Radio Broadcast Wednesday 02/01/2023

Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at Law & Grace P50 (02-01-23)

It’s All of Christ Jesus and none of me

~ “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” ^{John 15:4,5}

~ “Every command that Jesus gave us is an impossibility for us to carry out in the energy of our own flesh, as we just talked about, it is something that is produced by the life of the vine, not by the branch. And so Jesus gave us the illustration of how this Christian life is lived. In other words, it is not lived by us, it’s no longer I who live Paul said, It’s Christ living in us. Now, when we don’t understand that, the best that we can do, as I said, is to go out and produce something that looks like the real thing, but is not the real thing. And Satan’s greatest tool is to get the real thing, or get what isn’t the real thing, looking as close to what the real thing is. Until for the undiscerning you cannot tell the difference. And so we we look at a Christian life, as going to church as an example. Anybody can go to church, I went to church for 13 years, 36 years, without knowing the Lord from Abraham Lincoln. And so, but we substitute, I’m a churchgoer. Well, that’s fine. But it has nothing to do with whether you’re saved or not.”

Listen in to today’s lesson with more in-depth teaching, from the Bible study booklet, A Closer Look at Law & Grace, available for purchase from our online Bob George Ministries ecommerce store.

Jesus asked how does God love and accept us? And how does he expect us to live the Christian life? To answer those questions, this insightful study explores a vital issue at the heart of the Christian experience, the biblical relationship between law and grace, understanding their role in our relationship to God will bring joy, freedom and spontaneity to your Christian life. Now, let’s take A Closer Look at Law & Grace.

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Bob George 0:38
Now folks in order to accomplish those two things, forgiving each other, being kind to one another, being compassionate to one another. And accepting one another requires an attitude, I believe, have a premise or a beginning attitude. First of all, as we said, don’t judge one another, or you too will be judged. It’s not our role to judge one another. That’s God’s role. Matthew seven, one through five deals with that. Next we need to have an attitude of restoration, not condemnation. Galatians six one tells us brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself or you may also be tempted. In other words, we never go to someone with a spirit of condemnation. Who are we to condemn someone else? When there is no condemnation awaiting you from God? Unless our standards have become higher than his, then why should we condemn when he is not condemning? Think about that for a while folks, why are we condemning one another when Christ Jesus is not condemning any of us? He took that penalty upon Himself for our sins, He died for our sins so that the wages of sin which is death could be alleviated by the gift of God, which is life. And that’s why Paul said in the midst of your and my individual struggles of life, the things that I want to do, I don’t do the things I don’t want to do I do anyway, wretched man that I am, who will free me from this bondage of sin and death? And the answer to that is, thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So now there is no condemnation, awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus. For the law, the spirit of life, has set me free from the law of sin and death. And so my friends, when you and I, if we are truly born again, Christians now if we’re not, we don’t have that attitude in us. We have an attitude of self righteousness, we have an attitude of condemnation, toward one another instead of restoration. We don’t think about restoration, the jail system they play at restoration, but the jail isn’t there to restore, it’s there to condemn. It’s there to punish, it is not there to restore. That’s why the return of prisoners is about as evident as anything that is on the face of this earth. That’s the attitude of the lost is to condemn. If you’re in Christ, why are you condemning? Why do I condemn? because our minds have not been renewed by God. Now, brothers, it says if someone’s caught in a sin. In other words, if someone is trapped in a sin, caught in a sin, trapped in a sin interpreted either way you want to, it says, if you are spiritual, if you are in Christ, you should restore him gently. It doesn’t say to restore him harshly, it means to help him, it means to go to him with love. Never with an attitude of I would never do that, because and it says you need to watch yourself, you also can be tempted with the same thing. And folks, I think there is a principle to that. I believe in what I’ve observed in human experience, is that many times you can be in the process of trying to help someone or to restore someone in a certain sin. And through the conversation about that sin that you’re trying to help restore them in your own flesh begins to grab a hold of those temptations that this fella or this woman has gone through. And before long, you find yourself being tempted by the very same sin that they’re talking about. That is precisely why that I do not believe when you’re in counseling, that I need to have dug up all the garbage that has taken place in his garb in this situation, I have found myself wanting to hear more of the garbage. That is just the way it is folks. Watch yourself, you also may be tempted. And so if you see a person caught in a sin, God’s way of handling that is not to go and try to condemn, not to go and try to expose, not to go out and try to ruin that person. But to go to that person gently, lovingly, with an attitude of restoration. And a watch yourself, that you yourself do not get tempted by the very thing that you’re trying to help the person with.

