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Grace Reigns Over Sin (Rom. 5:21; 6:14)

4/27/2016

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I find three unsettling tendencies in myself. These three tendencies are evil responses to grace, which reside in the heart of every natural man. But God be thanked! I find another more powerful response. A response of faith to God’s grace in Christ (Rom. 6:14,17).

But first, we must ask, “What is grace?” Grace is what God does to save His people all by Himself, apart from any merit or contribution on their part (Rom. 11:6). God’s grace finds reason in Himself alone for showing favor, and finds nothing in those to whom He is gracious. He provides all for them in Christ to the glory of God alone (1 Cor. 1:30-31). The Lord Jesus Christ, by His life and in His death, has fulfilled a perfect righteousness for His people and removed their sins from them. He loved them and has cleansed them from their sins by His own blood (2 Cor. 5:21; Rev. 1:5; Gal. 2:20; Heb. 1:3; 10:11-17). He has fulfilled God's everlasting covenant, His eternal will, and thereby provided a perfect righteousness for His people and clothed them with it (Isaiah 61:10; Rom. 10:4; Heb. 10:7-14). All that God requires of His people, He has provided for them in Christ. That is grace. Grace is not God doing 90% or even most of the work, and leaving something for me to do. Grace is Christ doing all, fulfilling all for His people, in their place, as their Surety. Grace is not an attempt to save. Grace saves. Grace does not look for worthiness from me. It finds all worthiness in Christ (Eph. 2:8-9). Grace does not wait for cooperation on my part. Grace makes me willing. Grace does not wait for faith from me. Grace gives faith. Grace is God doing everything for us in Christ, and then performing a miracle in us, giving faith to see what He has done for us. Grace raises to life. It gives the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of life, to sinners to find that all that Christ is and all that He has accomplished is their all before God (John 11:25-26; Eph. 2:1-10; Col. 2:9-10). Grace is unchanging. God cannot change, and His grace towards sinners cannot change (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 13:8). God’s grace towards His people was in His heart when we were ungodly, sinners, dead in sins, and without strength to come to God, or to put away our sin, or to obey even one of God's commandments. It was then that God’s grace accomplished all for us in Christ (Rom. 5:6-10). That is grace! God, in grace, gave His Son to die to reconcile to Himself, we who were His enemies (Col. 1:20-22). That is grace! And when we were opposed to this salvation, it was God’s grace that gave us life with faith in Christ to see what He had done for us, causing us to own Him as our all, just as God worked that faith in us to do so (Col. 2:12-13). God's grace never requires anything from those to whom He is gracious to show them grace, but finds all that He requires in Christ and shows them His great salvation. And grace always triumphs over sin. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20-21; 1 Cor. 15:57)!  Now that is grace!  What is your response to this grace? What is mine?

I find three sinful responses in myself, which are natural and integral to my sinful self. The first sinful response is to think that God’s grace alone is not sufficient to save me, but that I need to “do my part.” This response also makes me think that God’s grace will not prevent me from sinning. This attitude causes me to focus on myself and the law of God. It puts me thinking about my experience and what God thinks of me for what I do, rather than Christ's experience and what God thinks of Christ and His people by Him. When it is all about me, then I need to avoid doing what God forbids. I need to do what God commands. I need to overcome sin. I need to obey in all things. And I need to do these things to have and retain God's favor. But this attitude is the response of a legalist. A legalist is concerned with external obedience. A legalist cannot believe that God’s grace alone is sufficient to save or to give dominion over sin. Therefore, the legalistic response is very sinful, for it requires me to add to or complete what God alone, by His grace, has already done in Christ (Gal 2:21; 3:2-3). That’s the first response of the natural man to grace. A legalist cannot believe that Christ is enough. The legalist denies his own sinfulness and denies that only Christ’s obedience and death can justify him before God. He denies these by trying to come up with something, to add a little bit of himself: his sorrow, his tears, his pain under God's chastening, his resolutions to do better, his religious experience, his decisions, his exercises of will, all of his own contribution and cooperation by which he means to do what he thinks needs to be done to "be saved", to fulfill the law, or to sanctify himself so that God will accept him. A legalist will even sub-consciously think that his doubt of God's grace is a sign of his humility. A legalist thinks it would be too much to receive all from God with no help or contribution or payback from him. A legalist is too proud to receive salvation full and free and to the uttermost out of pure, free grace. A legalist has not seen his own sinfulness nor has he seen God’s holiness that required the death of Christ. He does not understand that God can only accept what Christ has done for both sin payment and for righteousness. He does not understand God’s grace in giving His own Son to fulfill the New Covenant in His blood to bring open rebels to God (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 13:20-21; 2 Cor. 5:19-21; 1 Peter 3:18). The legalist is a faithless man. Oh! May the Lord save me and you from legalism!

