite of law and law is the opposite of grace. But biblically speaking, that is wrong. Wrong answer because the opposite of law is lawlessness and the opposite of grace is disgrace.

Not the opposite of law is grace and grace is the opposite of law. No, the opposite of law is lawlessness, disobedience. And the opposite of grace is to be disgraced or to be without grace.

They are totally wrong concepts, so we need to be sure we read the Bible carefully and read what it says, not what people want it to say or not what people read into it saying there. So where did these views come from? Well, they came from several scriptural passages that Martin Luther and others very badly misunderstood. One of them, a classic one that is quoted today, Ephesians 2 and verses 8 and 9, which reads, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any one should boast. Now, Martin Luther read that and said, okay, the works here he's talking about are giving this money to the church.

And grace, therefore, is the opposite of works and law. Every word that Paul wrote here is absolutely true. By grace we are saved through faith, and not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. And it's not of works. That's why we teach. There's nothing we can do to earn salvation. We cannot.

That is very clear here. Nothing we could ever do could earn God's gift of salvation. It is a gift by His grace. But so Martin Luther and others saw this as proof that salvation comes by faith and not by works, and thus his belief in grace alone, or faith alone, solo fide, faith alone.

But he should have read a little bit further because what does the very next verse say?

It says, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So, Luther was correct that we are not saved by works. Nothing we can ever do would earn us God's gift of salvation. But Paul says very plainly in the next verse, we are created for good works. That's why we are called. That's why we receive forgiveness. That's why we receive the gift of God's Holy Spirit and so on. For good works.

For doing good things. For obeying God. Which shows what? Which shows first four commandments. Show us how to love God. The last six tell us how to love our fellow men.

For good works, that we should walk in them. So that is how we are expected to live.

When we receive God's Spirit and are called and converted, we should be making good works a regular and habitual part of our lives. But it's not the kind of good works as Martin Luther reinterpreted the meaning of that word. So rather than saying good works are unnecessary for a Christian, Paul emphatically states that good works are a necessary and expected part of the Christian life.

So what Paul is telling us here is that by grace, by God's merciful forgiveness of our sins for which we deserved the death penalty, we have been saved through faith. As it says here, top line there in verse 8, we have been saved through faith.

Now, what kind of faith is Paul referring to? Well, as we've seen in this series of sermons, grace has a broad range of meanings. And so does the word faith. As many aspects of meanings might be a better way to word it there. With the intended meaning typically brought out in the context of how it is mentioned. Here, the faith that Paul refers to is an active and living faith that God the Father has personally chosen us. John 6 46, the Father has drawn us to him. He's personally chosen us, personally called us into a mutually loving relationship with him and with his son, Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, what are we to do? We are to, as it says here, the last line, we should walk in good works. Walk in good works that are what? That are evidence of us being in this right relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ.

And the meaning of this is brought out, just skip down a few verses. We see this made more clear.

Verse 17 through 22 of the same chapter. He, Jesus Christ, came and preached peace to you, who were far away, and peace to those who were near. It's referring to Jews and Gentiles there.

For through him we both, Jew and Gentile, have access to the Father by one Spirit, by that Holy Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household or God's family.

Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by His Spirit. So what Paul is telling us here is that as members of God's family, His household, in whom God lives by His Spirit, you might think of John 15, 16, 17, Christ's last words, on His last night, he said, the Father and I will come and make our home with you by the Comforter, by the Holy Spirit. So because of that indwelling of God the Father and Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, then our lives will naturally be characterized by good work. As we just saw earlier there, because this reflects the nature and the character of God living in us by His Spirit. And a very familiar passage, Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23, that ties in with this, the fruit of the Spirit, what should be produced in our lives by God's Spirit, is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Again such, there is no law. So this is what should be evident in the life of somebody who is being led by God's Spirit. The Apostle James, who again, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, also made it clear that good works will be evident in the life of a Christian. Notice what he says in James 2, 14 through 26, What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can faith save him? I might mention here Martin Luther didn't like what James said and referred to this as an epistle of straw. In other words, it was worthless. It was useless. That's how much he believed in his concept of faith alone without a word. So he just totally dismissed this epistle of James. Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, Depart in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, You have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. So what he and then he goes on to explain you believe there's one God. Yeah, faith. That's it's good. It's good to have faith. We have to have faith. You believe that there's one God. You do well. Even the demons believe, but they tremble.

