Living in Freedom: Grace Over Legalism

so another gospel is a gospel which keeps Christians bound to the law to try to be saved by rules and regulations and man has a great tendency to become a legalistic Christian then a Christian who loved lives under the Holy Spirit it's a terrific tendency in particularly Christian leaders and preachers can feel that if he preached grace too much people will just live loose lives and begin to live as they like and live in sin so they begin by introducing little bit of law some rules some regulations to control people [00:00:47]

the law could keep a person clean externally it's like you take tying the 10 commandments were like tying 10 chains to a pig and if you take a pig through dirty filthy areas after it's been scrubbed clean if you keep these 10 chains on it it'll remain clean because every time it goes to this side you pull it pulls to the side you pull and you can take it right through the filthiest area and you can keep that pig clean and the pig can boast when it came out after a two-mile walk through a filthy area unclean but it was clean because of all these genes and if you can be kept clean only by rules and regulations you're still under the law and you'll only be clean externally [00:02:06]

Christ gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world and it's opinions and its approval and its rules and its regulations deliver us out so that we might live according to the will of God so Jesus died not only to forgive our sins not only to that our old man might be crucified with him not only that Satan might be defeated on the cross not only that we might no longer live for ourselves but for him but also here's one more reason he died that we might never be part of this world system [00:04:31]

the righteousness of the law is external and we usually want an external righteousness to impress people that we are very holy but the righteousness which comes through grace and from God is primarily inward and if I'm only seeking to please men I will not care about my inside jesus spoke about to the Pharisees you people clean the outside of the cup and the inside is dirty this is how it is for those who are legalistic they their outside is clean but inside is dirty so thats related to pleasing men or pleasing God so what Paul is saying is if you really want to be free from legalistic Christianity under the law you must deal with the root of it [00:06:21]

Paul is writing at a time when the New Testament was not written a lot of the books in the New Testament were written after Paul died so when Paul wrote this there was no New Testament available in different places and even after the New Testament was written there were just a few copies available so Paul is writing to people very often you find Paul has to defend his Apostleship to the Corinthians he defended it and here also he defends his Apostleship why it's exactly like we would defend the Bible as the Word of God when we are trying to speak to someone who doesn't believe in the Bible we were trying to explain to him why we believe the Bible is God's Word [00:10:00]

when God revealed his son in me I did not consult with flesh and blood verse 17 verse 16 and 17 when God revealed his son in me I went to Arabia verse 17 and 3 years later verse 18 I went to Jerusalem first of all he started out very zealous verse 14 more than his contemporaries more than all the people of his time he was advancing which says in verse 14 in Judaism he was advancing in promoting the law and in the ancestral traditions but when Christ was revealed to him on the Damascus Road you know what he did next [00:12:44]

revelation is something that changes our life and that is what we need from God if we are to serve Him now we go to chapter 2 in chapter 2 we read about how Paul defends this gospel even before Peter now I want you to see something here which Paul did which is a very healthy attitude that all of us should have now I've spoken of the importance of Revelation now it's possible some people and you see that also happening today that you know Christianity is full of people who have gone to extremes there are some people who are totally intellectual they don't believe in the revelation of the Holy Spirit we can say they are dead spiritually then there are others who believe in Revelation and have taken it to such an extreme that they don't care what anybody else believes on these things and just go off on an extreme and they are the extremists and cultists today [00:17:36]

the great issue those days was do you have to be circumcised in order to be saved now today there are many things like that which people have added saying you can't be a part of our church you can't break bread with us unless you are baptized or unless you take off your ornaments or unless you wear white clothes or unless you get rid of your television set from your house it's the same old story it's gone on for centuries always something more to be added two simple repentance and faith throughout the years churches church leaders have added their rules and regulations and do you know what is the end result look at the condition of those churches today are they spiritual far from it [00:21:30]

it was for freedom verse 1 that Christ set us free Jesus has come to set us free don't let anybody bring you into bondage again don't follow these silly rules and regulations of your denomination you come to freedom but he says don't use your freedom verse 13 to commit sin some people take this freedom and say yeah I'm free and they end up right worse than being under the law being under the flesh so here he speaks about being under the flesh being under the law and being under the spirit and if you get away from being under the spirit and yeah then you better be under the law otherwise you've got even lower and come under the flesh and live in sin [00:47:17]

if you walk by the spirit verse 18 then you're not under the law we can say these are three levels of life one is led by the spirit below that is led by the law and below that is led by the flesh now if you say I am NOT led by the law because Jesus has abolished the law good but you better be led by the spirit thing otherwise when you throw away the law you will descend to the level of the flesh that's what happens you see something like this here is a ground floor the lower floor and top of that is the first or a second story and third story let's call it first story second story third story [00:48:25]

if you break away the law and you haven't come to life in the spirit above you listen to the level of the flesh this is exactly what has happened to multitudes of believers they've read in the scripture we are not under law we are free but they have not come to life in the spirit and the result is they are living according to the flesh and that is why you see Christian leaders today doing a hundred times worse things than people who lived under the law how is that this is tapas grace then law then the flesh how is it that people say we are under grace but they're living like people under the flesh because they have thrown away the law [00:49:41]

if you are led by the Spirit then you're not under law don't ever throw away the law without first determining that you're going to let the Holy Spirit guide you otherwise your life will be worse than every godly man in the Old Testament every single godly man in the Old Testament will be a million times better than you if you throw whether the law is excellent the law is excellent for those who don't want to be led by the Holy Spirit the message in Galatians is not don't is not throw away the law the messages throw it away when you come to life in the spirit that's where God wants you to live but if you don't want to live in that third story you want to then at least live in the second story otherwise you'll be sent down to the ground of living in the flesh [00:50:22]