The second sinful response to grace is to think of grace as a license to sin. The word “licentiousness” means just that. Have you ever thought, “Well, if salvation is all of grace, I can do whatever I want; I can sin with impunity -- without any negative consequence from God -- because God will do everything and I don’t need to do anything?" Making grace a license to sin reveals something very evil about us. It reveals that we have no respect for the law that we claim raised our need for grace. It reveals that we have only one nature: a sinful nature. When we find grace to be a license to sin, we show that there is no warfare within us, no struggle between the body of death -- the flesh -- and the Spirit of Christ in us -- the mind of Christ (Rom. 7:14-25).

The third sinful response to grace is indifference. Indifference is really licentiousness and legalism combined. To be indifferent is to have low thoughts of God, low thoughts of Christ, and high thoughts of myself and my own way. Remember the repeated assessment of the people in the book of Judges? “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes?” (Judges 21:25). In my indifference, I am so enwrapped in myself that I can’t see beyond my own nose to what Christ’s coming and living and dying and rising and reigning means to God and my soul! I can’t think of the holiness of God that required Him to die. I don’t fear the goodness of God (Psalm 130:4; Hosea 3:5), because I have no need for grace, and therefore see no beauty in Christ or blessing in grace. Not fearing God’s goodness, I am not amazed that God would save me when I was His enemy (Rom. 8:6-8), when I opposed Him and my own salvation (2 Tim. 2:25). I do not stand in fear and reverence that He would save me in spite of myself when I was in such a case! Indifference is the scariest of all responses to grace! It reveals the blindness of self-conceit and an obdurate callousness to the very goodness and glory of God; a nature that is graveyard dead to Christ in its sin and in its sins. May the Lord deliver me from indifference (Rev. 3:15-16)!

But there is a proper response to grace. And this every believer finds in his heart. This response is the response of one released from the worst bondage and prison. This response does two things: first, it glorifies God for His mercy, that He would save a wretch like me for reasons found in Himself alone, according by the righteousness found in Christ alone! Second, this response recognizes and owns its sinfulness, even while looking to Christ. The new man lives by looking to Christ. Christ’s history and life is his history and life. The new man cries out against himself, “O wretched man that I am” (Rom. 7:24)! He owns his sin: “The good that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7:19). The new man owns that in the body of his flesh, this body of death, he is sold under sin (Rom. 7:14), and cannot not sin in his old man (Rom. 7:18). But the new man also owns Christ as all, and so owning Him, looks to Him alone, and cries to Him (Rom. 7:24; Psalm 65:3; 34:17; 50:15). And the new man finds that God’s grace in Christ is his only hope for salvation. The new man finds Christ is all, and thus, is prostrated in the dust, confessing his sin, and looking to Christ for complete and perfect and finished justification from the law and from sin and for deliverance from sin on this foundation (Col. 2:6; Gal. 2:20). The new man has no confidence in his sinful flesh (Philippians 3:3), but rejoices in Christ, because he finds in Christ that he is set free from sin.


