Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Finality of The Cross P25 (10-04-21)
Learn to Walk in Freedom in That Sabbath Rest in the New Covenant of Grace
When a person does not know the full gospel, has been taught erroneous teaching of in and out of fellowship, that you can lose salvation or lose fellowship, and does not understand the New Covenant He is under today, he is unable to rest in the fact that God has not only done it all, has taken away your sins from the eyes of God never to see them again, but is always alive, living in you, forever interceding for you.
As you ponder over these scriptures, Romans 5:10, Hebrews 9:22-28, Hebrews 10:9-18, Hebrews 4:1-11, Hebrews 7:23-25, and Hebrews 3:18-19, what conclusions can be drawn?
Romans 5:10
10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
When you think about Romans 5:10, ask yourself, “When were you reconciled?”, “When did Jesus die?”, “Did His death save you or were you saved by His life?” So, Jesus died for you before you were even born, and when you were born, you were at enmity with God due to your fallen sin nature in Adam. So, did his death save you? No. What caused our death? Sin, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). So Jesus’ death on a cross took care of the sin problem. God sent Jesus to become sin for us and took upon the punishment of death for sin for us. As it is written in Hebrews 9:22, that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Will He ever shed His blood again? No. Why not? As it is written in Hebrews, He did it once, for all, and will not shed His blood again. It is finished. It is over. It was the complete satisfaction of God for the sins of the entire world, that justice demands, and that requires no more sacrifice. It was a propitiatory sacrifice.
So often people incorrectly think salvation is getting your sins forgiven. No, that is not salvation. Jesus’ death on a cross was a necessary preparation for life to be given. Forgiveness of sins does not give life. Only life gives life, and the only life, called eternal life, is the life of God Himself, a life that is indestructible. Only Jesus, God come in the flesh, is the only person who has that kind of life to give. He first had to take away the cause of death, which is sin, in order for life to be given. Salvation is coming to Christ for life. We are made alive because Jesus has risen from the dead and lives forevermore, and is placed in you, who put your faith in Him. If Jesus remained dead, as Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 15, we would still be dead in ours sins. So receiving by faith the life of Jesus, fully understanding what Jesus accomplished for you by means of His death, burial and resurrection for you, that you receive the very life of God, to be lived in you and through you, is the gospel that saves you.
Hebrews 9:28
28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Knowing the complete and full gospel of new life in Christ Jesus is the foundation in which to live in the new way of the Holy Spirit He has given you. Then we come to understand the New Covenant we are under today. From Hebrews 9:23-28, we understand Jesus is not coming back to bear sin but to bring salvation for those waiting for Him. Why will He not be bearing sin when he comes back again? He has already done it. He has done everything He is going to do with sin. He has dealt with it once and for all. This is forgiveness wrapped up in what is called the New Covenant. That is in comparison to the Old Covenant that was set aside, as we read in Hebrews 10.
Hebrews 10:8-10
8 First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” – though they were offered in accordance with the law. 9 Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first [Old Covenant] to establish the second [New Covenant]. 10 And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
So as we are having our minds renewed, we have to let go of faulty thinking we have heard, even from well-meaning pastors, who are merely repeating what was taught to them, not even realizing the error they are spreading themselves. So we have people who are born again but are not living in freedom. They are not living in the Sabbath rest that is spoken of in Hebrews.
Hebrews 4:8-10
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
Why not? Because they are living in unbelief. They are asking God to do something that He has already done. Faith that expresses itself in love is what pleases God (Galatians 5:6), but it is not faith to ask God for something you already have. You cannot live by faith asking God to forgive you when you sin, because your sins have already been forgiven (1 John 2:2). You cannot walk in faith asking God to make you more holy when God has said He has already made you holy, sanctified you, or set you apart (Hebrews 10:10, Hebrews 10:14 NASB). You cannot walk in faith asking God to give you more of the Holy Spirit when God will not give you more than what He already gave you and said He sealed that Spirit in you (Ephesians 4:30), and there is only one Spirit (Ephesians 4:4-6), until the day of redemption. We are told in Hebrews that we are to rest from our works just as God did from His (Hebrews 4:10).
