Not Under Law but Under Grace — What Romans 6:14 Really Means

(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, good to have everybody again, and we're going to go right back. We left off in Romans chapter six. You're almost tired of hearing that, I know, but you know, the slower we go, I trust the more we learn. And again, we like to welcome all of our television viewers, and we trust that every week we're picking up some new ones, and we just continue to appreciate your calls and your letters. And many of you are using the books and the tapes in home Bible studies, and you're spreading them out, sending them on to your kids, and that's what we want people to do. And I guess I haven't made mention of this for a long time, but even though our programs may be shown as copyrighted, yet we never, never mind someone dubbing your own tapes and sending them out. We've never been in this to make a dime, and anything you can do to get the word out the same way with the books. If you wanna make some copies of the pages or however you wanna do it, we're not worried about that, as long as someone doesn't make a profit from it. Okay, let's come back to Romans chapter six, and we're gonna again review verse 13, at least in reading it, so that we can get into verse 14 and 15 for this 30 minutes, where Paul writes again, neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Now I'm emphasizing this exercise of will in the life of the believer, because the word here again doesn't demand, it doesn't say we're not gonna have an opportunity to have a choice, but it's a matter of yielding. He says, do not yield or do not give in and let your members be instruments of unrighteousness unto sin or again unto old Adam. In other words, the constant admonition of Paul's letters to the believer is don't give in to old Adam, keep him under subjection. And Paul had to do it in himself. He says back in Corinthians that he kept his body under control, lest it became an instrument of unrighteousness. Now that doesn't mean you have to become a cleric or a monk in a monastery or anything like that. I've always maintained the Christian life is the greatest life of freedom of anything the world has ever known. And we don't have to subject ourselves. I'm reading here some time ago, back in the dark ages, some of the priests of the Roman church just to show their humility and their servitude, they would wear garments made of hair with the hair next to their skin just to torment themselves supposedly to please God and to show, like I said, their humility. Listen, that's not what the scripture asks. We do not have to go through some kind of torture and we do not have to torture ourselves in order to be a spiritual person, but rather the Christian life is a life of joy. It's a life of responsibility, yes, but it's also a life that lets us enjoy it to the full. God does not mandate that because you're a believer, you have to be poor as a pauper. On the other hand, I do not agree with these who say that if you're a believer, you will automatically become a millionaire. That's not in the cards at all. But whether we're rich or poor or somewheres in between, we have this satisfying life that God has now imparted to us while we're in this earthly sojourn. All right, reading on then again through verse 13. Yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead because that's what we are. We have been raised from that deadness in the old Adam and we are now alive unto God. And then that you're members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Now here comes what I wanna spend most of the half hour on, verse 14 and 15, for sin. Singular, old Adam. The old Adamic nature shall not have dominion. Now I trust you all know what dominion is. And again, that's something that rules like a king. And so Paul is admonishing us, don't let old Adam have dominion over you. And now this almost seems anticlimactic. Don't let old Adam have dominion. Don't let him influence you to live a life for the flesh because you're not under the law, you're under grace. Now you'd think it should be the other way around. You can't let old Adam have dominion over you because you're under law. And the law stipulates what you can or cannot do. That's not what it says. It's the opposite of that. He says, don't let old Adam have dominion over you because you're not under law, you're under grace. Hard to comprehend, isn't it? Here we have full freedom. We're not under any demands of a set of rules and regulations. And under those circumstances, I can still keep old Adam under subjection? Yes. See, that's the beauty of the gospel of the grace of God. Now, I put the timeline back on the board because it's been a long time since I've had it up there. But as soon as I saw in break time that we were only up to verse six, and I thought by now we'd be in chapter seven. I really did when I was looking at all this the past week. But since we're only this far anyway, I might as well just stop a minute again and go look at that timeline. Has mankind always had this kind of freedom? No. For what, 1,500 years, Israel was under the law. And whenever I talk about the law, I always have to remind people it was severe. The law was demanding. And there was no hanky-panky under the law because it was demanding and it was severe to the extremes. You