John 3:17 says God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. So if Jesus did not come into the world to condemn, then why should you and I, who are indwelt by Jesus be involved in condemnation?

Now on the next page, we talk about John 15:12. My command is this. It’s kind of like it there for love each other as I have loved you. Just as I have loved you, Jesus said, I want you to love each other. Now, folks, we look at that command. And once again, that command isn’t any different than any command that Jesus gave them gave us. It’s impossible to carry out in the energy of your flesh. Oh, you can put some artificial fruit on your branch and make it look good. You can get some color duplication to make this piece of wax look kind of like an apple or a peach or a pear but you buy it into that thing and you’re gonna find out in a hurry that is not real fruit, it’s just artificial fruit. And folks, unfortunately today, much of what we see going on in Christian experience is nothing but artificial fruit. Someone has read the Bible and said, This is what Jesus commanded. They know full well, they can’t do it to say, let’s try to duplicate it, let’s try to manufacture it. God’s heart isn’t good enough, let’s build an artificial one. If our knees aren’t good enough, let’s build some artificial knees. And they’ll help you for a while. But they’re artificial. We got this world of transplants going on Bob, where all of a sudden, women all over this world and found out that those transplants leak, and they’re causing deaths. Might make you feel a little better for a while. But you’re not going to feel very good. If those things start leaking. So we’re very anxious to inject into our bodies, anything that’s artificial, instead of just being granted and satisfied with what God gave us. But that’s another story. But what he is saying to us is that if we’re going to walk in a newness of life, we’re going to have to walk in a newness of life, trusting in Him to accomplish what you and I can never accomplish on our own.

Every command that Jesus gave us is an impossibility for us to carry out in the energy of our own flesh, as we just talked about, it is something that is produced by the life of the vine, not by the branch. And so Jesus gave us the illustration of how this Christian life is lived. In other words, it is not lived by us, it’s no longer I who live Paul said, It’s Christ living in us. Now, when we don’t understand that, the best that we can do, as I said, is to go out and produce something that looks like the real thing, but is not the real thing. And Satan’s greatest tool is to get the real thing, or get what isn’t the real thing, looking as close to what the real thing is. Until for the undiscerning you cannot tell the difference. And so we we look at a Christian life, as going to church as an example. Anybody can go to church, I went to church for 13 years, 36 years, without knowing the Lord from Abraham Lincoln. And so, but we substitute, I’m a churchgoer. Well, that’s fine. But it has nothing to do with whether you’re saved or not. We can sing in the choir, nothing wrong with singing in the choir, I sang in choirs for 36, some years off and on didn’t know the Lord again from Abraham Lincoln. And when you’re singing songs, you’re not singing the top 10. There’s not hit parade, you’re singing spiritual songs. And so you can get spiritual responses from that. And I’ve had people many times, sit with tears in their eyes, listening to a song being sung. Of course, when I sang, it’s enough to cause people to cry. But the fact of the matter is that can occur has nothing to do with whether you’re a Christian or not. It just has to do with whether you’re singing a song or not, that can engender an emotion in somebody. I could go on and on folks in these types of things. But what we have to understand is those things are our additives to, but no never of substitute for the real thing, which is our relationship with Christ Jesus. So the issue is, do you want to produce your own artificial fruit? You can get a lot of results from that. I mean, you can get people looking at that that have no intention to take a bite of it, but just looking admire it. But absolutely, you’d better not take a bite out of it. It’s like plants in your house, you can have real ones that you have to water, you don’t have artificial ones. Do you want artificial ones in your house? Or do you want real ones in there? There’s a difference in it? Do they look alike? When you look at him in person, it’s not very discerning like me would know the difference. But to the person who knows the difference, they know the difference. So folks, the issue is what do you want in your life? Do you want what you’re producing? Or is your Do you have a desire to receive what he can produce? Now that requires folks a death? It requires a death whose death yours, dying to your own self sufficiency. Dying to your own self righteousness, dying to the laws that you’re trying to keep, dying to the principles that you’re trying to keep, dying to trying to live a godly life. How in the world can you live a godly life? You can live a godly looking artificial life. But you can’t live a life that you don’t have, or to have a life that you don’t live. You don’t live it, he lives in, you die to those things. I have to die to the fact that I’ve got the ability to commit to do something, and to carry that out for the rest of my life or to promise to do something and carry it out for the rest of my life. You don’t have it in you to do that. If you did, the Lord could have stayed at home. And you could have just had everybody sitting around, either marching on Washington or making promises about what they’re going to do or commitments what they’re going to do, or like the Israelites said, when they gave him the law will do it. And God says, No, you won’t. You may think you will do it, you may be as sincere as a heart attack and desiring to do it. But you man cannot pull this off. And until you come to realize you can’t, you will never ever realize that I can. And as long as you’re satisfied with dangling artificial fruit on your branch, you will never bear the real fruit that comes from me. I am not going to share my glory with your artificial fruit. So folks, you have a choice, don’t you? Do I want to spend my life abiding, giving up on my self effort? Realizing it’s no longer I who live I’m crucified, die to yourself died of the law. Died your commitments? Died you’re trying and start trusting? Who do you think it might be a little more sense to trust in one who can then try with the one who can’t?