Hebrews 4:10
10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
So what does it mean to rest? When you ponder over John 15, the illustration of the vine and the branch, is a branch grunting and groaning to produce fruit? No. It is resting in the vine, and the vine is doing all the work to draw up nutrients from the soil and in that process, the branch bears fruit. Jesus Himself taught us this so we may rest in Christ, who is the true vine, who lives in you, the branch, to will and to act according to His good purposes. Christ, alive living in you, produces the fruit as spoken about by the apostle Paul in Galatians 5:22-23.
John 15:1-5
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
Galatians 5:22-23
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
So when Jesus walked the earth, He walked in faith, in total submission to the will of His Father, emptying Himself of His divine attributes, although never ceasing to be God, and becoming obedient to death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-9). He received this command from His Father, to voluntarily lay down His life for us only to raise it up again (John 10:18). Jesus lived in total dependency on His Father in order that we, who are not God, will know what it means to walk in the Spirit, and also so that we may know what true righteousness is. When we see our unrighteousness in light of HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, we might recognize our condition of death and seek a Savior and come alive in Christ Jesus (John 5:19, John 8:28). In Him is redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7). In Him is eternal life (John 3:16, Romans 6:23). In Him is perfect righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). In Him, we have been made holy (Hebrews 10:10). This is called the great exchange. We exchange our unrighteousness for His Righteousness.
In much of Christendom, we have been incorrectly taught an application of 1 John 1:9 that has absolutely crippled the Christian life. We have been taught it has been written to Christians, when indeed it was not. We have been taught that we must confess our sin to get our sins forgiven, when that is not walking by faith. We have been taught we could either lose our fellowship with God or lose our salvation if we deliberately keep on sinning, but sin is not the issue. The issue is have you been made alive in Christ Jesus? He who has the Son has the life and he who does not have the Son does not have the life (1 John 5:12). Are you in Christ? If so, what do you have? Redemption. What else? Forgiveness of sins. See Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14. What else? Eternal life. See John 3:16. Will God ever leave you or for forsake you? No. See Hebrews 13:5. So you can never be out of fellowship with God.
Can you ever lose something that is eternal? No. Why not? Jesus is the guarantee of eternal life, as we read in Hebrews, as He always lives to intercede for you (Ephesians 1:14, Hebrews 7:22). If Satan accuses you of sin before your Father in heaven, Jesus says, “Paid in full” (1 John 2:1-2). He guarantees eternal life for those who are born again. His sacrifice, once and for all, was all sufficient to satisfy the wrath of God against all sin (1 John 2:2). A believer can never lose salvation because the price of death has been paid in full by Christ Jesus on a cross (John 19:30). And once the life of Christ is sealed in you, with a promise to never leave you nor forsake you because of sin, you have an indestructible life (Ephesians 1:13). It is by grace you have been saved, not by works, that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). You walk in that same faith, and God is faithful to Himself, and will never renege on His promises. He maintains your salvation by what He alone accomplished for you (1 Corinthians 10:13). You are saved by grace through faith and walk by that same faith, and that faith is in the person of Christ Jesus (Romans 1:17, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Galatians 2:20).
You cannot lose fellowship with God. You are either in the light, saved, or in the dark, lost. If you are not under grace, how then can you boldly approach the throne of grace for help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16)? If you were under law, then you would fear God that you might die again if you sin (Romans 6:23), or that God would be mad at you and walk away from you (Galatians 3:10). But there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1-4). You are now made into a new creation, a child of God (2 Corinthians 5:17, John 1:12-13), and God deals with you on that new basis, of a child who needs correction and training to live in the new way of the Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16). That is why scripture tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2), to recognize what we have been freely given in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:12), which is everything we need for life and godliness, so we can choose to participate in that divine nature we have been given (2 Peter 1:3-4).
