If you are a Christian and you have no grace, don't think you are a gem of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, and without that first one, the rest don't count. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, faithfulness, goodness. Without that first one, love, the Bible says you are nothing.
That agape love is a very big deal. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Gospel of Luke chapter 7 as he continues his message, weeding out the legalists. Luke chapter 7, Jesus illustrates for us just what this legalism in the church is about. This is a story of two debtors that were forgiven their debt, and when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both.
Tell me, therefore. Now, Jesus is in the house of Simon, a Pharisee, who likely submitted to these teachings, and that's why he's named. And he was judging Jesus because Jesus had the audacity to let this sinful woman at his feet, weeping at his feet, wiping his feet from the tears that were falling on them with her hair.
She was so happy to find somebody who could forgive her for the dirty life she found herself in. And he didn't see her that way. Simon was incensed that if he were a prophet, he would know who this woman was. Yes, Simon, he knows who you are.
And she may have an exterior that is unappealing, but you have an interior and an exterior that are wrong. So Jesus says to him, tell me, therefore, which of them will love more? The two people that were forgiven.
Simon answered and said, I suppose the one whom he forgave more. And he said to him, you have rightly judged, therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much, but to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little. Which gets us to why the legalist is. Guilt. They can't understand grace, they carry their guilt. And they channel it into other areas, false obedience, self-righteous, they miss the point that Christ loves them. In spite of their sin, in spite of their inability to conquer sin, which is the next part of chapter seven. In spite of the inability to beat sin out. So your legalist will admit that they are sinners, they just won't admit that they sin. They keep it from being personal.
Again, there's exceptions here and there, little twists and turns, but I'm giving you an overall. It is easy to find religion without grace and it's easy to find religion without obedience too. We have a whole bunch of them out there saying the Bible doesn't count, you know, sin doesn't matter. It matters a lot from heaven's point of view, enough to send the Son of God to be abused and nailed to a cross because of one thing, sin.
The world is blind to these things. So again, when Paul mentions the word law, which is in each of the first nine verses of this chapter, he's talking about rabbinical influences on the mosaic law, he's talking about the old covenant ceremonies and rituals. He's saying these things are done with and Christ is sufficient. And if you don't learn how to walk with Christ by grace, then you're going to walk with him by law. And if you walk with him by law, you won't be walking with him.
Well, can two walk together if they are not in agreement? Verse one now, Romans today. And we should be able to go through this because I think what I've been trying to say hopefully has summarized what he's going to say in these six verses.
And if I had tried to bake it into verse by verse, it just got to be too long. So he says here in verse one, or do you not know brethren for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. That's the rabbinical law, the Old Testament law. He's targeting the views that had just been accepted and pushed into the church that were outside of Christianity. Again, the legalists will not tolerate the sins of others.
They'll sidestep their own pretty good. So Titus again, chapter three, because you cannot sustain salvation by your works. You're not acceptable to Christ when you come to him, but you accept him. You can't work to remain acceptable to him. If I could earn my salvation, then I could lose myself.
I could do something to blow it. Do you understand what grace is? From top to bottom, it's you don't deserve this.
That's it. Then why am I getting it? Because I love you. Now I got to relearn love. I've got to learn that there are other kinds of love. It's okay to love things in life. You know, maybe I, I love calligraphy.
That's fine. Maybe I love milkshakes. That's advisable, but those cannot compare to my love for God. Maybe I love my family. Jesus said, you better watch that because if I find that you love your family more than me, we're going to have problems. Luke chapter 14 verse 26.
And so get it. This is our assignment to sort these things out with love and grace without ever trivializing sin. Well, Titus, Paul said, not by works of righteousness would we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
There is that renewal. I look back at my life and there are things that, well, I still haven't mastered yet, but there are a lot of things that are very different about me now since I've come to Christ and I'm not going to throw Satan a bone and say, well, it's not working because I'm not perfect yet. Well, I'm not going to be perfect this side of heaven. I accept that in myself and I got to learn to accept it in others. And some, and there've been many that have come through here. They've, they've sinned and they've come to us and we've worked on a solution. But if they come and they say, well, I don't think it's that bad.
Well, there's not going to be a solution. You know, it has to be, if your sin is brought out, it has to be confessed. Anyway, no system of human effort can sustain a victorious Christian life. But legalistic disagrees with that in their thinking. And it's a mindset.
It is more of a mindset than I think anything else. So as long as you remain under the mosaic law, he's telling him here in verse one, outside of the new covenant, you're not coming into the faith that God has for us. Romans six, verse 19, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. So I'm going to use these examples. Previously used the example of the slave and the master. Now he's going to use the example of, of marriage. You know, give you another example of blind eye, of legalism, of the letter of the law without the spirit of the law is King Saul.
