Classic Christianity – Do or Done – Part 1 – 8-11-26
The Kinsman-Redeemer and the Impossibility of “Bouncing” in and out of Fellowship
Among the modern religious circles of the lands about us, a devastating theological error has been systematically codified: the teaching that a born-again believer can bounce “in and out of fellowship” with God. Congregations are conditioned to believe that a horizontal behavioral stumble or sin instantly severs their vertical connection with the Father, plunging them into relational darkness until they drop a verbal “apology coin” into the confession dispenser to buy their way back into His good graces.
This transactional model completely scrambles the legal chronology of the New Covenant. According to Scripture, fellowship is not a revolving door; it is an absolute indicator of your salvation status.
1. Light and Darkness: The Saved vs. Lost Binary
In his first epistle, the Apostle John establishes that there are only two groups of people residing under the Father’s Throne: those who walk in the light and those who walk in darkness.
- Walking in the Light is Salvation: “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” To walk in the light means to reside in the truth of who Jesus is and what He accomplished. This is the permanent, unyielding state of being Saved.
- Walking in Darkness is Lostness: “If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Walking in darkness is not a temporary behavioral slip; it is the ontological state of being Lost—spiritually dead and unsealed.
There is no middle ground. You are either in the light (saved and in fellowship) or in the darkness (lost and out of fellowship). Therefore, to teach that a believer can slide “out of fellowship” when they sin is to legally declare that they have slipped back into darkness—meaning they have lost their salvation and are once again spiritually dead.
2. God is Faithful: The Unbreakable Call
Your placement within this fellowship is not a horizontal arrangement managed by your daily performance. As the Apostle Paul forensically declares in 1 Corinthians 1:9: “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”
The covenant is initiated, executed, and maintained by the Father’s faithfulness, not your behavioral perfection. Once the Holy Spirit vertically descends and fuses spirit-to-spirit with your native human spirit, you are permanently sealed. You cannot un-fuse the hardware. Your fellowship is an eternal, structural status.
3. The Jurisprudence of the Goel: 100% Buy-Back or No Redemption
This permanent standing is deeply rooted in the legal statutes of the Goel (Kinsman-Redeemer) establish by God Himself. Under divine property law, a near-relative of blood relation [see the book of Ruth on understanding the Goel (Kinsman-Redeemer)] held the legal right to buy back a forfeited inheritance (Leviticus 25:25). Under these statutes, a partial redemption is a legal impossibility.
A redeemer is legally prohibited from declaring a transaction settled if any portion of the forfeited estate remains under a foreign claim. When Jesus Christ took on literal human flesh and blood, He qualified as our near-kinsman. At the cross at Calvary, He offered a perfect, infinite propitiation (hilasmos) that covered every Man(male and female) ever born and liquidated the Adamic sin-debt once and for ALL.
If a sealed Saint could bounce “out of fellowship” due to a behavioral stumble, it would mean that:
- The global sin-debt was not fully liquidated at Calvary.
- The adversary has successfully re-established a active legal lien over a portion of Christ’s purchased possession.
- The Kinsman-Redeemer’s infinite buy-back was incomplete and a legal failure.
This is a structural and legal impossibility in the Courtroom of Heaven. The Goel paid the full price to execute a total, dual-realm reclamation. When you stumble, your standing before the Bench does not fluctuate. Your sins are not being counted or logged against you because the ledger was permanently balanced and closed at Calvary.
True confession (homologeo) is not begging a volatile deity for fresh clearance; it is standing as a sealed courtroom officer, agreeing with His verdict, and offering the sacrifice of praise—giving thanks to His name for a completed, eternal redemption.
—
Pray to God:
Do you really want to know the WHOLE Truth of what is going on today?
Lord Jesus, teach me the truth of the world today and give me the wisdom to know the truth and identify the lies of the devil. Thank you God.”
~ Bob George discusses the distinction between the law and grace in Galatians, emphasizing that faith in Christ frees us from the law’s consequences. He argues that the law, which demands obedience and results in death, is fulfilled by Christ, leading to a New Covenant of grace. Bob criticizes legalism and the misinterpretation of the law, such as tithing and the Sabbath keepers, which he views as old covenant. He stresses that true freedom comes from recognizing Christ’s completed work and living by the Holy Spirit, not by adhering to old testament legalistic practices.
