Thinking you're who you used to be . . .

The great debate today in evangelicalism is about the place of ‘the law’ in the life of a Believer.

“One of the reasons for that is there’s a resurgence today of Calvinistic Reformed Theology,” said Jordan in his Sunday morning sermon last week. “The largest Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptists, are being infected with this.

“The pendulum is swinging back from the charismatic mania (of the Corinthians, who were man-centered) to the Moses-centered Galatians and this Calvinist kind of stuff.

“Guys like John McArthur, R.C. Sproul, John Piper, etc., are all a bunch of Reformed people. They’re on the Calvinist side and Calvinism teaches that what you need is to follow the law.

“You say, ‘Wait a minute, I thought I was under grace!’ Yeah, you’re under grace but you’re also under the law, according to them.

“In Reformed Theology, they say the law has three purposes:

1. The usus elenchticus sive paedagogicus, the elenctical or pedagogical use which confronts sin and points us to Christ.
2. The usus politicus sive civilis, the political or civil use, is a restraint on sin and stands apart from the work of salvation.
3. The usus didacticus sive normativus

 

“The law is to be used first to reveal sin and what does Paul say in Galatians? It’s a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. So the first purpose of the law is to point out sin, which causes you to need a Savior.

“The second purpose of the law, they say, is to be a civil use; to tell you how to run life. And the third means to reveal the will of God; to reveal how God would have you to live--how you can live and show Jehovah is your God.

“Now, all of that’s nice; none of that’s Bible. But that’s Calvinistic Reformed thinking about the law.

“The terminology you read in the magazines and in the writing is the ‘third use of the law.’ What they’re talking about is not using the law to point out sin or try to have civil law; they’re using the law to try and tell you how God would have you to live. So you’re under grace, but in order to know how God wants you to live, they say you have to have the law.

*****

“Paul writes in Ephesians 2:15, ‘Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.’

 “He’s talking about the WHOLE Jewish system.  When Paul looked at the law, he didn’t say, ‘There’s a part of the law over there and there’s a part of the law over here.’

“The law was a unit; it was a covenant system that regulated the Abrahamic Covenant and its application in the nation Israel. It came along and enforced that circumcision division. It taught Israel how to live as a nation that was set apart on ‘the right side of the middle wall of partition’ and how they were to function; how they were to think, act and work on that side.

*****

“In a nutshell, God spent 2,000 years making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles; between the circumcision and the uncircumcision. He said, ‘I'm going to build a middle wall of partition between these two and I'm going to deal with men on this basis. Then, I'm going to wipe out that distinction and make all one in the Body of Christ. I'm going to make a new humanity.' "

“There's no place in all the universe, accept in Christ, where Jew and Gentile can be made one and it's only because of the Cross that God could accomplish this.

“What the law did was fortify--it made that wall formidable; it strengthened it. It made it something that produced enmity toward those who were on the other side. On Israel’s side, they had pride of place ‘because we’re special.’ In Isaiah, he says, ‘We are more holy than them,’ and they were.

“But they shouldn’t have had a sense of that because they were set apart not because of who they were, but because of God’s purpose in them. They didn’t get that, and the people on the other side of the wall said, ‘Well, who do they think they are anyway?!’

“That wall of separation created in the nation Israel an animosity toward those who weren’t in there and it created an animosity among the Gentiles toward Israel. Go back and look at verse 11: ‘Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands.’

“Every time I read that verse I make the point that the emphasis there is on ‘called.’ These dudes are calling each other names. They didn’t like each other. David goes out there and he sees Goliath and says, ‘Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?’ He wasn’t saying nice things about him.

“Pilate looks at Jesus and says, ‘Am I a Jew?’ He wasn’t complimenting the nation Israel when he said that. These guys—there’s friction between them.

“In Acts 20, the Lord says to Peter, ‘I want you to go down and talk to Cornelius,’ and Peter responds, ‘I’ve never touched anything that’s common or unclean.’ He thought of a Gentile as unclean.  

“In Acts 22, Paul is on the temple steps talking to the nation Israel about how the Lord Jesus Christ told him, ‘I’m going to send you far hence to the Gentiles.’ In Acts 22:22, it says they ‘gave him audience’ until that word and then they rose up and said, ‘We’ll have no part in it! Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.’

*****

“Israel had the pride of place, and that division between them caused a division, but Christ says the enmity was abolished in His flesh. You remember the verse in Colossians that says, ‘And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.’ That’s why it says it’s by His blood.

“Colossians 2:13 says, ‘And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.’

“You understand the law is never for you; it’s always against you? Why? Because you can’t keep it! The law doesn’t say, ‘Here’s a bunch of rules, regulations and precepts and things for you to try and attain to.’ The law says, ‘If you offend in one point, you’re guilty of ALL!’