know the illustration I would like to give? If someone under the law, before they of course degenerated it, but when they were under the true law of Moses, if they picked up sticks on the Sabbath day, what was the result? Death, see? No ifs, ands, buts. They were out of there. And the same way with any of the other great sins. If they would have committed murder, boy, there was no such thing as umpteen years of appeals. They were dead. They were done with. And so the law was demanding. All right, so when did the law begin? Way back, of course, we're gonna start with Adam in 4,000, about 4 BC. But the point I always like to start with in our timeline is 2,000 BC with the Paul of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees. And then after Abram had had Isaac and Jacob and the 12 sons. And then coming out of Egypt, we have the nation of Israel making its appearance under the leadership of Moses. Remember, Israel was to become a nation while they're in slavery in Egypt. And then we had the giving of the law shortly after that. And that of course was by Moses. The Lord gave it to him at Sinai. And now we're about 1,500 years from the cross. Law for 1,500 years before the cross. And so when Christ came on the scene in His earthly ministry for those three years, was He under the law? Yes. And He confined His ministry again with the exception of two people to the nation of Israel under the law. See, and this is what I try to get across to people. Now, I do not downplay the Gospels that you should not read them or have anything to do with them any more than I would the Old Testament. But as I've been saying over the last several months, you do not get church doctrine. You do not get grace doctrine in the four Gospels. It's not in there. Because God is still dealing with the nation of Israel under the covenant promises and under the law. And so consequently, there's nothing of grace in there as we understand grace. Now, again, I always have to qualify. Grace has always been the attribute of God because when Adam sinned way back there in the garden, what attribute of God caused him to go seeking for Adam and Eve? Well, His grace, of course it was. He didn't have to. He could have just either let them go or He could have zapped them and started over. But it was His grace that went back and reconciled Adam and Eve unto Himself. In fact, I just had a question in the mail this morning again. Will Adam be in heaven or was he lost? No, Adam's gonna be in heaven because his faith, you see, made him back and fellowship with his Creator and Eve as well. But anyway, once law came on the scene with the nation of Israel and it was severe and here we have the three years of Christ's earthly ministry. But you see, even after the cross, now I know even one of our best study Bibles makes the comment in the footnotes that grace began with the cross. Well, as an attribute, of course it did. But in experience, there is still no gospel of grace in the early chapters of Acts. You can't find it. But once the apostle Paul is converted on the road to Damascus and he makes his appearance there to the Ananias at the house of Ananias, the first thing that God reveals is that now he's gonna send this man where? To the Gentiles. Well, now he couldn't send an apostle to the Gentiles and promote the law of Israel because that was only for the nation of Israel. So it stands to reason that if he's going to go to the non-Jewish world, if he's gonna go to the Gentiles, he's gonna have to go with something totally different than Judaism, even though he's gonna go first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. Now let me show you how the Scripture qualifies that. You're in Romans, aren't you? Go all the way back to Galatians. Romans, first and second Corinthians, Galatians. Chapter two. Galatians chapter two. And this all is part and parcel of that segregating or dividing law and grace. And there's a lot of people that just don't understand that. And I know that. All right, Galatians chapter two, beginning in verse one. Galatians chapter two, verse one. And remember Paul is writing now to the churches up there in Asia Minor who are being deluged with Judaizers who are trying to bring these Gentile believers under the law, legalism. All right, verse one. Then 14 years after, that is after his conversion on the road to Damascus, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas and took Titus with me also. Now remember by this time he's been up into Asia Minor on his missionary journeys. He's established Gentile churches and he has gotten word that they're being tempted with legalism and so he hurriedly writes this little epistle. Verse two. This is the one I want you to see. And I'm glad the camera's got it on it. All right, verse two. And I went up, Paul says, to Jerusalem by revelation, which means it was a supernatural trip. God had instructed it and he had led him up there. I went up by revelation and communicated unto them. Now that would be Peter and the 11 and other leaders of the Jerusalem believers. And I communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among, what? What does that tell you? Hey, that's something totally different than what the Jews in Jerusalem knew about. It was an advance on it, of course, but it was still something that they could not comprehend that