You know, he was just a total train wreck. He is one of those, it's easier to preach about a character like Saul than it is to come in, for me at least, take it doctrinally as it is in Romans. King Saul on a, on a day that his son Jonathan started the fight with the Philistines, the enemy that he was supposed to start, King Saul makes this edict, this decree, no one gets to eat anything till we have vanquished the enemy, which was just typical Saul and it was wrong. Well, Jonathan, his eldest son did not hear that. He being the prince, he's out and he's tired from the battle because if you're, you know, infantry is running, he's running a lot, you're hauling, you're fighting, it's a lot of work.
You're going to get tired, you're going to get thirsty, you're going to, you know, his energy was low. So he sees, you know, a honey pot, bees and he sticks his spear into it, he takes the honey and he is refreshed. And the witnesses said you're going to get it now because your dad, the king, said anybody that does that is going to die and we're going to rat you out.
And they did. And what did Saul do? Kill Saul. His own son.
His own son. Saul had other issues but it's just so, the letter, my edict was no one eats but you ate. Never mind that it brought the victory. Never mind that he didn't hear the edict.
Never mind that it was dumb from the beginning. And this is a behavior that can be found and when does it really flash forward when you stand up to them, when their legalism flashes forward and you say, wait a minute, that's not scripture. And that's when it comes out. When they double down, they're not going to give you an inch on a verse that requires grace. Anyway, there is no way out of God's Old Testament, Old Covenant except through the new. That's what he's saying. You're stuck in the Old Covenant.
Oh yeah, stuck might be a little bit too hard. We're in the Old Covenant and you cannot get out of that until the new one comes. Deuteronomy 18, Moses said that there was going to be one that comes and you better listen to him and if you don't, you're going to be cut off. Christ said that was, in John chapter 5, said that's me. Deuteronomy 18, 15, Yahweh your God will rise up for you, a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren.
Him you shall hear. That gives him all authority, even over Moses. Only death can deliver us from the Old Covenant. Well, Matthew 26, 28, this is my blood, the New Covenant. You better listen to this prophet like Moses said. And then he says for the remission of sins.
Well, wait a minute. I thought the Old Testament brought, you know, the blood of animals. Well, the New Testament brings the blood of God and it takes away the sin.
It doesn't just cover it. And Paul is illustrating this. He's saying, so if you're in the New Covenant, you've got to die to the old one.
And so he uses the verse two and three. Now we'll take together for the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband for as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she's not to have a party. You can say that, right? Because unfortunately, sometimes it gets really tough for people.
Sin has done this to us. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress.
But if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Well, he is not at this point trying to make a doctrinal statement on marriage and divorce, though it is. He is using the doctrine to make a different statement. We get sidetracked by that when we come to Romans seven.
We tunnel vision into, well, we can, not everybody. You may say, I don't, I'm fine. But you can get stuck on verses two and three and forget about everything else he's saying.
And so I'm not going to stay on that because he didn't stay on that. But I will say, if you want more in it, well, Deuteronomy 24, verses one and four, but that's not going to be good without some New Testament backup. Matthew 19, the first 12 verses.
And then there is our beloved Corinthian letter, chapter seven, verses 10 through 15. And I might add, don't be the proverbial sea lawyer where you've picked up a little information and now you think you've got it. These are difficult things. They're not trivial.
They are real lives. There's a hell and a heaven involved. Well, you just got to give you a curve ball. You know, if the unbelieving husband or wife spouse leaves, you're not under bondage now. Well, that means if it is a believing spouse and they leave, you're still under bondage.
Well, what if that believing spouse becomes an apostate? Renounce this. See the little curve balls. I'm not trying to settle this right at this point. I'm just telling you that there's more, there's more to, with the letter comes the spirit. It comes reason. And if you look at it black and white, you won't get through the Proverbs of Solomon because the Proverbs of Solomon will at one moment tell you to deal with a fool and another moment tell you to avoid the fool.
You've got to think. And when the Christian stops thinking in the light of scripture, we get tangled up. And this is why I should take hours for a Christian Bible teacher to prepare. To make sure he's as best as he can.
He's not getting tangled up. To read what other men have written and preached on. To see if it makes sense, if it's true, if it's consistent. And it is a very beneficial system that way.
It's just a lot of work. And it's quite presumptuous to think that, well, I get it because I'm me. If you're going to teach the Bible to your children, for example, you better be praying first. You better be asking the Lord for the insight, letting him know that without him, you are nothing. Would you want a pastor that comes up? I'm going to teach the word. I didn't bother praying because I've done this so many times, I'm pretty good at it now.
Would you want that? You want to know if I've been praying to God about the things I'm talking to you, and I'm telling you I do. Because I don't want to get it wrong. And I don't want to get it wrong in front of everybody because I don't want to be wrong in front of Christ. I want that well done good and faithful servant. Anyway, back to verse 4. Therefore, my brethren, remember if you're offended by these things against the legalists, you must be admitting you're the legalist.
