As I start this lesson, I want to remind you of a few things I said in Lesson 2 What is man? The garden was a temple for God. Like the temple, the garden was the joining together of God’s space and mans’ space - the intersection of the heavenly realm and the earthly realm. Adam was a priest who walked with God, bore his image, was clothed in his glory, and demonstrated servant leadership in the garden. Since man lost his original place of fellowship with God, he has tried through his own works and self-effort to regain this place of intimacy.
Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1 talks about a foundation of repentance from dead works. It’s the only place in the Bible that uses the term dead works, but the idea is throughout the Bible. It’s not just in the Bible, but whether you realize it or not it’s something that’s intrinsic to human nature because every religion is actually built upon some type of dead work. I’m going to show you in this lesson that dead works is man’s futile attempt to get back to God through his own self effort.
The Pitfall of Dead Works in the Creation Story
Dead works is an age-old problem. It goes back to the very beginning of the creation story when Adam and Eve performed dead works by clothing themselves with fig leaves. It was an attempt to cover their sin through their own self effort and it didn’t work. As we follow the redemptive story in Genesis chapter 11 we see that the people of that day joined their efforts together to build the Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel was an attempt to reach God through man’s collective self-effort. We see this same collective effort today throughout the nations of the earth through organized religion. The intent of collective systems of religion is always an attempt to replace the free grace of God with human effort in an attempt to gain the favor of God. All systems of religion beginning with the Tower of Babel up to our present time get their inspiration from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
As I share this lesson with you, I want you to begin to see me as your peer, your friend, your brother and co-laborer in Christ. I’m not some spiritual guru who has some special knowledge or special access to God. I’m just like you a frail human being dependent on the cross for my source of spiritual life. One thing that’s happened to Christianity as a religious institution and pretty much all religions is what I call the holy man myth.
Now my main audience is the American church, but this is not just an American problem, but it’s something that permeates societies throughout the world. It’s because all of humanity is seeking the same thing which is forgiveness from sin and peace in the heart. It’s also not just what we consider traditional religious organizations for example the Environmental movement is at it’s roots religious and has all the trappings of other religious systems. Think about those who push this idea and how they want to dictate how you live your life.
The Dangers of the Holy Man Myth in Religious Organizations
The holy man myth causes you to put those who run the religious organization upon a pedal stool as if they are above you in some spiritual hierarchy. The holy man myth sets up what I call the spiritual caste system where people are set over you to dictate and govern your spiritual life through rules. It makes them feel important because the holy person yielding spiritual authority over you has become their identity.
I’m not talking about supporting and helping someone in their faith. What I am talking about is when someone is dependent on another for their spiritual well being. It’s when someone demands your obedient submission and you become subservient to their authority for your well being.
It’s not healthy for you nor is it healthy for the person you are idolizing. If you look down through the history of humanity and even today, men tend to worship that which they can see, feel and control. It’s a human problem and the Bible calls it idolatry. It’s why the Jewish leaders asked Samuel for a king to rule over them like the other nations.
Jesus taught an upside-down kingdom and what I mean is that he specifically told those who would lead his body the church; that they should not lead like the gentiles or nations do. In Luke chapter 22 verses 25 thru 26 Jesus said, “in this world the kings and great men lord it over their people…But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant.” Jesus did not teach a chain of command structure for his body, but he said that the greatest among you is servant of all.
Paul went further in breaking down the chain of command structure and broke down ethnic hierarchy, social class hierarchy, gender hierarchy, and the holy man myth by saying in Galatians chapter 3 verse 28 that, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Your relationship with God is not through the holy man or holy woman and we all equally stand on the same foundation, the one new man Christ. All who accept him are made equal, yet we are all uniquely gifted as part of his multi-faceted body. It’s a unified, yet diversified body of Christ. It’s an enigma.
The God who fills all in all has poured out his blood on all nations and He puts his Spirit into all who will come under that blood covenant no matter if they are red, yellow, black, or white they are all precious in his sight.
The Bible teaches that there is only one holy man and there is only one head of the church. No, it’s not the pope, it’s not your priest, it’s not your apostle, it’s not your pastor or your bishop. Jesus is the only head of the church and everyone who comes under his lordship is simply just another part of the body.