God was now going to go to the Gentile, pagan, idolatrous world and bring those people to a place of reconciliation with himself outside of Judaism. That was incomprehensible. They just couldn't fathom that the God of Abraham would go to those pagans and bring them to a place of salvation without bringing them under the law of Israel. Now you doubt what I'm saying. Come on down to, oh, let me see. We almost have to go back to Acts 15. Keep your hand in Galatians two, but come back to Acts 15, where it's a direct parallel. There's chapter for chapter are almost identical. Acts 15 is the same set of events as Paul reports in his own hand in Galatians two. But see, this is what he was up against when he was trying to bring the gospel of the grace of God in the midst of Judaizers who were still under the law. And that's something a lot of people can't see, but they were. Took me a long time to see it. But all right, now look, Acts 15, verse one. It's the same timeframe, 14 years after Saul's conversion, which is about 38 AD. So this is about 52 AD. That takes it about 22, three years after Pentecost. 22, 23 years after Pentecost. Don't lose sight of that. And certain men, verse one of chapter 15 of Acts, came down from Judea, taught the brethren, that is these Gentile believers at Antioch, and said, except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. That's what the book says. I don't care what traditionalists say. The book says that these Jewish believers at Jerusalem were still so saturated with the law that they tried to bring those Gentile believers of Saul's or Paul's ministry up in Antioch under it. And they said, unless you do, you cannot be saved. And Paul just said, yes, they are. They don't have to keep the law of Moses. They're now under my gospel, which I'm preaching to the Gentile. Now, you say, well, that's just one verse less. I'm not satisfied. All right, come on up to verse five. Paul is now down to Jerusalem, or up altitude wise. He's now up to Jerusalem. He's meeting with the 12 and the other leaders of the church there. And there rose up, verse five of Acts 15, there rose up certain of the sect of Pharisees, but not Christ-rejecting Pharisees. What kind? Believers. These were Pharisees who now believe that Jesus was the Christ, see? And that's what they were to believe to become a believer under Judaism, that Jesus was who he said he was. All right, there arose certain of these Pharisees who believed, and these who should have been in the know, if anybody was, they said that it was needful to circumcise them. Now, keep everything straight. Who are the them? The Gentiles at Atioch, and they're telling Paul and Barnabas, you have to circumcise those Gentiles and to command them to do what? Keep the law of Moses. The book says it, as plain as day. And then people try to tell me, oh, the gospel of grace started way back there. No, it couldn't have, or they wouldn't be putting this kind of a demand on those Gentile believers. All right, now come back, if you will, to Galatians chapter two again, and after there had been a lot of disputing, see? Verse four of Galatians two. Remember the setting now. Paul has been ministering to Gentiles up at Atioch, where the scripture says they were first called Christians. Now the Jerusalem believers, Peter and the rest of them are all shook up that Paul is claiming these Gentiles as saved people, but they're not keeping the law of Judaism. Impossible. So they bring them up to Jerusalem. All right, verse four. And as they come in to wherever they were meeting, and that because of false brethren unawares brought in who came in secretly or privately to spy out our liberty. Now, what does that imply? Free from the law, see? They're coming in to spy out our freedom from the law, which we have in Christ Jesus. Now again, that comes back to all the terminology we've used in the last three programs, that now when we become a believer of the gospel, we're in Christ. Now you see, the Old Testament believer didn't have that kind of a position, but as Grace Age believers, yes, we're in Christ, we're in the body, and certainly Paul and Barnabas were as well. All right, so they spied out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage. What does that mean? Back under the law. Oh, these Jewish believers of Jerusalem were still trying to hang the law, not only on Paul and Barnabas, but on those Antioch Gentile believers. All right, verse five. To whom Paul says, we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour. In other words, we didn't give in. That the truth of the gospel, that is his gospel, which he preaches amongst the Gentile, might, what's the next word? Continue. Now, there's a whole train load in just that one word, continue. What if, what if these Jewish leaders at Jerusalem would have convinced Paul that the Gentile believers had to subject themselves to the Mosaic system? What would have happened to Christianity? They would have died. That would have been the end of it. But you see, Paul didn't give in, thanks, of course, to a sovereign God, the sovereign God of all grace. But nevertheless, this is where it was all hanging in the balance, that if Paul would have given in, our gospel as we now know it would have died. But of course, God wouldn't allow that. All right, then he comes down to, oh, verse