If you remember back in in verse 23 of chapter three, you don’t have to turn there. I’ll read it. It’s talking about the fact that before faith came, and that is before Jesus came, historically, and before Jesus came, reality in a reality in your life. So before Christ Jesus became a reality in your life, it says that you were locked up until faith should be revealed. You and I are locked up under the law. We are born into this world under the law, and we’re born into this world under the consequence of the law. And the consequence of the law is that the wages of sin is what? Death. It is not out of fellowship, as is taught all over the place, in and out of fellowship. No place in the Scripture where you’re in and out of fellowship. That’s all man-made teaching, where every time you sin, you’re out of fellowship. There’s, it’s not in the Scripture. You’re in in fellowship. You’re either in the fellowship saved or you’re out of the fellowship lost, and fellowship is what takes place when you come into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so there isn’t any of that other stuff out there except in man-made teaching, and we have to understand that.
Bible Study Booklets
Announcer 0:13
Welcome to Classic Christianity Radio with Bob George Bob’s clear, timeless teachings on the complete forgiveness and unconditional love of Jesus Christ will transform your life as you learn about God’s amazing grace. Let’s join Bob as he teaches us from God’s Word.
Bob George 0:27
Well, let’s turn to Galatians five, as Paul is now coming to the conclusion of this marvelous book of Galatians, and this book is something that, when you read, I do not know how people who are in ministry, who have supposedly studied Scripture in seminary, could ever read this book and go back and teach the law. I do not know. I cannot comprehend that. It is a marvelous treatise that Paul gave to us in regard to the difference between the law and grace.
If you remember back in in verse 23 of chapter three, you don’t have to turn there. I’ll read it. It’s talking about the fact that before faith came, and that is before Jesus came, historically, and before Jesus came, reality in a reality in your life. So before Christ Jesus became a reality in your life, it says that you were locked up until faith should be revealed. You and I are locked up under the law. We are born into this world under the law, and we’re born into this world under the consequence of the law. And the consequence of the law is that the wages of sin is what? Death. It is not out of fellowship, as is taught all over the place, in and out of fellowship. No place in the Scripture where you’re in and out of fellowship. That’s all man-made teaching, where every time you sin, you’re out of fellowship. There’s, it’s not in the Scripture. You’re in in fellowship. You’re either in the fellowship saved or you’re out of the fellowship lost, and fellowship is what takes place when you come into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so there isn’t any of that other stuff out there except in man-made teaching, and we have to understand that.
And so when we have come into this relationship with Christ Jesus, we then are freed from the consequence of the law, and we are freed from the law, because you cannot separate the law from the punishment under the law. The law is meaningless unless there’s punishment for violation, and so God at the cross nailed the law, it says to the cross. Why? The law was paid for. The law was fulfilled through the life of Christ. It was upheld by the death of Christ, and that’s what enabled Him to usher in a New Covenant in which we stand today, and that is the covenant of grace.
Someone recently heard was, “What is the law? The law is due. What is grace? Done. There’s your difference. Under the law, do. Under grace, done. Finished, over, complete. Now learn to walk in it, and so it says that you were locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, so that we might be justified by faith. You can’t be justified by faith under the law. The only way that man could be justified was through grace, because no man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law, and this is what he’s trying to get across. You people who want to be under the law, you’re a goner. He says you are under a curse. You’re under the curse of the law. You’re under the death penalty. You’ve got yourself on death row by your own choosing. The doors are unlocked. The bars are unlocked. Walk out of there, and that’s what he’s saying to us. You’re in that thing by your own choosing. You were born under the law, and I have opened the gates, and you can walk out any time that you want to into a newness of life.
And so he’s saying to us, the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, so that we could be justified by faith. And now that faith has come, and if you’re sitting in this room today who have exercise faith, not plan religion. There’s a lot of people playing religion, and I’ve seen them, and I’ve sat in assemblies with, looking every Sunday morning at hundreds of young people with their rosy cheeks in their youth, sitting there singing their hearts out, and go to school, and died of AIDS. I could name them on both hands. Not a reality, just a name. And there are many people who go to schools and they sit there in those schools. Some of them religious schools, and study the Bible academically, just like you’re studying a history book, and never come to know the author, never meet the author, because we’re acquainted with books to study the books, without ever an intent of knowing the author, whether the author has a brain in their head or not, whether they know what they’re talking about or not, we don’t know. You just study the book, don’t you? And you just take what’s in the book and you get it in a blue book, and you do that enough times, you’re going to get a degree. That’s how hard it is to get a degree. You don’t know whether the author has a brain in his head, you don’t know whether he knows anything. You don’t know whether what he’s talking about is true. All you’re doing is internalizing what he says and put it in a book, and get a grade. And we worship an education. Isn’t that strange? It’s stately strange when you think of 1941 the three most educated countries in the world were Japan, Germany, and the United States of America, and what were they doing? Blowing the daylights out of each other. And so, if anybody thinks that intelligence has anything to do with morality, they’d better start thinking again.