If you don’t get this foundation right then everything you build on top of it is built on a faulty foundation of man centered worship which will eventually crack, crumble, and fall. I’ve watched a lot of crumbling over the last 35 years of my life. I’ve seen a lot of congregations dissolve and no longer exist because they got this foundation wrong.
I’ve seen a lot of believers no longer follow Christ because they became disillusioned when the holy man or holy woman let them down. If you build around the holy man or holy woman then at some point, your idol is going to fail to meet your needs because they always do. It’s then that you will destroy the idol, burn the idol and go find another. I was introduced very quickly in my walk with God to the holy man myth and I could tell you story after story.
Jesus is the only doorway and access to the Father. In Christ we are all on the same footing. Christ truly is the great equalizer. Don’t mistake what I am saying. I’m not saying we have no spiritual leaders, but spiritual leaders are simply a part of the same body not the head. Leadership has two purposes.
Number one it’s necessary for the fulfilling of mission.
Number two it’s necessary for dealing with conflict resolution. Leadership is about supporting and undergirding the members of the body so that they can fulfill the mission.
Paul did not teach nor demonstrate a clergy class ruling over the rest of the body. He did teach that each member of his body has differing gifts; giving some the ability to speak and lead; while others are given the ability to serve and manage. I’ll get into church leadership during later lessons. I’m laying foundations right now and this concept of Jesus being lord over his church is the pre-imminent cornerstone of His church. I am saying all of this to say this: I am on a journey just like you and repentance from dead works has to do with leaving the faulty foundations of man made religion.
The journey that we are on is one to walk in union with our Creator in the same way that Adam did and it’s a journey of restoration.
It’s a life focused on the cruciform life of Christ living by faith working through love. It’s the yearning desire in all men’s hearts whether they understand it or not. A yearning to have the void in the heart filled with the Holy Spirit and have an intimate relationship with God. It’s the only thing that will truly fill the void within us. It's why people get addicted to drugs, alcohol, sexual pleasure, and you name it because they are trying to fill the void in their heart. All of creation groans together longing for this same freedom as stated in Romans chapter 8.
Dead works is attempting to get forgiveness through self-effort. It’s based on pride thinking that you can work your way into getting God to forgive and love you. Repentance from dead works is the first step in approaching God and it’s realizing our complete insufficiency separate from the grace of God. Repentance from dead works is about turning away from our attempts to change ourselves through self-made religion. It’s about turning away from any religious system.
All man made religion is an attempt to access what we lost through Adam’s sin. It’s an attempt to get back the life and power of the Spirit through self-effort. It’s man attempting to access God through his own self effort and it always ends in futility. It just doesn’t work. It will always leave you empty and frustrated because it’s impossible for man to access the life of the Spirit through self-effort.
John the Baptist and Jesus turned religion on its heads. The religious legalists misinterpret the heart of God and create systems which they think are protecting the glory of God, but it destroys it. The religious leaders of Jesus' days were the Pharisees and historians estimate they had developed a system of 613 laws adding to the Mosaic Law. The Pharisees had produced a heartless, cold and arrogant brand of legalism. Jesus compared it to bondage and the servitude of slavery saying in Luke 11:46 that they: “load people with burdens hard to bear” and they did not care but enjoyed it because they were the big fish on top of the spiritual food chain getting to reap the benefits.
The religious legalism produced by the Pharisees can be summed up in Matthew chapter 15 and Mark 7 which both tell the same story. The scribes and the Pharisees had major issues about Jesus and his disciples not following their traditional methods of washing their hands before they ate. The issue was not cleaning hands. It was because they were not following the ritualistic traditions the Pharisees had developed over the years attempting to interpret and live out the Mosaic law.
The power the Pharisees had over the people was because the people obeyed their rules. The Sadducees were the real power brokers in Israel because Rome had granted them the political power to control the Temple. The historian Josephus described them as secular and not interested in Judaism as a faith. He described them as not believing in a God who directed the affairs of men, but they believed man was left to his own devices to figure things out. I call them practical atheists who used the Jewish religion and Temple as a means of power.