So the demons have faith that there is a God. That doesn't make them righteous, because they're demons. They're totally opposed to everything God wants. So they believe and tremble. But do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead? And then he gives an example. Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works, when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works? And by works, faith was made perfect. You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. So it's certainly not faith alone, as Martin Luther taught. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. So we see here that both James and Paul make the exact same point, that the life of a Christian is transformed by faith and by a close relationship with God the Father through the Holy Spirit, at work within us developing God's mind and God's character. Here, and these are the evidence of a person truly being converted by God's Spirit, living in them, truly converted by God's grace, as we've talked about in previous sermons. Okay, so those who don't believe obedience to God as necessary choose to emphasize certain parts of Paul's writings here, and totally ignore others that express Paul's clear intent, like we've seen in some of these passages we've covered. One such passage is Romans 3 and verse 28, where Paul says, Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. But what is Paul's subject here? We won't go into what leads up to this, but what he leads up to is Christ's death that covers our previous transgressions and God accepting our repentant resolve to change. So Paul is showing, again, that we can never earn forgiveness by what we do. But that is a different subject than the importance of using God's law as a guide to our lives, and our guide to our behavior and how we're supposed to live. The context of this is in verse 25, where Paul talks about the sins that were previously committed. So he's talking about how those sins are removed. They are removed by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and passed over so we can then begin a new life as obedient servants and sons of God.

And then to make sure that we understand this, again, a lot of people will quote this verse, but skipping down just a few verses, what is Paul's conclusion to this discussion?

He says, Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. On the contrary, we establish the law. So the law is not done away through faith or grace. No, on the contrary, it is established.

It's all the more important here in light of what those terms really mean. So he's not even hinting that God's law is abolished or done away. On the contrary, without the law, we would have no knowledge of what sin is, because by law is the knowledge of sin, as he explains in this discussion here. And of course we know 1 John 3, 4, sin is lawlessness. It is the breaking of God's law.

So grace and law are actually inseparable because without law there would be no need for grace.

In a religious context, the word grace is often used for the gift of forgiveness. It refers to how God extends his favor, his grace, to those who do repent of their sins, and then he forgives us for our disobedience. And we need this forgiveness because, again, 1 John 3, 4, whoever sins breaks the law, in fact sin is lawlessness. So if there's no law to break, there is no sin. And grace then becomes meaningless, because you don't need to be forgiven if there's no law. There's no sin, so nothing to be forgiven of. So the meaning of grace then would have no meaning whatsoever without law. God does not just dismiss our sins, our lawless acts, and neither does he ignore them. He deals with our sins, as we've talked about, according to grace. And we see this brought out in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 3. For I delivered, Paul writes, I delivered to you, first of all, that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That sacrifice is spelled out thematically throughout the Bible, again and again and again. He died according to our Scriptures.

But why did this happen? Explaining a little more in Hebrews 2 and verse 9.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, so here's grace brought into the picture, as part of this whole plan, was done by God's grace. By the grace of God might taste death for everyone. So in other words, it was to make God's favor, God's grace, available to everyone who repents, that Jesus tasted death for everyone. It was all a part of God's grace toward mankind, the forgiveness that he makes possible. And why did Jesus do this? Titus 2 and verse 14 says, "...he gave himself for us, that he might redeem us by his back from every lawless deed, and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works." There's that importance of good works being a part of the life of a Christian again.

So he gave himself to redeem us or to buy us back from slavery to sin, and to purify us so he could be his own special people. As it says here, people who are zealous, eager, anxious for carrying out good works in our lives. Does this sound like God gives us a free pass to live however we want, or do whatever we want, and ignore God's laws? Obviously not. It shows there is an obligation for good works, as we see here. So to conclude some of this, to sum up some of this, grace in copses more than just forgiveness of our past sins. It also includes the gift of God's Holy Spirit to help us be obedient to God's laws. It encompasses all of the free and undeserved gifts that God has given to us. It includes his help and repentance, as we've seen in some of these passages here, and initially turning us away from sin and then helping us to live a life empowered through God's Spirit. It includes his forgiveness of our past sins. And ultimately, it includes granting us the greatest gift of all, which is eternal life in his kingdom. And again, without law, all of this grace would be meaningless because there would be no way to define sin or to understand what sin is. So without grace, forgiveness of sin for breaking God's law would not be made available to us.