And so he says to us: Now that faith has come, now that you have put your faith not in religion, but in Jesus, the person of Christ Jesus, you are no longer under the supervision of the law. The law’s done its work. The law is a mirror. The law has showed you that your face is dirty. The law has showed you you can’t do it, and if you still think you can, you’re deceived, and the Bible says you’re under a curse. You cannot do it. If you think you’re a law abider, try the first one on for size. Love your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. Try that one on for size, see how you’re doing. You can’t love God until you understand He loves you. That’s why there’s no such thing as a legalist that loves God. That’s verbage that is nonsensical, because a legalist thinks he’s still trying to earn. A legalist is still doing. He doesn’t realize it’s done, and it says that in the scripture. It’s not that we love God, but that He loved us first. We cannot initiate love to God; we only can respond to the love of God. And it’s not that we loved Him, but that He loved us first, and we understand that love for me, and I can respond to His love, but I cannot initiate it. And so, when you’re still working at it, you’re not loving God; you’re loving yourself.
And we love our pride and how well we’re doing for Jesus. And what we have to do is to understand that Paul is writing here to cut through all of this nonsense, and to get down to the nitty-gritty of life, and say it’s all Jesus and it’s none of you, and so faith has come you’re no longer under the supervision of the law.
Now, chapter five. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Now, what have you been set free from? The bondage of the law. The bondage of the law. What was the bondage of the law? The wages of sin is what? Death. That’s a bondage, isn’t it? Kind of a bondage. You have been set free from the bondage of the law by the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says, “I it is for freedom, so that you could be free, that I set you free. I set you free so that you could be free. Now, isn’t that hard? But it is hard because we don’t respond that way.
And as I’ve given this illustration before, but well worthy of doing again, you can envision with me going back to the years of slavery in this country, the worst atrocity that we’ve had in this country, even more so than the World Trade Center. Of people killing brothers, killing each other, and much of that was over slavery, and so imagine that all of a sudden you’re a slave block, and you’re standing there with me watching this, and all of a sudden they bring in this huge muscular black man, and you stand him at the at the slave block, and the bidding starts going up for him, and it goes up, and it goes up, and it up, and one guy bids, and the another guy tops, and it it just goes skyrockets. And all of a sudden, a man comes in and triples what the highest bid was, and the auctioneer says, “Going, going, gone, and he sells that slave. The man comes over and it pays this absorbent amount of money for this slave, more than had ever been purchased for a man ever before, and he goes over and asks the man who did the sale for the keys to the locks, the man hands him the keys. He goes over to the black gentleman. He says, “Sir, stick out your hands, and he sticks out his hands and he unlocks the the bars and they fall to the ground. He then kneels before him, and unlocks the leg chains, and they fall to the ground. And he stands up and says, “Sir, now go free. And the black man looks at him and said, “Do what? He says, “Go free. I bought you. It is for freedom that I’m setting you free. He said, “Sir, you just paid the biggest price that anyone’s ever paid for a man. He said, “I know. I bought you to set you free. And the man looks at him and he says, “Sir, where do you live? Oh, he says, “I live down the road. Could I go home with you? You can go home with me as my son, but not as my slave. You can go home with me as my friend, but not as my slave. Why do you want to go home with me? Said, sir, any man that loved me enough to pay that kind of a price to set me free, I want to spend the rest of my life getting to know you and serving you voluntarily. That’s what freedom is, the perfect example of it as to what freedom is.
Now Christ came to free us from the demands of the law, so that we could walk freely, being guided now by who? The Holy Spirit of God, who is alive, indwelling you. and if He isn’t in dwelling you, you don’t have anything to be led by but the law, and that’s why people hang on to the law, is they have no awareness at all of the Holy Spirit of God. Either have Him and are too dumb to realize it, or they don’t have Him. You either have a life that you don’t live, or you don’t have a life that you try to live. One of the two. And so he says, if you’re now in Christ, it is for freedom that I have set you free. The law killed you. The demands of the law drove you to the grave. Paul said, under the law, the things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I do them anyway. Wretched man that I am, who will free me from this bondage of what? Sin and death under the law? And his answer to that was, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, my Lord, He has set me free.