The Pharisees didn’t have any real power, so they had to use the power of persuasion to manipulate and control the people. The Pharisees controlled the people through their religious teaching because they sat in the seat of Moses interpreting the Law teaching the nation of Israel. If people did not follow their traditions, then the very system by which they maintained their power would be undermined. The Pharisees had become blinded and deceived by their own legalistic system. Jesus called them blind guides. The Pharisees had taken the Mosaic Law and drove it into the ditch of legalistic extremism. It became stuck in the deep ruts of bondage. It was a road that led them and others away from God, but they had come to believe their own lies.
The legalistic system produced by the Pharisees no longer resembled the Mosaic covenant law; it had become a shelter of falsehoods where they hid the wickedness of their hearts.
Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah from chapter 29 verse 13 saying: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” Jesus was clear in his response to the Pharisees that the root of the problem was not the Mosaic Law, but their hearts and the system they had built to retain their power, prestige and dominance over the people.
Matthew 15:10 - 20 Jesus said: “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Then the disciples came and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying. Jesus “answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him, “Explain the parable to us.” And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.” Paul defined these activities as the works of the flesh in Galatians chapter 5.
It’s an oxymoron but the only way to regain access to the life of the Spirit is through death.
It’s what Paul called the foolishness of the cross. In the Genesis story we see that man’s first actions after losing the glory of God’s Spirit was to work to cover himself and his sin. However, our merciful God immediately stepped in with a sacrificial death covering the man and woman absolving their sins. It’s only through complete surrender to the cross of Christ and his resurrection life that we can experience the life of the Spirit. It’s only by the grace of God found in the redemptive work of Christ that we can be forgiven and have peace with God. Now to be able to do this you will have to turn away from dead works and find a new identity in the crucified and risen Christ.
The spark that started the Protestant Reformation in 1515 was based around the issue of dead works. The reason Luther, who was a Catholic monk, wrote his 95 theses was not to leave the Catholic Church but he was trying to reform the Catholic Church because the dead works of indulgences had corrupted the church.
I’m going to give you a little church history. I’m not a Catholic basher. Is the Catholic Church corrupt? You bet it is, but have you looked around at a lot of Protestant churches these days? C’mon let's get real there is confusion and corruption everywhere. I’ve met great Catholic believers. I’ve been in good Catholic Churches and I’ve been around Catholics who speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick, understand the redemptive work in Christ; so Catholics like Protestants are not a monolithic group. I know some of you think that all Catholics are going to hell. Like Johnny Cash said, you have your view and I have mine.
What Martin Luther was trying to reform is what has come to be known as Catholic Indulgences. The indulgence system was formalized by Pope Urban II during the Council of Clermont in 1095. The indulgence doctrine went like this. If an individual performed enough good deeds like going on a crusade to the Holy Land to fight the Muslims or giving a large amount of money to the church then he could earn full forgiveness from the Pope himself. They could have all their sins erased. Then you had partial indulgences which would cover a lesser amount.
Indulgences developed into a complex system in which the church claimed they could calculate to the day how much sin a person had canceled out by their good deeds which were all done on behalf of the church. It became pretty popular with the clergy because it gave them a tremendous amount of money and with money comes what? Power; c’mon it's an age long story. What began as an idea to raise money to fight the crusades metastasized into a cancer that corrupted not only the church, but all nations of that day where the church was the state.
It was called the Holy Roman Empire when the church replaced the Roman Empire and we refer to these days as the Dark Ages. The dark ages were a complete mixture of Politics and Religion when the Catholic church ruled nations like the Mullah’s rule Iran today. Martin Luther believed that the Catholic Church of his days was Babylon and the pope or papacy was the anti-christ. It was his understanding in his day of Revelation chapters 17 and 18. He was actually pretty accurate for his day, but it was only one layer of the onion peel. If you don’t understand the onion peel analogy then listen to Lesson 6: Messiah which is the previous lesson.
The indulgence system was the way the church retained its power and enslaved the masses to a system of religious bondage.