“How many times did Adam and Eve have to sin before God kicked them out of the Garden? You got more than that already! You aren’t perfect. So the law can’t work for you. Your acceptance before God on your performance, well, where’s Beulah? She’s going to blow the buzzer. You don’t make it.

*****

“If you don’t get the dispensational issue about this, you’re never going to get the impact of the truth of it in the practice of your life. Don’t you ever think dispensational Bible study isn’t practical.

"It’s the most practical thing you’ll ever understand because all these people out there in evangelicalism trying to argue about the place of the law, and how the law functions and where it ought to be—all of them reject dispensational Bible study out of hand.

“In fact, most of them are open opponents of dispensationalism. The reason is dispensationalism is the ONLY answer to the confusion they have!

*****

“Now, this is what you really need to get.  Galatians 2:16 says, ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.’

“Tell me something—how would you be found a sinner? ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin.’ The law says, ‘Sinner, sinner, sinner.’ So, if you’re over here saying, ‘I’m justified by Christ,’ and then you identify yourself as a sinner . . . who are you? Aren’t you a saint of the Most High God?

“Do you know God never thinks of you as a sinner? We took that song out of the song book that says, ‘I’m only a sinner saved by grace,’ because I’m not ‘only a sinner saved by grace’; I’m a saint! I once was a sinner but now I’m a son! You understand the difference in that?

“If you go around identifying yourself by who you USED to be, who are you going to begin to think you are? You’re going to begin to think you are who you used to be! And you know what that does? That confuses you.

“If you put yourself back under the law when you’re saying you’re justified by Christ, you’re going to wind up thinking, ‘Christ made me a sinner.’

“If you get under the law, it doesn’t release you from the dominion of sin; it makes sin have dominion OVER you, for the law is the strength of sin, I Corinthians 15 says. Why? Because you’re a sinner.

“Where did you get Christ’s righteousness? You didn’t get it from what you did; you didn’t get it in your performance. You got it in what Jesus Christ accomplished for you and gave to you as a gift. That’s grace.

“The law says, ‘Do!'; grace says, ‘It’s DONE! It’s a gift. I paid for it. It’s yours, free for the asking. It’s a free gift.’ That’s the difference!

*****

“Paul writes Timothy in I Timothy 1, ‘As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine,
[4] Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.
[5] Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:
[6] From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;

“Vain jangling would be the opposite of sound doctrine. Something that’s vain is worthless, and jangling is just incessant noise. Pull out your keys and just rattle them. That’s vain jangling. Down South a guy said, ‘It’s like a truckload of pots and pans getting run over by a truckload of pigs.’ It’s just noise. Lot of it, and loud, but what is that?

“Verse 7 says, ‘Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.’

“The law was for the time when the ‘middle wall of partition’ was up, and the distinction was between the circumcision and the uncircumcision, but the wall’s down and that’s not the way it works today.

“When you mix law and grace you affirm something that’s devastating.  You destroy both of them. You take the inflexible demand for righteousness and you say, ‘Well, it’s really a bunch of precepts that you need to try to live up to.’

“You say, ‘Well, God will forgive that little failure,’ but that’s not what the law says. It says that failure’s got to be paid for and that’s what hell and the lake of fire are for.

*****

“When you’re trusting your performance, what do you get? You get failure. There are only two choices, folks, when it comes to changing life. One is law and one is grace. You either believe the law changes you or you believe love changes you.

“Let me tell you something. Simply telling people to change can’t change them. Giving people reasons for changing, for doing what’s right and for avoiding what’s wrong, doesn’t change them.

“You get to Romans 7 and look at Paul’s description of the life of a Believer lived under the law and it’s very clear that the law endorses the need for change but is powerless to produce it. That’s not its job description.

“The job description of the law is to point out failure. That’s why it gives the rules and regulations and the demand for perfection so it can hold up the mirror and say, ‘See, you can’t do it. You’re not perfect. You need a Savior.' And it’s your schoolmaster that brings you to Christ.

“I’ve said it a thousand times: ‘If God wanted you to be perfect He’d have kept His Son home because you can’t be perfect! If you could get to heaven by being perfect, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to come.’

“Have you ever seen somebody headed for a mess and you begin to give reasons why they shouldn’t do it? Think about yourself. You got all these reasons not to do something and you do it anyway.

“You see, reasons answer the ‘why?’ question: ‘Why should I not do this and why should I do that.’ You need motivation to answer the ‘how?’

*****

“What is it actually that causes you to love God? Is it Him telling you, ‘Love me,’ or do we love Him because He first loved us? Where does love for Him really come from? It’s His love for us that motivates our love for Him.

“That’s why I John 4:10 says, ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’ It says, ‘We love him, because he first loved us.’ ”