So as we've seen here, Jesus died and rose again to make grace available to anyone and everyone who is willing to change. And as Christ told the woman, caught in adultery, to go and sin no more.

To go and sin no more. Through grace we are forgiven and then enabled by God's Spirit to obey God's law and to go and sin no more. We heard some of that talked about in the sermon at here today by Mr. Hooser. So to sum up, law and grace are utterly inseparable. Law is necessary to define sin and its consequences. And grace is necessary for sin to be forgiven in the lives of sinners. And so it will lead us to obedience to God through the power of God's Spirit and the assistance of our Savior and High Priest, Jesus Christ. Now as I've said several times, God's law is a reflection of his mind and nature and character. And I have said that in the introduction, but how do we know? Well, we know that because as the Bible shows, God and his law share the same characteristics. What does it mean? Well, as we might say that his law is summarized in the Ten Commandments, explain God's character in written form. They express his values, his thinking.

In the same way, Jesus Christ, as we covered in the last sermon, showed God's character and mind in perfectly obeying God's law, which led to the grace by which he treated other people.

That was his pattern in life. And just as God doesn't change, neither does his law change, because again, it is a reflection of God's mind and his eternal values. You might take a look at the handout that was passed out here. I'm not going to go over this, just providing it for you as a reference to look at. There are 12 points here that show characteristics of God and characteristics of his law, with passages demonstrating both that God is holy, and the law is holy. God is good, and the law is good. God is perfect, and the law is perfect. God is pure, and the law is perfect. It's pure, rather. God is true, and the law is true. God is just, and the law is just. God is righteousness, and the law is righteousness. God is faithful, and the law is faithful. God is love, and the law is love. God is upright, and the law is upright. God is unchangeable, and the law is unchangeable. And God is everlasting, and his law is everlasting. So here we see a dozen different parallels between characteristics of God and characteristics of his law, showing they are closely intertwined, interrelated, aligned with one another. So, again, this is just, you could do a nice Bible study on that on your own, but I'm just providing this as a, this handout as a reference for you here.

Another question I want to want to address here that we need to address is, did Jesus Christ come to do away with the law? Because this is a major theological misunderstanding of much of traditional Christianity, because many religious people believe that Jesus came to do away with the law, and to replace the law with grace. But is that what happened? Is that what he intended?

Well, the answer to that question becomes obvious when we understand exactly who and what Jesus Christ was. And he was much more than most people realize. Scripture repeatedly tells us, here are four passages, that no one has seen God the Father at any time. The Apostle John makes this very clear in the introduction to his gospel, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son he has declared him. Now, John, just a few verses before that, has talked about how Jesus came in the flesh, and we saw him, and we touched him, and we handled him, and so on. So, he's clearly talking about Jesus Christ there. So, the only being he can be referring to is God the Father. The one we would call God the Father is the one that no one has seen at any time.

He repeats his statement in 1 John 4 and verse 12, no one has seen God at any time. We see also two explicit statements from Jesus Christ himself.

John 5 verse 37, you have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form.

And just to be clear, he again repeats John 6 and verse 46 from the New International Version.

No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. Only he has seen the Father, referring, of course, to himself. He is the only one who has seen God the Father. So, here both John, Jesus is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and Jesus repeatedly say that no one has seen the Father except the one who came down from the Father, referring to Jesus Christ. And no human being has ever seen the Father. However, in the books of the Old Testament, we are told a number of times that people did see God. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, the 70 elders of Israel, Joshua, and Gideon are all explicitly stated that they saw God. So, who did they see when scripture tells us they saw God? Well, the only way we can make sense of this is to understand that the being they saw was not God the Father, but the one who just became Jesus Christ, who came to earth as Jesus Christ, as the Word who was with God and was God, as we read in John 1 and verse 1.