Very few people could read, the Catholic mass was done in Latin and whatever the clergy said was the law of the land. During the Crusades men went to war fighting for the church. Truth be told most weren’t motivated to fight for the faith; they fought for gold and glory just like the Romans, but the clergy blessed their killing and sent them off to war. If they died while fighting the Muslim infidels they were assured heaven and if they brought back gold and treasures their sins were canceled. It was a win - win for everyone because let’s face it, who doesn’t want to have their sins forgiven and have peace in their hearts while at the same time having the potential to get rich? The clergy hit the jackpot. The church could get rich while fighting the infidel Muslims while at the same time their authority could be extended and preserved.
People who didn’t, or couldn’t, go on the crusades began to wonder whether some other practice might allow them to earn the indulgence too. The clergy gladly complied with love of money and power in their hearts. So the indulgence system came to be associated with people either working for or buying their forgiveness.
A system was set up so that if you donated sums of money to charitable works, or if you paid to construct buildings to praise the church you could get in on the forgiveness racket. It was the perfect scheme for the church to get rich, gain power and subdue the people at the same time. That practice began in the 13th century and was so successful that soon both the ruling kings and church leaders could take a percentage of the funds for their own uses. A wealthy person could even buy indulgences for their ancestors, relatives, and friends who were already dead.
Martin Luther some 200 years later realized this was nothing but a completely corrupt religious system. Luther was an upperclassman part of the wealthy aristocratic class but he did have a heart for the commoner. Luther actually wasn’t trying to start a revolution. Martin Luther was just a German monk but he realized the religious system they had constructed produced bondage and complete corruption. He wanted to reform the Church, but he soon found out that he poked the dragon. He wasn’t the only one awakening to the corruption of his day but he along with John Calvin are probably the two most famous.
The Bible opens with the garden of Eden where you see the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from which man was forbidden to eat. Adam and Eve ate from it and when they did the result was that they partook of death. The first thing the man and woman did after eating was to work. It was an attempt to absolve or cover their sin. It was their attempt to deal with the sin problem through their own self effort, completely separate from God. The fruit that sprang from eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the beginning of man made religion. All religions are based on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and they all lead to death and corruption. It may be legalistic corruption or lawless corruption but it all comes from the same source.
It was the religious left and the religious right that crucified the Messiah and they thought they were doing God a favor. We need to ask ourselves if we are using religion, politics or societal good works to seek forgiveness for our sins? I’m going to go through a list of activities that are very common in American culture.
Contributing time and effort to charities.
Donating money to organizations.
Fasting regularly, eating healthy and abstain from bad foods both for environmental reasons and religious reasons.
Quitting smoking, drinking or doing drugs by going through a 12 step program. Praying and chanting as an attempt to get to God.
Keeping religious holy days and going to church ritualistically. Buying electric cars or solar panels to save mother earth.
Organizing for a political group to save the world.
The religious patriot may join the military to demonstrate their faithfulness to God and country.
The religious woke will apologize to others for being born a certain race looking for redemption.
The list could go on. Don’t get me wrong because I’m not saying these activities are necessarily wrong. The vast majority of the things in this list are noble and good activities. It’s not the activity that I am talking about. Its why are you doing it? The question I want you to ask yourself is what’s motivating you? If your motivation is an attempt to get peace in your heart and absolve yourself of guilt then it’s a religious act of dead works. It’s when your motivation for doing works is to get forgiveness and acceptance before man or God that it becomes a dead work. Environmentalism and wokism is just as much a religion as Islam because they are both collective systems where people are attempting to be absolved from sin through self effort and sacrifice.
I’ve discovered that many times dead works are done with a sincere desire to be free. Adam and Eve’s attempt to cover their sin was a sincere effort to find peace and get back to God. It was just totally inadequate. What makes them dead works is that they are a futile attempt to deal with a guilty conscience through self effort.
Paul the apostle wrote of his Jewish brethren in Romans chapter 10 verse 2, that I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. Paul’s Jewish brethren like Adam and Eve were ignorant concerning the grace of God. Yes, I said grace because when God stepped in and covered the man and woman with animal skins it was the free gift of grace in action.