Click to Donate to Bob George Ministries
Check out our website, Shop.BobGeorge.net. Let’s join Bob. Now as he continues the radio program.
Bob George 14:19
So he says, stand firm. Stand firm. Don’t be a mealy mouth. Stand firm. Don’t be vacillating back and forth. Under the law, under grace, don’t try to be politically correct. Don’t try to make brownie points with your professors. Stand firm in the grace of God, and do not let yourself be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. I’ve freed you. Do not go back and be a slave. You’ve been. Freed. You’re now free.
It’s like a guy that lives in the apartment, and his landlord lives next to him, and he’s mean as a hand. That’s an old mean hand. Mean. That’s right, just mean. And every month, here he comes, knocking on the door. Where’s the rent? Of course, it’s 10 days before it’s due, but I want it now. And you’re making too much noise, and I don’t like the way you keep your house, and I don’t like-I mean, just griping all the time at him. And this guy sits there living in that house, and he’s miserable, but he can’t move someplace else. But he hates this guy, and one day one of his buddies comes up, knocks on the door, and he lets him in. He said, “Man, did you hear the good news? Said, “No. What is it? The building’s been sold. Really? Yeah. The old guy next door sold the building to a new group of landlords. No kidding. What are they like? Oh, phenomenal! A bunch of Christian people, they’re loving. We’ve talked to some people over there that that where they own other buildings, and you know if you’re a little late on your rent, that kind of stuff. They just work with you, just marvelous loving people. Oh fantastic, fantastic! Incidentally, where’s the old goat gonna move? The old old owner, oh, he’s gonna stay here. He’s gonna rent from them.
Next month comes along, banging on the door. Here’s the old landlord banging on the door, saying, “Where’s your rent? You make too much noise. And you know what we do? We just pull up our little chair and sit there, listen to him, and live under the frightening demands of somebody that doesn’t even have anything to do with you anymore. Now, what do you do with a guy like that? You tell him to get lost. You tell him, sir, I am under new ownership. You don’t own this place anymore. You live here just like I do. Get lost. I don’t want to listen to you anymore. And slam the door in his face and enjoy where you live. You’re under new ownership.
Now that is exactly what he’s talking about here. Don’t let yourself be burdened again by the yoke of slavery. Don’t get back under the old landlord’s commands when he’s not the landlord anymore. He is not your master, and that’s what he’s trying to get about. You’re going to be mastered by one of two people, satan or God, and don’t get back under the yoke of slavery to be mastered by the law, because it says in the scripture that the power of sin is in the law. So you keep yourself under the power of sin, and walk in this defeated lifestyle because you don’t slam the door on your old landlord and say I’m under new ownership.
So mark my words, Paul says. I tell you that if you let yourself be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Now, why is he saying this? Well, once again, every place Paul went into the Gentile world and told people about their freedom in Christ. The HEBREWIZERS came right in behind them, and began to try to put them under HEBREW law, stating that Christianity is an extension of HEBREWISM, and you cannot be a true Christian until you become a true HEBREW. And one of the signs of being a HEBREW is to be circumcised, and so you have to go through the the rite of circumcision in order to become a true HEBREW and therefore a true Christian, putting them back under the HEBREW law again. Did the Gentiles ever have the law of circumcision? Never. That was all HEBREWISH. And so he says, if you let yourself be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. In other words, you’re back under the legal system.
You’ve just put yourself back under the old owner, and are going to be right back in bondage again. Again, I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised, he is obligated to obey what? The whole law. So if you allow, if you get back under one law, you’re obligated to obey how many of them? All of them, guys. According to God, not according to religion, but according to God, you don’t cherry pick the law. You don’t take the ones you like and bring them over and leave the others behind. Now, do we ever do that in Christianity? Like what? What? What’s one you can think of? Tithing. Tithing. We like that one. We can raise money easier. Does tithing belong in your freedom? That’s a do, not a done. Why do we teach it? Why do we pull Malachi over into the New Covenant? Now, to me, I have difficulty believing that people don’t know that they’re deceiving people. I have trouble with that because I don’t know how you can read this and come up with any other conclusion, but that’s just one thing we drag over.