The one who was born in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. So, with this understanding, there isn't any contradiction between what we read there. So, the one who appeared and spoke to people as God was the one who became Jesus Christ. And Jesus himself clearly expressed this.

And the people who heard him knew exactly what he meant when he said this. Let's notice this, John 8 and verses 57 and 58, where Jesus is in a heated debate with some of the Jews who were opposing him at that time. And Jesus mentioned in passing that Abraham rejoiced to see his day, his Jesus Christ day. Then the Jews, verse 57, said to him, you're not yet 50 years old. And have you seen Abraham? Abraham lived approximately 2,000 years prior to this.

So, they say, you're not even 50. How was it you say you saw Abraham? And Jesus said to them, most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, or before Abraham existed, I am. I am. And here, Jesus specifically tells them of his divine identity, that he existed before Abraham lived 2,000 years prior to this, and that he was the God who had interacted with people as God in the Old Testament period. So, who was it he was explicitly claiming to be? We find the answer to that in Exodus 3, and verses 13 and 14, where God appears to Moses at the burning bush, and tells Moses that he will deliver the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt. Picking up the story then, then Moses said to God, indeed, when I come to the children of Israel, and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. And then, 15 centuries later, what did Jesus say about who he was? Going back to what we just read in John 8, 57 and 58, Jesus said to them, most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. I am. And notice then, did they understand what he was saying, that he was claiming to be the I am who spoke to Moses. Yes, because, verse 59, what is the crowd's reaction? They took up stones to throw at him. They're going to stone him to death for blasphemy, for claiming to be the God who spoke to Moses. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. So they knew exactly what he was claiming to be the I am, who had interacted there with Moses. And they want to stone him to death because of that. So in light of these clear passages, who was Israel's lawgiver, who spoke to Moses, who gave him the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and were written with his own finger there, who was it, who ate a covenant meal with Moses and Aaron and the 70 elders of Israel on Mount Sinai. It was Jesus Christ. He was the one who gave the law. He was the one who gave the Ten Commandments. So this is why Jesus would say in Matthew 5 and verse 17, did not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. So it's absurd to think that Jesus, who was the being who gave the law to Moses, would come along 1500 years later and do away with that law. It's just absurd. And a lot of people misread this word fulfill here. It's the Greek word pluroo, to make full or to fill to the full, or to make complete in every particular, to render perfect, to carry through to the end.

Other ways this word is used in the Bible is when the disciples are fishing and they catch a net full of fish. That's the same word that's used here. The net is filled to the full with fish. It's fulfilled, filled to the full. Does that mean the net is destroyed? No, of course not. That's absurd. And that's the point Jesus is making here. He didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill it, to fill it to the full, to show how you live a life that is in exact accordance with God's law and pleasing to Him. And he plainly tells us, Matthew 4 and verse 4, this is quoting from Deuteronomy 8 and verse 3, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And what was the word of God that they had at that time? The only word they had were the books of the Old Testament. The books of Moses and the rest of the Old Testament are the Hebrew Scriptures here. And of course, those words that he spoke here, the words that proceed from the mouth of God, he was the God who spoke those words. To Moses it had Moses write them down.

And of course, another passage here, Hebrews 13 verse 8, Jesus has not changed. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And because these laws are a reflection of his mind and thoughts and character, why would anybody think he would do away with those laws? It's absurd, absurd thinking.

And John, the last of the twelve apostles, wrote near the end of his life in 1 John 2 verses 1 through 6 from the New Living Translation, My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins, and not only our sins, but the sins of all the world. And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments.

If someone claims, I know God, but doesn't obey God's commandments, that person is a liar, and is not living in the truth. But those who obey God's Word truly show how completely they love him. This is how we know we are living in him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did. So again, obviously Jesus did not come to do away with the law. He did come to experience death, to pay the death penalty for us that we deserved, and therefore gave us the opportunity for eternal life. And that again is part of God's wonderful gift of grace, one of the many gifts that he does give us. I want to conclude here with one more point. And I came across this as I was preparing this series of sermons and wasn't quite sure where to fit it in. It didn't necessarily fit logically in the flow of the previous messages. So I'm going to add this here at the end. And this is very, very helpful again for helping us understand what the Bible means when it talks about Charis or grace. In the first sermon in this series, I disagree with the meaning of Charis, the biblical definitions, which is the word translated grace 156 times in the New Testament, about two-thirds of which are in the writings of Paul.