Ignorance doesn’t mean you are dumb it simply means you don’t know.
Adam and Even didn’t know how to get back what they had just lost so they tried what they thought would work. Everyone born into Adam’s race wants to be free from guilt, shame and have peace in their hearts. The problem is like the Pharisees they go about it through their own self effort. No one on earth prayed more, fasted more, gave more money, read the scriptures more, had a greater hope in the coming of the Messiah than the Pharisees. Yet, they were the greatest opposers of God and His Messiah when he came.
Romans chapter 3 verse 23 tells us why we have a guilty conscience. “All have sinned; and all have fallen short of God’s glorious standard.” We all miss the mark. We’re all flawed. If you are born into this world then you are affected by Adams sin nature. The result is a guilty conscience and a guilty conscience is what motivates us to change through our own self effort. The root of all religion is through the door of guilt, fear and rejection.
God came to commune with the man and woman in the Garden after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What did they do? Due to guilt they worked to cover their sin and then hid from God because they were afraid. Religion doesn’t have the ability to absolve us of our sin; it just makes us hypocrites. The word hypocrite in the Greek language means to be an actor. Jesus called the religious people hypocrites or actors because they performed works in front of men, but their hearts were still evil. There is a pattern in the religious actor's life.
He wants to show people how righteous he is through his own self-effort.
He will sound the trumpet about his greatness to others.
Religion is an empty shell and its just building your life on a house of cards. It’s outward form with no substance and it produces insincere fakers because it’s the only fruit religion can produce.
Have you ever met a strict environmentalist? I mean someone who has bitten into the fruit and eaten the whole environmental doctrine that the planets going to be destroyed and we are all going to die if we don’t change our ways. They are religious zealots who are on a crusade to save the earth. They will tell us to sacrifice to conserve energy so that we can be absolved of our sins by Mother Earth, while they fly on a private jet and that’s called left wing religious hypocrisy. Environmentalist are legalist who want to impose their religion on you by force because that’s what religions do.
Hebrews chapter 6 verse 1 tells us to repent from dead works. To repent simply means to stop and turn around. It’s a cease and desist order. The first step to having peace and reconciliation with God is understanding that dead works is not the solution. Dead works is what we do when we pursue salvation outside of the grace of God. You can’t work your way to God and when you try it’s actually counterproductive.
Performing ritualistic works won’t give you peace with God nor do they have the ability to cleanse your conscience. Dead works are like a drug. When you do them, you feel a temporary relief from guilt. However, it only puts you into a deadly cycle. I use this illustration I put up on the screen and I call it the cycle of dead works. The cycle of dead works is living in an endless circle going around and around never getting to your destination.
In this illustration you see that we take pride in ourselves when we do works, but then we miss the mark. We are always at some point going to fail to live up to the standard of a rule based religion. Once we do then we go into despair and guilt, only to perform more works. If you look at the center of the cycle of dead works you can see that it’s built on religion and self-effort. It’s trying to live up to a man-made standard by which we gain approval before God or man.
When we base our spiritual lives on keeping a man-made standard then we become prideful in our self-effort. We began to judge others who aren't as noble or as good as we are. Then as it always happens we once again fail to keep the man-made standard so we go into despair and guilt, only to perform more works, so we can be accepted. Self-effort is living independent of God's ability and trusting in our own ability.
Ask yourself as you look at this illustration. Is this my life? Are you doing something knowingly or unknowingly trying to gain God’s or man’s approval? Are you going around and around hitting your head against the same wall? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. It’s time to turn away from self effort and dead works. It’s time to let the Spirit of God change you from the inside out.
Let’s go back to the original creation story where man was created on the sixth day being the crown jewel of God’s creation. Then Genesis chapter 2 verse 1 says that on the seventh day God rested and ceased from His creative activity. Verses 2 and 3 says “on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”
The sabbath has been made into a legalistic doctrine, but the original intent was to teach us something about God’s redemptive and restorative nature.
