On this broadcast, on this recording, you're not going to find a to do list. You're not going to find out how you can try harder to be a better person, to be a better Christian or whatever. We're here to focus in on the true gospel. The goodness of God’s unconditional love and grace. We are here to focus on the finished work of Jesus which will empower you to live the abundant life, to live in victory and to overcome the things that are coming against you.
If you have a car without fuel in it, it's not going anywhere, right? It's still a car, it’s just not able to function as it should. But if you take the car and put fuel in it, all of a sudden it's empowered to do something; to do what it's purposed to do. And it's the same thing with us really: the grace of God empowers us to live the abundant life!
You can be a Christian without living in the flow of God's grace; it’s just difficult and will make you miserable. We cannot live out our relationship with God nor our Christianity based on old covenant principles; on a works-based or performance-based mentality. It doesn't get you anyway. All it does is make you tired. And that's my testimony. For many years, I lived in a place of just trying to please God. I did everything that I could do to try and please God – and that’s a good thing! My heart was for God. I was passionate about God. But legalism stresses you out and makes you tired. It also doesn't help you be a nice person. I was not a nice person. My testimony is that when I discovered grace, it radically changed my life and it made me a better person. I had some friends before I had a revelation of grace, but not like I do now! Now that I'm in grace, you know, I've got more friends. I got more people who want to hang out with me, which makes sense because the Bible says that, that the sinners, and the Publicans (the tax collectors) wanted to hang out with Jesus and that they wanted to hear what He had to say. Can we say that of ourselves? Or are you just pointing out everybody's sins and telling them why they're wrong and why God won't accept them?
The truth of the matter is that Jesus came to rescue the world, not to condemn the world (John 3:17). And so, if we're to be like Jesus, we're not going to be condemning anyone. We're not going to be pointing out their faults. We're going to be loving them and loving them to the degree that they want to be with us.
In our last recording, I finished off with a question that we need to ask ourselves, are we disciples of Moses or are we disciples of Jesus? The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus. It's interesting to see there that grace and truth are not on the same side as the law, and the truth is not law. Okay? Many of us automatically link law and truth and think that it's the same thing. But truth is grace. Grace is the truth that sets us free! Law is not the truth that sets us free, law promotes bondage, and there's many scriptures to confirm that. 1 Corinthians 15:56 says that the strength of sin is in the law. And so when we're preaching law and we're focused on the law, it's strengthening and empowering sin in our lives. Who wants that? I don't.
Let's look at Romans chapter six and this, this kind of echoes what I've just been saying. Roman 6:14 says, For sin shall not have dominion over you. For you are not under law but under grace. So, it's saying that sin shall not have control or dominion over you, for you're not under law but under grace. By implication, what this verse is saying is that when we're under law, sin has dominion over us. But when we're under grace, we're free from dominion of sin. And I know that every single person listening to this recording right now, you don't want to be in bondage to sin. You don't want to live just suffering because of the effects of sin in your life and all of that. We all want to live in victory. What all we want to be overcomers and live pure and holy. But religion has told us that we have to be pure and holy. We have to do the right thing. It doesn't give us the empowering to do it. We really need God's grace to be able to live the empowered life of victory.
You know, scripture says that we need to live our lives empowered by God's free-flowing grace, because when we do, sin has no dominion over us. And another thing this verse it's saying is that we're not under law. We are under grace! As believers, we are not under the law. We're not subject to the law. The law is not for us. The law wasn't made for a righteous person, but for the unrighteous person, and we are now righteous in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). We're not under law. We're under grace. We're under God's undeserved, unmerited, unearned favour and because of that, sin should have no dominion in our lives. And when you are feeling the effects of sin in your life or whenever you're in bondage as a believer, it's only because you're more law-focused and you've got a law-mentality or performance-based mentality and you're not focused in on grace. You're not focusing on Jesus. You're not focused in on the finished work. You're not living your life empowered by God's free flowing grace. The more you focus in on God's unconditional love and grace for you, the more you discover the true nature of God, the more you start to see more of is the riches of his grace, then you’re empowered to rise up and live in victory over sin and enjoy the abundant life that Jesus has for you. This is God's will for you. Not that you live after Moses in bondage, trying to live up to some kind of unrealistic standard. God's will for you is that you live in his free-flowing grace, that you live focused in on him, not on what you should do, but on how much He loves you. That will empower you to live a life of victory that will empower you to enjoy the abundant life.