When he is writing and speaking to a predominantly Gentile audience.

Think about that. He's writing predominantly to a Gentile audience. Yes, there are some Jews in the congregations, but it's predominantly Gentile. People from a Greco-Roman cultural background.

When we look at Bible words, we need to be sure we look at what the words meant to the original audience. Why did Paul choose this word, Charis, to explain to people about God and God's love and God's gifts toward us? What did this word Charis mean? What was the meaning of Charis to those Gentiles who were Romans and Greeks who don't have a Jewish background? What did this word mean to them? Because there's a lot of important lessons we can learn from this when we understand how Paul used this word to teach these non-Jews about God. And it's quite fascinating. I was just blown away when I came across this and researching this topic here.

And why Paul chose to use this particular word. To understand its significance, we need to totally do a mental reset to think the way a first century Roman hearing this word would have understood this word Charis. We need to understand something about Roman culture that is very different from our world today. Very, very different. And yet it's part of a culture that dominated the world of the New Testament, where Paul is preaching and teaching and writing his epistles here. Very, very, very different concept and way of doing things. And to help us understand this, I'm going to read a fairly long passage from an academic paper. It's actually written in several books, but the academic paper expressed a little bit better, I think, by a biblical and Greek scholar. His name is David De Silva. He's a professor of Greek and New Testament studies at Ashland Theological Seminary. He's written a number of very, very good books on this topic and others about New Testament culture. And I quote this because it helps us understand what the word Charis meant to a first century Roman hearing.

To a first century Gentile person who heard this word, heard Paul preach it or saw Paul write it in his epistles. And why Paul used this term in relation to God. First off, this quote starts out about talking the way we do things today. So, fairly long quote, but pay close attention to this.

Today, we tend to get what we need by means of buying and selling.

Where exchange is precisely measured out ahead of time. You don't leave a department store owing the salesperson a favor. Nor does the cashier at a restaurant owe me a good turn for the money I gave after dinner. When we seek employment, most often we are hired on the basis of our skills and experience by people we do not know. We prepare for employment not so much by cultivating connections, although this is still useful, as by equipping ourselves with the knowledge and skills that we hope a potential employer will recognize as giving us the necessary resources to do the job well. Again, contrasting society today with what existed in New Testament times, when we fall into hard times, there is a massive public welfare system in place, access to which is offered not as a personal favor, but as a bureaucratized right of the poor or unemployed. If an alien wants citizenship and the rights that go along with it, he or she applies, and undergoes the same process as every other naturalized citizen. It is not a favor granted personally by an individual in power. So he's just summing up the way we do things in our society and culture today. That everything has a price, there's a system laid out for getting citizenship, there's systems in place for hiring people for a job. When you go and buy something from a store, the cashier doesn't feel like he owes you a favor in return because there's a price for everything that is spelled out and understood. So that's the way our culture works today. Everything is spelled out with the rules and regulations. Some are written, some are unwritten, but that's the way it's done today. But then, in contrast to how the world of the first century and the first century church was very, very different. This originated in Greek culture and later came to be adopted by Roman culture, which dominates the whole period of the New Testament.

Then he contrasts the way we do things and the way things were done then.

I want to show a picture up here. This is called the Roman patronage system.

Here's his explanation of this Roman personal patronage system. The world of the authors and readers of the New Testament, however, was a world in which personal patronage was an essential means of acquiring access to goods, merchandise, protection, or opportunities for employment and advancement. Not only was it essential, it was expected and publicized. The giving and receiving of favors was, according to a first century participant, the quote, practice that constitutes the chief bond of human society. This was written by the Roman historian Seneca, a very well-known Roman historian. To enter their world of the first century and hear their words more authentically, we have to leave behind our cultural norms and ways of doing things and learn a quite different way of managing resources and meeting needs. So he's saying the way they got things, the way they got things done, the way they accessed goods and favors was through this Roman patronage system.