Religion pushes us to work to find forgiveness and peace. I want to repeat something I’ve said before which is that the Bible does not tell us everything about world history nor does it tell us everything about how to live life. The Bible is history, but it’s telling us the story of God’s redemptive history in time. It’s God’s love story to humanity showing us His redemptive hand through the Hebrew people; his chosen vehicle to redeem a fallen humanity bringing us back to Himself. Embedded within the creation story is the redemptive story of God bringing us back to himself because He knows the end from the beginning.
Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 thru 4 says “blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Verse 7 then says “in Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Before the foundation of the earth Jesus, in perfect unadulterated love, was willing to be the Lamb of God that would offer himself so that we could go free. It was a plan put in place before there was space, time or matter and that’s why Revelation chapter 13 verse 8 speaks of Him being 'the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth'.
The Sabbath rest is about learning to rest in the finished work of our Creator.
It was to show us a salvation based on what Christ has done for us because he is the Alpha and Omega; the Beginning and the end of our salvation. Matthew chapter 12 opens up with Jesus walking through a grain field with his disciples on the Sabbath where they are picking grain to later eat. The Pharisees began to accuse them of breaking the law of the Sabbath. Jesus spoke directly to the idea of dead works when he said “if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Religion imposes a rules based religious system while mercy calls us to rest in the redemptive work of Christ. Matthew in his gospel puts this discussion on the Sabbath just after Jesus calls us to rest.
In Matthew chapter 11 Jesus said come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Discipleship is about a call to live the cruciform life of Christ. The message of the cross is about change from the inside out, not religion, not man-made standards being imposed or forced upon you. It’s a message of death which is the only path to the life of the Spirit. Paul said that we have been crucified with Christ.
Death means we cease from trying to save ourselves through self effort.
Hebrews chapter 4 verse 9 says “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” The promised Sabbath rest is not taking a day off from work but entering into the finished work of Christ who paid the ultimate price for sins. It’s ceasing from our own works and entering into reconciliation with God through the sacrificial blood of the Lamb. Grace is about totally identifying with Christ because grace tethers us to the cross.
Paul is speaking about us being forgiven and justified before God says in Galatians 2:20: “that I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In Titus 3:5-7 he says that Christ: “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace.”
Grace does not just make us right with God but empowers us to live in the power and wisdom of God. Grace is the power of God’s Spirit transforming our hearts and helping us to live by wisdom demonstrated through Christ character developing in us.
Grace is what John was explaining in John 1:12 -13 when he said that all who receive Christ and: “who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Receiving the grace of God is about becoming a child of God born through the blood, water and Spirit. It’s all about being the workmanship of God. It’s out of this new life brought into our hearts through the power of the Spirit that we live, move and have our being in Christ.
Grace is not about trying to be something or someone, but it’s about understanding who you are in Christ and surrendering.
It’s about the power and wisdom that’s been given to you as a gift. Grace should produce in you a humility of heart and dependence on the Spirit knowing without his ability you can do nothing good. Jesus was crucified on a tree and you were crucified with him so that you can now live your life in union with the one who created you. He is the only one that can fill the void in your hearts. You simply have to surrender your life to him.
Death is the only pathway to true eternal life of the Spirit. Stop struggling, stop fighting, just surrender and you will find the Spirit's power changing you from the inside out.
It’s about opening up and receiving the free gift of Christ.
It’s about the inward transformation of the heart through surrender to the grace poured out upon our lives through the blood of the crucified Lamb of God.
It’s about daily living the cruciform life of Christ reckoning ourselves dead to sin and living by the Spirit.
The gospel is not religion but a spiritual journey to understand our identity as a child of God and learning to let Christ live His life through us. In the next lesson I’m going to give you some keys of the kingdom. I’m going to show you how you can break the cycle of dead works through intimacy with God and be set on a path of restoration to live a life in union with the God who created all things. If you enjoyed this lesson then please subscribe to my channel so I can reach more people and you will be notified when I post more videos. Please share this information with your friends on any social media platforms that you may use.
If you enjoyed this lesson, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Foundation Publications, so I can reach more people and you will be notified when I post more videos. Please share this information with your friends on any social media platforms that you may use.
Next Lesson: Lesson 8 - The Cycle of New Life
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