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Bob George 14:13
It just doesn’t make any sense anymore, folks, if you realize that there is a living Christ, who’s not hanging on a cross who was raised from the dead and he’s not just seated in heaven. We always are looking up he said look down I look I came down to you. I came to live inside of you. So that I Jesus alive living inside of you can renew your mind teaching you truth and live my life in and through you. Having giving my life for you so that I could give my life to you. I now want to live my life through you. Now the issue is are you willing to let me I died for your sins, you’ve gone out for years. And if you were a Hebrew while you tried to get your sins forgiven to a sacrificial system, I died for your sins. Now the issue is, are you going to keep the sacrificial system up? Or are you willing to trust me? That I did it? Are you willing to trust me that I did it? Or do you still need your confession booth? Do you trust me that I did it? Or do you still need your altar calls in your first job one nines to keep yourself forgivin? Because all of those are functioning in an FBI leaf. That is not faith, folks. That’s religion. You’re practicing an artificial fruit religion. Faith says thank you, Jesus for what you did. Faith has nothing to do with what I did. That’s works, faith, trust you and what you’ve done. Do you trust him for your forgiveness? With some I would say I doubt it. I think it’s lip service. I want to ask you, have you come to the point in your life where you’ve died to your own effort to keep yourself forgiven? And are now walking trusting Him and Him alone for your forgiveness? Have you died to your ability to live the Christian life and have come to the point where you say, Lord Jesus, if you can’t live it, it isn’t gonna get lived? I’m asking you these questions so that you can answer them. Are you counting on being able to produce? Or have you died? To being able to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control? Have you died to try and to produce those on your own? Because you can’t you know it, you’ve had experienced trying. People have gone out and try to experience some joy by getting stoned on drugs or alcohol, tried to go out and try to get love through affairs. And anything else that came down the pike, you’re looking for artificial fruit. We’re looking for something that is not there. We’re looking for something that is fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow. Have you died to that? Or are you still searching?

There comes a point in our lives, folks, when we have to be crucified with Christ. We have to say Bob George has to go. I cannot produce any of these things in and of myself. I can’t live the Christian life. God never said I could. And I never thought I would. That’s why he came to live in me, so that he who could would. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Fruit is something produced by something other than what it’s produced, out of what it’s produced out of. The branch doesn’t produce fruit, it bears it. It’s produced someplace else. It’s flowing in and through the branch so that the branch can bear the fruit. But the branch cannot produce the fruit and the love you’re looking for cannot be produced by a branch. You can’t get together with another branch, and gender up some love, the kind of love that you’re really looking for. Oh you can have some branch love, but doesn’t last long. The love you’re looking for can only come from the life of the vine. You can’t go out and on your own and get peace, not the peace of God that passes all understanding that peace comes from the life of the vine. It’s not available by the branch. Branch can’t produce true peace, just artificial fruit. The patience that you and I are looking for with other people. And folks, patience is such an important thing. It’s back to what we were talking about earlier. That patience is one of those things it’s able to say to us that if I’m somebody’s caught in the sin, I can go to them gently I can be patient because I’m capable of doing the same thing. Only that comes from God. God has to show you that. Man says no, I’m not capable doing that not me. I’d never do anything like that. God shows you Yes, you could. You can do anything under a certain circumstance. Kindness, all of those attitudes are what produce the kindness and the goodness and the faithfulness and a gentleness and the self control keeping yourself under the control of Christ Jesus. And against these things. It says there is no law. Folks, that’s fruit that is fruit that is produced by someone else. And we have the privilege of bearing that fruit. Why would we want to substitute our own artificial f single Christian on the face of this earth who is truly in Christ has come to a point in some way of depending upon him for their forgiveness, and hopefully their resurrected life. Why not now depend upon him for the life that he lives in you to live his life through.