Lord! Deliver us from legalism, licentiousness and indifference. Grant us this grace to obey the gospel from our hearts by looking to Christ alone!
Rick Warta
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"If We Deny Him" (2 Tim. 2:12-13)

4/18/2016

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Nothing gave greater bitterness and grief to Peter than his denial of his beloved Master and Lord (Matt. 26:75; Luke 22:61-62)! What do we learn from him?
  1. That we all are capable of falling, of doing the one thing we most dread.
  2. That Peter's resolve and boast that he would never deny his Lord, proved to be his downfall (Matt. 26:33-34; Mark 14:29-30). Should we not resolve to follow our Lord and Savior fully? A thousand times yes! But resolve is but the constraint of love in the heart. It is the caboose in the train of faith and love, and never the engine (Ps. 119:32; 2 Cor. 5:14).
  3. Threats of hell may sober our mind, but they cannot bind our heart to Christ.
  4. Only one thing will enable us, will keep us from falling: Him whose love and grace has power to raise dead sinners to life and keep living sinners in life and faith in Christ! His power alone, not mine, will keep and bring and perfect me (Ps. 50:15; 57:2; 119:133; Isaiah 26:1-3,12; John 15:5; Rom. 5:10; 6:14; 7:24-25; 8:25-39; Philip. 1:6; 2:12-13; Heb. 7:25; 10:10-23; 13:20-21; 1 Thess. 5:23-24; Jude 1:24-25).
  5. The greatest and only motive put in the heart of a believing sinner, to hold to Christ in faith until the end, is love for Him. O! who can describe the bitterness of soul that would overwhelm me were I to lose my beloved Master's smile, to see His lovely face no more, to never hear of His sovereign mercy and grace for a sinner like me?!
  6. And nothing produces love in the heart, not true love, but this precious faith by which we see our all in Him (1 John 4:9-10,19; Luke 7:47).

Even in life, it is a mother's love that causes her to rush into a burning building or cast herself into a raging flood to save her child. Among men, what but love motivates one brother or sister to give their organs to save another sibling? What but love causes a man to give himself faithfully to his wife and for his children all the days of his life?

This is the question Jesus put to Peter after he was restored from his denial: "Peter, do you love me" (John 21:15)?! The first time Jesus asked him this question, Peter must have thought his Master intended to teach him some lesson. Therefore, the inquiry of love did not grieve him. But the third time Jesus asked him, Peter was grieved. Didn't his Master know all things? Could it be that Peter had after all been self-deluded? Was Jesus probing to uncover iniquity and insincerity in him? No. His probing was to draw forth the response of His own Spirit of grace in the heart of Peter, that law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that sees Christ as all in my salvation, all in life, my hope and joy for eternity: "Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love Thee" (John 21:17)!

Let us therefore be driven by the prospect of falling from our beloved Master to look more earnestly, more intently, more ardently to Him and find ourselves -- though undeserving -- lost in love and wonder, adoration and worship; that He would love and give Himself to save me (Gal. 2:20)!? In so doing, we will see our Lord to be infinitely gracious, full of compassion, always giving Himself, fulfilling all, suffering and enduring, and doing all to save me (Rom. 8:34-39)! And let this sight of Him by faith endear Him to my soul in honest assessment of my utter sinfulness and weakness, so that I find Him to be my all in all!

Let us be done with introspection! Not what I am, or even what I will be, but what He is and has done, and what I am in Him! This is all my assurance and peace and joy! This produces love and puts me in the posture of adoring wonder (Eph. 3:16-21)!

Faith sees that He abides faithful. An honest heart owns that it is capable of denying its beloved Master. But faith and the love that springs from it by the Spirit of Christ in me, drives me to my Master's bosom. If it is I who have so sinned, then let the LORD accept a sacrifice, the offering of His Son in my nature, that I might be recovered from the error of my way (1 Sam. 26:19)! Lord, I have but one place to go (John 6:67-69). In body and soul, in life and in death, I belong to my faithful Savior (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23)! "Upon a life I did not live; upon a death I did not die, I stake my whole eternity" (Horatius Bonar)!
Rick Warta
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"When he had spoken to me, I was strengthened"(Dan. 10:19).

