This message is very precious to us because it highlights how much people are yet tainted with legalism, and the Word comes to release us from it. Many times there has been counseling and ministry which confused people’s minds so that they did not move in faith to appropriate the righteousness which comes by the grace of God. But now we are going to be free because we are going to begin to understand that we are righteous by faith, not by works of religious legalism.
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Romans 3:21–24, 28.
It is amazing how much legalism has blanketed Europe and the Scandinavian countries—such legalism that even while they were contending for the grace of God during the Reformation, they enforced it with law. The American people came out a little bit freer than that, but we are finding that in America we are still wrapped up too much in laws, in rules and regulations when it comes to our belief in God.
We talk about the grace of God, but then we end up making a lot of rules about it—how to get to it; how to earn it; how to deserve it; how to keep it. One of the finest things which could be done for you would be that this teaching set you free from much of that legalism.
What happens in legalism? When you set about to do the will of God and to fulfill the righteousness of God, and you begin in the Spirit but try to perfect it in the flesh (Galatians 3:3), then something is going to happen. God has to show you that what He requires of you cannot be produced apart from His grace. You must have His grace or you cannot do it; you cannot become it.
This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Galatians 3:2–5.
Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Galatians 3:21–22.
So you say, “If there are no rules or regulations, then I’ll just be free to do anything I want to do.” That is not grace either; that is licentiousness.
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 4.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1–4.
Grace brings you to the place where you say, “What God wants of me, I can’t do. But I know He will never require anything of me that He does not give me the grace to be.” That is the bottom line of it.
When you see this, then you start ministering to one another and helping one another so that no one fails in the grace of God, so that no one seems to come short of what God wants (Hebrews 12:15).
Paul wrote to the Colossians about how he labored with the Spirit working in him mightily to present every man perfect in Christ.
And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ. And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me. Colossians 1:28–29.
Paul did not teach some kind of doctrine by which people believed, “If I get saved it doesn’t matter what I do. God will take me to heaven when the rapture comes.” That is what has been taught, but that kind of teaching is scripturally unsound.
God is not going to send the wicked people of the world into judgment for things which He will excuse in His own people. He is not going to do that. Judgment is going to begin with us.
For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner? I Peter 4:17–18.
If we miss the grace of God, it will be because we do not see that God provided it; and therefore we failed to appropriate it, to cry out to the Lord for it. We began our walk with God unworthy, and we never will be worthy; but because He is worthy, we will be able to walk in the true righteousness that God gives us.
Years ago I began to teach this principle. Very soon people stopped hiding their cigarettes when I came around, because I said, “Your hypocrisy is worse than smoking a cigarette. Bring it out in the open and puff it in my face. But if you are convicted that it is wrong, then every time you light up say, ‘Lord, I’m sorry. Take this habit away from me.’ ” When those who did this were delivered from smoking, they were indeed delivered. In contrast, think about those who would say, “Thou shalt not smoke a cigarette.” But just as soon as they started feeling a little discouraged, they would pick up a pack of cigarettes and start smoking. They were never really delivered; there was never a real freedom in their hearts. It was a legalistic, religious trip. If deliverance is to be real, it will be because the grace of God looses you from the bondage. It has to be the grace of God. You realize, “This is something that God wants to set me free from, and He is going to do it for me. But in the meantime, I am not going to do one thing to cover it up, to make it look good, or to make excuses; I am going to look for the grace of God to change me!” Then the change and transformation will indeed become a very real and wonderful thing in your life.
If this is true, what do you think will happen in the Kingdom? The principles and the truths that God has set before us seem impossible to apply. For instance, do you love all your enemies? Do you love those who persecute you?
“But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44.
According to the Scriptures, this is a basic law.
“Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:19–20.
Then how are you going to enter the Kingdom? You are going to look to God to give you grace; and it will all take place because He gives grace to you to do it.
This is the amazing thing: Nothing that God is requiring of us as we enter the Kingdom can be performed through religious discipline or rules or regulations. It has to be that we believe and we are transformed, and that is what appropriation is all about.
That is why we lay hands on people. They are going to receive an impartation from the Lord to become something that they could never be if they did not receive it. Or, to put it in other words, we lay hands on you so that you will receive something you need, because you will never be what God wants you to be with what you have at this point. Every time God says, “Here’s what I want,” you say, “Sorry, Lord, I don’t have it.” So He says, “That’s all right. Look to Me for grace and I’ll give it to you.” God has a way of giving you grace that makes you come up to what He requires of you. And He looks down at you and says, “Oh, that is good. When I asked something of you, you did not try to produce a fake, counterfeit thing.”
“For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Galatians 2:19–21.
The response of trying to produce what God requires is only human religion. But God gives His grace to us to appropriate what He requires, and we literally become that without having to make a fake pretense of it.
All spiritual reality is found in the grace of God. And all of the farce, the hypocrisy, the pharisaism comes by people trying to be religious—looking pious, looking religious, acting by a certain discipline. But Jesus said of these that they are like whited sepulchers which are full of dead men’s bones. That is what is on the inside. We do not want that.
“You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” Matthew 23:24–28.
Some of us need to get rid of that legalistic response, because even in this walk with God, some start out trying to preach this Word and end up putting a trip on others, saying, “This is what you have to do.”
“And they tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.” Matthew 23:4.
When this happens to you, you wind up intimidated, trying to measure up to something, trying to please someone else. But you only have to please God, and you will never please Him except through one channel: faith. Without faith it is impossible to please Him.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Hebrews 11:6.
You must have the faith that says, “What God has provided for me, I am going to have.” You take it. The Kingdom of God is marked by two classes: the fakers and the takers.
God free every one of us from that legalistic trip. God deliver us from the efforts to be religious enough to please God, and bring us to the place where we have faith enough for grace to please Him.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Philippians 3:8–9.
How shall we fulfill God’s righteousness? Legalism says, “I can manufacture it, or a reasonable facsimile.” Grace says, “You can’t measure up to it, but God will impart it if you believe.”
Legalism tries to earn what is a gift of God.
Legalism would attain by discipline what can only be attained by the appropriation of faith.
The true believer wears a robe of righteousness clean and white; the religious man lives in a whited sepulcher filled with death.
In the Kingdom of God there are the takers by faith, not the fakers by the flesh.