Colossians one six tells us this all over the world, this gospel, and that’s the gospel of grace, folks that only comes from Christ Jesus, all over the world, this gospel is bearing fruit, just what we’re talking about. Not producing fruit, bearing fruit, and growing, just as it has been doing among you, since the day you heard it, and understood God’s what? grace, in all of its truth. Folks, I wonder why that doesn’t say every since you heard it and understood God’s law in all its truth. When do I didn’t say that? Because the law doesn’t cause you to grow. The good law law kills you. All over this world, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the one who is full of what? grace and in truth, that gospel of God’s love, unconditional love, that caused him to go to a cross, to take upon himself your and my sins once and for all, not to cover them as atonement did, but take them away, as Only Jesus could do, and took away your sins once and for all. So that raised from the dead, he can offer life to the dead, and give you and me an opportunity of being born again. Dead, born, a new creation, born once physically by mom and dad, born the second time, spiritually by Jesus Christ. Now that gospel is bearing fruit. In other words, he is producing fruit and it is bearing fruit through you. And it’s growing. Any tree that has life in it is going to grow. The tree is going to grow, the fruit is going to become more plentiful. The more that the branches abide in the life of the vine. Now it says that this gospel, this true gospel, the one Paul was talking about, the mystery, Christ in you your hope of glory, that gospel has been bearing fruit, and it’s been growing since the day you heard it, and look at this and understood God’s grace and all of its truth, not understood a partial of God’s grace.

Folks, do you realize that in many instances, the only thing that you know about God’s grace is he died for your sins? And then and then that’s a feeble understanding, because, in essence, we really don’t believe it. If we did believe that Jesus died for all our sins, then why would we still be having him dealing with them? How can I say I understand God’s grace and all of its truth when I don’t believe that he took away my sins when Jesus said, I took away your sins. How can I say that I understand God’s grace and all of its truth when I do not believe that God’s resurrected life, produce new life and me? And it’s a life called Eternal life when he said it’s eternal life. How can I be understanding God’s grace and all its truth and denying the eternal life that was offered to me? I don’t think you can. You may understand some of God’s grace, but you don’t understand it in all of its truth. I didn’t understand God’s grace in all its truth. And when I didn’t understand the difference between law grace, how the world can understand God’s grace and all its truth. If I don’t understand that I’ve been freed from the law so that I could wallow in God’s grace. I understood God’s grace, but not in all its truth. Now it says when you understand God’s grace and all its truth, you’re going to be bearing fruit and growing. And you’re going to be doing that as a way of life. To understand God’s grace and all its truth, I have to realize that I can’t but he can. And he does. To understand God’s grace and all its truth means it’s all grace and none of me to understand God’s grace and all its truth annihilates me in what I’m doing, and concentrates on him and what he’s doing. So you see, folks when if we’re going to be controlled by the Spirit of God, today, we’re going to have to be controlled with a love of God, which is what this lesson is all about.

Second, Peter 3:18 said, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What does it mean you’re growing? You’re growing in grace. Folks, people say I walked away from God or I back slid. We use those word not used in the Scripture, but we use them. And what that means is I started sinning again. Folks, that isn’t what separated you from God, in your own mind. Remember the scripture that says that once you are alienated from God in your own mind, but and then gives the contrast but God reconciled you through his physical death in order to present you wholly imperfect in his sight without blemish and free of accusation. But in your own mind separated. You know, when you get separated in your own mind from God, is when you forget his grace in the midst of when you blew it. You see, you get into sin, like eat an elephant a bite at a time. And the more that you give into sin, the more it captivates you. When you first started and when that when you first fell when you first made the mistake, and you don’t grasp on to the love and the grace of God that’s been extended to you. To be able to look at a mirror and make a confession. What is your confession? I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, that’s your confession. I am righteous in the sight of God not because of what I’ve done, but because Lord of what you’ve done. When you stop realizing that your position before Christ, that’s your identity before Christ is not based on what you’ve done, but what he has done. You will never, ever, ever fall out of the grace and the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Classic Christianity, with Bob George. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s program. We truly hope that today’s message has inspired you to walk a life of faith in the Lord, find more information online at shop.BobGeorge.net. There you’ll also find available CDs, DVDs, and bible studies available for purchase. It’s through your help that we are able to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. Until next time, walk in faith, be good to one another and praise the Lord. Amen.