4/17/2016

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Daniel was highly favored and greatly loved (Dan. 10:19). So is every believer (Eph. 1:6). The Lord Jesus appeared to him. He showed him a great vision concerning His church, her enemies and His ultimate victory for her as her Husband, her King and her Lord (1 Cor. 15:57). When He did, Daniel’s strength became weakness. His own comeliness was turned to corruption. No strength remained in him. When Daniel was so affected by God’s word, he could not even speak to the Lord as he should. The Lord had to speak again to him. He had to command him to be strong. When Christ commanded Daniel to be strong, then Daniel said, “Let my Lord speak, for thou hast strengthened me” (Daniel 10:19). So it is with us. When we hear the word of God, we are laid low. Knowing we are guilty and have no reason in ourselves to come or ask, we are left without strength. But when Christ commands us to believe, to be strong, then we are strengthened. When we are strong, then we ask the Lord to speak to us, to make Himself known to us (compare John 20:27-28).

The Lord Jesus Christ is everything to His people. He is all we have. He meets our every need. “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Painful as it is to our pride, even our ability to believe Him requires His grace (Eph. 2:8-9). We cannot meet the smallest need of our soul apart from His sovereign grace. We cannot understand. We cannot repent. We cannot believe. Surprising to us, without His grace, we cannot even receive grace (John 1:16). Apart from Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5). We need grace from first to last and everything in between (Rev. 1:8,11,18; Heb. 12:2). We need His choosing grace, for we cannot choose ourselves to be God’s sons. We cannot choose Christ to be our Redeemer. We cannot decide to be born again. We cannot choose to believe. Don't you think Thomas wanted to believe? Yet until the Lord Jesus spoke peace to him, showed him His wounds, and commanded him not to be faithless but believing, he could not believe his beloved Master had risen from the dead. No, we cannot choose to believe. And we will not come, and we cannot come unless God the Father draws us (John 5:40; 6:44). We need redeeming grace to remit our sin debt before the throne and court of heaven -- the holy place -- and to ransom our souls from the prison God’s justice demands that we occupy. We need redeeming grace to raise our spiritually dead souls to life. We need redeeming grace to raise our mortal body to immortality, and to replace our corruption with incorruption; to give us eternal life (1 Cor. 15:53).

We need grace to turn, to change our minds about God (Ps. 80; Acts 5:31) and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 20:21). “Surely after that I was turned, I repented” (Jer. 31:19). We need grace to strengthen us to come to God, to call on Him, to look to Christ, to hold fast to Him, to continue believing Him, to look for Him (Isaiah 45:21; Heb. 12:2). We receive this strength when we hear the gospel in our conscience. When Christ speaks the gospel of His grace to our conscience, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee” (Isaiah 44:22), then we are strengthened. When He says that He is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes (Rom. 10:4), then we are strengthened. When He says that though we have two natures, one sold under sin, and one alive to God, yet, “sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14), then we are strengthened.

Christ must command our salvation (Ps. 71:3). He must strengthen us (Ps. 35:3). When He says to us in the gospel, “Be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee,” causing us to see that it is Him who speaks and Him who has fulfilled all for our release, then we know it is our Savior, our great Shepherd whose voice we hear, and as Daniel, His command to us is “Be strong, yea, be strong.” Then we are strengthened.

To receive grace is to receive all that God has done for His people in Christ. To receive grace is to not work, but to receive the reward of Christ’s work (Rom. 4:5). Grace is God doing all for His people in Christ. Grace means that nothing can be done to earn or complete our salvation, for Christ is our salvation and He has done all (Luke 2:30; John 19:28-30; 17:4; Heb. 10:14).

“Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength” (Daniel 10:8).

“And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake [until Christ gives grace, we cannot even ask for living water], and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? for as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me. Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me, And said, O man greatly beloved, fear not: peace be unto thee, be strong, yea, be strong. And when he had spoken unto me, I was strengthened, and said, Let my lord speak; for thou hast strengthened me” (Dan. 10:16-19).
Rick Warta
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