What’s another thing under the law we drag over? How’d you get forgiven under the Old Covenant? Day of Atonement, that was law. How do you get forgiven today? Well, let’s see. There’s no more Day of Atonement. So let’s First John one nine and go to our confession booths and let’s do all those things. Is it a do or a done? Is your forgiveness a do or is it a done? It’s done. Who did it? Christ. How much of it? All of it. What’s left for you? None. So why are we still going to God to get forgiveness when He said forgiveness is done? What are you doing? Burdening yourself again with the yoke of slavery, and hoping that your memory does not diminish as you get older. Because what happened if you forgot one? That’s what happens.
So what is he saying to us? Christ will be of no value to you at all. I declare that every man who lets himself be circumcised, that he’s obligated to obey the whole law. If you want to obey the law of tithing, you’ve got to obey all of them. No man will ever be declared righteous in the sight of God through obedience to the law. James says the same things. If you violate just the least of these my commandments, you violated how many of them? All of them. What kind of shape does that leave us in, folks? I mean, that’s pretty bad shape. I’ve violated every law there is. But Lord, you take me into heaven with you. Those of you who are trying to be justified by the law, are there people who are trying to be justified by the law? What are you doing when you’re talking about that I worship on Saturday, and that’s the Sabbath? And you worship on Sunday, and you’re going to hell, and then we get a little liberal and say, “Well, maybe not hell, but you got to get close to it. I want to ask you a question, folks: What is the Sabbath? Is that the law? Is that a part of the law?
Turn back with me to Colossians a minute. Colossians two, and again, we’re just going to briefly go over this again, verse 16. Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, a Sabbath day, or the way you dance. That wasn’t in there, I guess. All right, now he’s named about four or five things there, but let’s just take them one at a time. A Sabbath day, did was there a Sabbath, and is there a Sabbath day, and what’s it talk about in the Scripture about the Sabbath? Set it apart and make it holy. How many laws did the HEBREWS have around the Sabbath alone 600 and some laws around the Sabbath alone, and we’ve laughingly talked about some of those laws at what you can and cannot do on Shabbat on the Sabbath. If you live in [the so-called state of] Israel today, you’re going to have to take an Shabbat elevator up to up to your room. You can’t push a button; that would be considered as work. You can’t spit on the ground on the Sabbath. Spit on a rock, but not the ground. Spit on the ground that makes mud. That’s called work. That’s why Jesus spit on the ground, made mud, put it on the guy’s eyes, and told him to go wash in the pool. That was on the Sabbath. Why did he do that? Because he needed to? No, to drive them crazy, to show them their hypocrisy, that all you’re worried about is Sabbath, but you don’t care give a flip about a guy who was blind and now he could see. He showed them their hearts.
Now it says, “What is a Sabbath day? These or it? The Sabbath day is a shadow of the things that are to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. It’s a shadow. What’s the law? It’s a shadow. What’s the reality? Jesus. So people bring the Sabbath over from the law, the shadow, and worship at the foot of the shadow. Now, what is our Sabbath today? I mean, how many days are we supposed to be resting in Jesus? Every moment of the day, not one day a week, every day. He is called the Lord of the Sabbath. What does that mean? He is our Sabbath. Christ is your Sabbath, not a day of the week, every day of the week. And so again, we drag the old the Old Covenant, the Old Testament law over into Christian living, and get in arguments over what day you ought to go to church. It wouldn’t matter whether you were here on Sunday or Wednesday or Tuesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday. This is not the Sabbath. You are the Sabbath, if you’re resting in Christ. You’re just coming here to learn, not to rest. You should be resting before you get here. And so we we understand the difference. Do we understand the difference between the law and grace? And that’s what he’s trying to get to us.
Now, it says, “You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ. You have fallen away from grace. Now, does that mean you’ve lost your salvation? Do people teach that? Yeah, you’ve fallen from grace, man. You’ve lost it. What’s he talking about here? What’s the subject here? Law and grace. When you’ve fallen from grace, what did you fall back to? The law. It’s not you lose your salvation. You’ve gotten yourself back under the law. You’ve fallen from the grace of God that saved you and trying to perfect yourself by human effort. He just got through talking about that in Galatians three. You foolish, idiotic Galatians, who has mesmerized you, hypnotized you, and cast an evil spell upon you? You used to see the meaning of Christ’s death as clearly as though I painted a place card in front of your face. Have you gone mad? He said. I want to ask you a question. Did you receive the Spirit of God by obeying the law, or by believing what you heard? Well, after beginning by faith, believing what you heard, why are you now trying to perfect yourself by human effort? That’s the question. Why are you now going back under the law and trying to perfect yourself under the law instead of allowing Jesus’ Spirit to perfect you?
Announcer
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 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.