Very different. You can erase anything about the way we do it today to understand the way they're doing it. Then he goes on to explain. For everyday needs, there was the market in which buying and selling provided access to daily necessities. So if you need your daily food, you go down to the local agora, the big Roman forum, Greek forum, kind of like today's Walmart. That's where you buy your daily groceries because you don't have refrigeration. You buy your meat and veggies and stuff there. You buy your pottery there, your clothing, maybe your sandals. That's where you go for the daily necessities. But what if you need something more than that? Something that can't be bought and sold in that way? For anything outside of the ordinary, one sought out the person who possessed or controlled access to what one needed and received what one needed as a quote-unquote favor.

So in other words, it's who you know. If you want something that's outside what is normally bought and sold, it's who you know. It's connections. That's why it's called the Roman Personal Patronage System. It's who you know who has access to what you need outside of the daily goods and so on that you would buy. The ancient world from the classical through the Roman periods was one of greatly limited access to goods. The greater part of the property, wealth, and power was concentrated into the hands of a few. And access to these goods was through personal connection rather than bureaucratic channels. The kinds of benefits sought from patrons depended on the needs or desires of the petitioner. They might include, and then it gives examples, plots of land, or distribution or borrowing of money to get started in business, or supply food after a crop failure, or a failed business venture, protection, debt relief, or an appointment to some office or position in government. And then quoting from Seneca again, he talks about the range of favors that were distributed in this way. Help one person with money, another with credit, with a loan, another with influence, you know, say he's a friend of mine, do, do, treat him like this, another with advice, another with sound presets, end of quote. So this is the way Seneca describes some of the favors that would be given, distributed here. Contribute continuing with a quote, if the patron granted the partition, the petitioner would become the client of the patron. And today we hear about clients and business. It comes back to this ancient Roman system. And potentially a long and a potentially long-term relationship would begin. This relationship would be marked by the mutual exchange of desired goods and services. The patron being available for assistance in the future, the client doing everything in his or her power to enhance the fame and honor of the patron. Publicizing the benefit and showing the patron respect.

Remaining loyal to the patron and providing services whenever the opportunity arose. So that's the end of of this scholar David De Silva's quote describing this Roman personal patronage system. And this is why I included this illustration here. You have somebody who is powerful, wealthy, influential, and somebody comes to him asking for a favor. That favor might be a loan because he wants to start a business, wants to buy a field of property. Maybe the rains didn't come and his crop failed that year, so he needs money to tide him over for the next year. This is called favors there. That was the term the Roman historian Seneca used. So this was the the Roman patron-client relationship or system. And it's just the way things worked in that day.

Somebody who was wealthy and powerful gave gifts, gave favors to those who were in need.

And those who were in need then, who had received the gifts or the favors from the patron, were obligated to show absolute loyalty and respect to the person who had given them these favors.

They could never pay back that gift because it was far more than they could ever hope to pay back.

But to show their gratefulness, they could and would do whatever was necessary to show their absolute support for and loyalty to their patron. So to sum up, you have somebody who is very wealthy and generous, who gives gifts to somebody who can never pay them back. That's what is being described here. Would anybody like to guess what the word was used for the gifts that were given by the patron to the client? Is there a particular word? Anybody want to guess?

Charis. Charis. That's the word. The gifts from a patron or benefactor were called Charis.

The same word that is translated grace. The same word that Paul uses over a hundred times in writing to a primarily Greek, Gentile, Roman audience. They understood this system.

They understood the gifts that are given. So it's the same exact word. So what's the picture?

When Paul uses this term Charis over a hundred times. So the picture here is there's this wealthy and generous benefactor who enjoys giving what he has to others, sharing with them because he is kind, because he is generous. And he gives Charis, he gives grace to people who can never repay him. And that's the picture that Paul uses again and again and again when he uses this word Charis so many times in his writings. To me that is just amazing. Just an amazing picture. Paul uses a picture that everybody, every Greek and Gentile knows about in that culture and system because that's the glue that holds the society together that keeps it functioning in that day. And literally everybody knows about it. And he uses this picture to teach us about God.