And I don't think I've said anything positive about this kind of behavior. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ that you may be married to another to him who was raised from the dead that we should bear fruit to God. So he's going into again, he's saying, I'm giving you an example and I'm using the marriage divorce, you're free from the Old Testament if that Old Covenant dies. Romans 6, verse 3.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We're dead to the Old Covenant. Free from the Old Covenant.
Joined to the New Covenant and its law. Which is the outpouring of the Old Covenant law. We don't get to the New Testament without the Old Testament. It's what the Old Testament was working on. Not only preparing a people for Messiah to come out and all the prophecies and things that were going on and that not only is an instrument of God purging much of the promised land of those who were just so incredibly idolatrous and just sinful with their offering of children and sacrifices and things like that. There's so much more going on to what God was doing through the Jews than just the Ten Commandments. And we New Testament Christians should see that. Moses, Aaron, Samson, David, Solomon, Jonah, they're all righteous men under the Old Covenant.
But it wasn't enough to reach the world. All of those men sinned. We talked about Aaron last session when God said, you know, there's more to Aaron than this sin. Yeah, it's a sin, it's wrong, it's worthy of judgment, but there's more to the man. And the man is ready to be used.
He's ready to submit. Because when he helped them with the golden calf, he was just as guilty as they were. He's complicit to the crime. And God forgave him. See, that's grace. And that's Moses showing that grace. When Aaron's sons were struck by fire for their sin before God, he couldn't finish the meal. He told Moses, I can't. And Moses understood. See, there's the spirit involved, not only the letter. However, it's not just the spirit.
You need the letter too. We still have, thus says the Lord. We just have to learn to balance them. You, moms, dads, grandpas, and grandmas, you know when a child asks you a hard biblical question, you've got to reconcile it. You've got to think it through. You can't just dismiss it. And the reason why I know you don't, because many a times you come to me and tell me. And you ask me my opinion. Because it has to be reconciled.
That's a good thing. Well, anyway, moving along, he says that you may be married to another to him who was raised from the dead. So he's telling them, look, you're not becoming a spiritual adulterer by leaving the old covenant and coming into the new covenant, which is what the whole letter of the Hebrews is about, that you should bear fruit to God. That's life producing eternal life. Verse 5, for when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. Moses codified sin, but again, there's just more to it. There's more coming in the work of God.
The Old Testament allowed us the insight, the knowledge to be able to receive the New Testament, but you can't go back. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 29. And you should know these kind of verses. When I quote these kind of verses, you should say, oh yeah, I remember that. And if you don't, that means you just got to work a little bit more and get the reading done in the scripture.
That's what it calls for. Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant, that's the new covenant, by which he was sanctified, a common thing, and insulted the spirit of grace. He didn't say the spirit of law. What's he talking about here?
Well, many of the Jews were claiming Christ, but they were still going down to the temple in Jerusalem offering bulls and goats and other things like that. And he's saying to them, you're not going to be forgiven if you keep that up. You're trampling the blood of Christ.
You're saying it wasn't enough. I've got to do more. And I've got to bring offerings to the temple. And this is the whole thing with the legalists, I've got to do more. The salvation is not enough to pronounce me clean.
The Son says you're clean, you are clean indeed. But it's not enough. And if you have that guilt, you're not going to be very usable to Christ when it comes to dealing with people who get tripped up in sin. Some of us would benefit from being stationed among, let's say, drug addicts. Find out what addiction really is, that there are people that hate their addictions, can't get out of it, crying out to Christ and nobody else. You have to work around that kind of stuff to begin to understand the difference between the letter and the law, obedience and disobedience, honoring God and dishonoring God.
It's not the only way, it's just one. Some perceive, some don't. Well anyway, verse six, but now I wonder if I'm being judged for these things that I'm saying.
I wonder if someone is saying you're being too easy on something or you're being too hard on it. Verse six, but now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by so that we should serve in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Spirit, not the letter. What is Christ doing?
What is his gold? Talk about the bondage. Acts 15, now therefore, Peter speaking, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? Peter is saying the Old Testament is too hard. The Old Covenant, the flesh could not bear it and when the rabbis got finished with it, it was sheer religion. The Old Covenant Jews before Christ, they did the things that they were ashamed of and how do we know that? Look back at chapter six, verse 21, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed for the end of those things is death.
Well, they preferred neither to recall nor to repeat those sins because now they were in Christ and that's what salvation is all about. Galatians 5, one, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Well, that bondage could be anything that is outside the grace of Christ. I've got two more verses then we'll be done. Paul upholding obedience, 1 Corinthians 9, 21, not being without law toward God but under law toward Christ and that includes grace.
You cannot serve Christ efficiently without grace but you sure can help Satan. If you are a Christian and you have no grace, don't think you are a gem of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love and without that first one, the rest don't count. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, faithfulness, goodness. Without that first one, love, the Bible says you are nothing. That agape love is a very big deal and it is to flow through our veins and when you think about your own failures, it helps you wake up when you're in the face of someone else's failure.
Not to give them a pass, I've seen that disaster. Closing with this, not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reverence Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