nine. I guess this is why a lot of people don't like Paul. They don't like what he says. And so they ignore him. But look what it says in verse nine. And when James and Cephas, that's Peter, and when James and Peter and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived or understood the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me in Barnabas the right hands of fellowship. In other words, when they finally comprehended that Paul was on the right track with regard to these Gentiles, they finally gave in and said, okay, we'll agree. And so they shook hands on it. So they gave to me in Barnabas the right hands of fellowship. And now look what they agree on. That we, Paul said, should go to the heathen. Now, who are they? Gentiles. And they would go where? To the Jew. Plain as day. All right. This is what happened then when God introduced, now come back to Romans again, chapter six. This is what happened when God introduced this whole gospel of grace. That now we Gentiles are not subject to the Judaic system. We're not subject to the legalism of Judaism. We're set free from all that. And our gospel is simply believing that Christ died for me and rose from the dead. Plus nothing. Plus nothing. I'll do it again. Plus nothing for salvation. Now that doesn't mean we stop there as I stressed a few weeks ago. We move on. We've been created unto good works. Absolutely we have. And that's what Paul has been talking about in these previous verses that we don't give in to old Adam. We now live above the desires of old Adam. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We have Christ himself becoming the head of our daily living. Okay. Back to verse 14. So old Adam won't have dominion over you because you are not under law, but you're under grace. Okay. Now then for the last 1900, now I'll just put plus years. For 1900 and some years, God has been dealing with the whole human race, not just the Gentile, but even the nation of Israel on the basis of his grace. Now I've said it before and I'll say it again. Very few people, even amongst Christendom, understand the grace of God. I don't understand it. I don't even pretend to. It is so far beyond human comprehension. What am I talking about? That the God of creation himself, that invisible triune God, that one of the persons of that triune God stepped out and took on human flesh, walked amongst sinful men, subjected himself to the desires of sinful men, and he let them nail him to a Roman cross. He permitted it. He could have zapped the whole Roman empire with one word if he'd have wanted to. But of his own volition, he subjected himself to those people who put him on a cross where he suffered and died simply because he was ready now to pour out salvation to the whole human race. That's grace. That's grace. And then you take it a little further. Here we are now, especially in our beloved nation, with the last 200 years of our Christian heritage, enjoying a standard of living like no other people ever in all of human history. What is that? That's grace. We don't deserve it. Just because we're Americans is no reason we have the right to enjoy 90% of the world's resources with 6% of its people. But oh, God has seen fit in his grace to just pour it out upon us. And so everything that you and I enjoy, every breath of air, every bite of food, every good thing, it's all of what? It's grace. We don't deserve it. And so this is the whole comprehension of Paul's gospel is that God has poured out his grace, not just upon America, not just upon Israel, but the whole world. And of course, that becomes our responsibility is to let the world know that the grace of God reaches to the vilest person. Going back to what we heard about three, four programs ago that were sin abounds. What's always greater? The grace of God. I don't think I have time, but I read an account one time of Dwight L. Moody. And he had preached a tremendous sermon in Chicago on the grace of God. And after all the audience had cleared out, there was one poor old reprobate sitting on the back row weeping. And Moody walked back and he says, young man, what's the matter with you? And he said, don't tell me the grace of God can help me. And Dwight L. Moody said, oh, yes, it can. Why don't you think it can? And he says, you don't know what I've been. And he had been a recruiter for the prostitution trade of Chicago. And he said, because of me, countless number of beautiful young girls have ended up drug addicts, alcoholics, murdered, committed suicide, all because of me. And you tell me God will still save me? Dwight L. Moody said, that's the grace of God. And that's probably as good an example as I can find other than Paul himself. That the grace of God can go far beyond the most vile sinner that we can dream of. Incomprehensible, it's almost unbelievable if it weren't that the word so clearly declares it. You are not under the law, you're under grace. And I'm gonna repeat it again as the program winds down. We're not under the law, we're under grace. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, route one, box 760. Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's route one, box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported and your gift is appreciated. Thank you and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick. Thank you.