That God is this wealthy and generous benefactor who owns everything and who enjoys and wants to share everything he has because he is kind and generous. And so he gives us Charis. He gives us every good and perfect gift that comes from above. That's pretty mind-boggling.

Help us understand what Paul means when he uses this word grace again and again.

So in this patron-client relationship where God is the patron who gives these gifts, who generously gives them to those who can never replay, who are the clients?

That's you and that's me. We are the clients. We are the recipients of these great blessings, of these great gifts, this Charis from God, that we can never repay.

God's grace is Charis because we have no means of ever repaying God in kind for what he has given us.

So what is the obligation of the client that we just read about there? The obligation is to show absolute loyalty and respect and support and devotion to the patron who has given us these gifts. This is the only way in that system that they could repay him because they can never pay back the value of what they've received. But what they can do is show their grateful response through their loyalty, their devotion, through doing whatever the patron asks of you. And there was a word for this, too. A word that shows up 244 times in the New Testament.

A word for the response that the patron was to that the client was to show to the patron.

It's a word we should be familiar with. A response from a recipient of the gift of Charis was called pistis. Is that ring a bell? Anybody remember what word that is translated is in the New Testament?

It's a very common word. Faith. Faith. So our obligation to God for the grace, the carers he has shown us, is faith. But faith, as we see, isn't just belief. It's not just believing that God is up there and gives us gifts. No, it involves what was the obligation of a client in that culture, which was to show absolute loyalty and devotion to your patron and do whatever he asks you to do. It's an exact parallel. What Paul uses is his words, Charis and pistis, grace and faith, to tell us about God's relationship to us and our obligations to God in return. And this is why Paul uses this analogy to teach us about God's love and his generosity toward us and our obligation to repay him. So to kind of sum up what he's saying here, we have a generous and loving and kind God who gives us Charis, who gives us gifts that we don't deserve and that are so valuable that we can never pay them back. And our obligation in return is to show pistis, to show faith to God. But again, not just believing there is a God, that's not the kind of faith that is talked about here. I've mentioned many, many times before that faith in Bible times means not just believing, but that when you know something is true, you have an absolute, absolute obligation to live according to that truth, to what you know is true. And I was saying that from a Hebrew perspective because that's the connotations of the Hebrew meaning of faith and belief. And that was before I came across this as to the meaning of pistis in Greek here, which emphasizes this even more. So what he's saying here is if we know that God is a generous and loving giver who has given us gifts that we can never repay, we are absolutely obligated to show in return our loyalty and devotion to Him as our grateful response. And we do anything that He asks of us.

And this is what pistis means, as Paul used the word. This is the meaning of the word faith. And again, this is mind-boggling. It is so crystal clear when we understand what it meant in the cultural context of that day. That's why he so often bring out these cultural tidbits and details of the Bible. So we understand what it meant to Paul who wrote these words and what it meant to those who heard them.

And it's perfectly clear. I would also add from part of the studies, I didn't include a quote on this, but to not show pistis, to not show your faith and devotion and gratitude to somebody who had given you grace was one of the most reprehensible things a person could do.

And first century culture in society. It was viewed as a sacrilege against humanity, against the gods, even against the person himself. It was such a disgrace, such a dishonorable thing that it made you utterly despicable in the eyes of other people. It made you utterly reprehensible as somebody who's just unworthy of any kind of grace or favor in the future. And that is true of us today. Having been the recipients of God's gift of his grace and favors that we can never repay, we have an obligation. And that is our utter and complete loyalty and devotion and gratitude to God, our great giver, and to do anything he asks of us. And that is what real faith is. Far more than just believing. So in conclusion here, we've covered in this series of sermons what grace is, and today some of what grace isn't as well. And as a bonus, we've now talked about the flip side of grace. We have God's gifts to us, but it comes with obligations.

And our obligations to God to show our utter and complete loyalty and devotion and gratitude to him for all the grace he has shown to us, and to do whatever he asks of us in return. So I hope this has been helpful to you, and that now we can better understand and appreciate the depths of God's grace toward us and what he expects of us in return.