02-08-26 Study of Acts Chapter 15:19-21 Is Salvation by Law or Grace? Part 3

➡ This Bible study focuses on the book of Acts, specifically chapter 15, which discusses the foundation and creation of the church. It highlights the transition from the Jewish faith to the inclusion of Gentiles, led by Paul, and the challenges faced during this period. The study emphasizes the importance of understanding the early church’s struggles to deal with pagan gods, as these issues are still relevant today. It also discusses the two great commissions given by Christ to the apostles, the removal of pagan gods, and the importance of living a Christian lifestyle as outlined in Ephesians and Acts.
➡ This text discusses the concept of salvation in Christianity, emphasizing that it is a gift from God, received through faith, not through works or rituals. It criticizes the idea of needing to belong to a specific church or follow certain doctrines to achieve salvation. The text also warns against churches that add their own doctrines or rituals to the teachings of the Bible, arguing that a Christian’s focus should be solely on the scripture. It concludes by stating that salvation is about personal faith in Jesus Christ, not about following religious rules or belonging to a particular church.
➡ The text discusses the early Christian church’s struggle with accepting Gentiles (non-Jews) into their faith. Some Jews believed that Gentiles had to become Jews and follow Jewish laws to be true Christians, causing conflict with those who believed in salvation through grace alone. The text uses the story of Peter, Paul, and Barnabas arguing for grace-based salvation at a council in Jerusalem to illustrate this conflict. It emphasizes the importance of unity in belief and worship within the church, and the transition from Judaism to Christianity.
➡ The text discusses the transition from Jewish to Gentile leadership in the early church, emphasizing the importance of salvation by grace and faith alone. It highlights the challenges faced due to differences in Jewish and Gentile practices, with Jews having followed strict laws for thousands of years and Gentiles coming from a pagan background. The text also underscores the need for believers to respect each other’s beliefs and not cause offense, while maintaining their faith and avoiding idol worship. Lastly, it emphasizes the freedom brought by Christ’s fulfillment of the law, allowing believers to live free from the constraints of the law.
➡ The text discusses the teachings of Jesus Christ and the moral standards set by God, emphasizing the importance of obedience and sanctification. It contrasts the strict laws of the Old Testament with the freedom offered in the New Testament, highlighting the shift from rules to personal morality. The text also explores the historical separation of Jews and Gentiles, and how this changed with the arrival of Christ. Lastly, it warns against indulging in sin, urging individuals to evaluate their actions and strive for holiness.
➡ The text discusses the evolution of laws from the biblical perspective, starting with the first law about not touching the tree of knowledge. It explains how this led to more laws, eventually reaching 613 laws in the Old Testament. The text then transitions to the New Testament, introducing the law of love, which is about serving and helping each other. This law of love is seen as a shift from fear-based laws to a law based on love and freedom.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of love in Christian life, stating that love is the ultimate law. It suggests that if we truly love others, we won’t harm them or break any rules, eliminating the need for specific laws or commandments. The text also highlights the power of love as a motivating force and encourages us to express love through our actions and thoughts. Lastly, it advises us to walk in the Spirit, which means living a life guided by the Holy Spirit, to truly understand and express love.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of not just studying religious teachings, but also acting on them. It highlights the concept of love as a principle, not a feeling, and encourages living this principle through actions and deeds. The text also discusses the idea of self-restriction for the sake of others, suggesting that this is a demonstration of love. Lastly, it underscores the belief that understanding and obeying religious teachings give life meaning.

Foreign. Welcome back. This is our Sunday morning Bible study. We’re in the book of Acts. We’re happy to be running around chapter 15 for a number of weeks. This is our third session. We have two more to go. And looking at the foundation of the church, Acts 15 is the transition chapter for the actual creation of the church, beginning with the Jews, then, then moving with Paul into the Gentiles. And all of the consternations and, and doctrine and the theological process and everything about the rules of the church is right here. And we’re going to spend, we’re spending enough time on it for you guys to absolutely get your arms around the conditions of the church then and what they went through.

Because it’s the same thing you’re getting, you’re doing today. So you need to have the base of understanding because if you are going to accomplish in your life setting the ability to deal with these pagan gods that are in your life today, then you’re going to need to do exactly what they did in the early church because that is the way that they eliminated them from society at that time. Now remember, there are two great commissions that Christ gave the apostles. The first was to go send the gospel to the nations, to all the people in, in the faith by flesh doctrine that is set up in Second Corinthians that Christ gave to Paul underneath the mystery of the church.

They did not know that at that time until Paul had his, his come come to Jesus meeting with the Jew Jerusalem Council after he and Barnabas had already started the church in Antioch and was preaching all the way back to Jerusalem. So they really didn’t understand what, what it was that Paul what was doing until he got back into the Jewish council and basically provided them the information that they needed to decisions. The second great commission is that when the apostles went into a particular geographical territory and there was conversion of the people to the following of Christ, then the apostles had the ability to remove the pagan gods from their system.

And that removal was an exorcism removal. And, and the apostles put them in hell. And it wasn’t until what you’re learning now in the Return of the God series that we the people over the course of time and we the people today are bringing those gods more and more into our life than they were at this time. Because it tells you in the gospels that once they were removed and they basically search for a home, they went back to the original home. Think about that. Back to the original home which was civilization and came back sevenfold more evil.

So our time and day of, of paganism is sevenfold more evil than that which the apostles had to deal with at the time of the early church. Now that’s important because you’re getting the tools in Ephesians in order to. How to protect yourself by putting on, by putting on the armor of God is a lifestyle. It is not weapons and swords and garment garments and all this other stuff. It is a lifestyle. And that lifestyle is symbolized by Paul using the garments that the Roman soldiers put on to identify specific tools that you need to use in order to remove the evil spirits from you and as well as protecting you from that.

Now that’s the formula. That is the formula that Christ gave us in order to, in order to live our life as Christians following Him. So you need to, you need to really get an understanding of this in both Ephesians and Acts because they go hand in glove in managing not only your life as an individual, but your life as a member of the church. So that ought to be an indication to you really quick that you can’t be an individual follower of Jesus Christ and not be a member of the church. But it’s two different focuses, okay? One focuses on yourself, which is the application of the doctrine and the theology in Ephesians 1, 2 and 3.

And the other is the, the, the doctrine and theology of the Church. And we’re going to begin to discuss today the fellowship doctrine of the Church. So in Acts chapter 15, this, we, we already already gone through the story of the Jerusalem Council, the early church first convening on the crucial question of how a man is saved. The basis of the Church and the apostles, because they were, they were tagged with writing all of this and implementing that which Jesus started. They had to come to a conclusion, a census, if you will, or a consensus, if you will, that what was this doctrine and theology of this Christianity fellowship with Jesus Christ? Absolutely.

How does it absolutely take place? And what does it mean? And that is, that’s what we’ve been studying for two weeks. And this being our third week, we’re going to look at how the apostles defended the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, plus nothing. Another step in that process. Because that is the, that is the, that is the gospel that Christ gave to Paul in starting the Gentile Church. And they, they were, they defended that. If you recall over the last two sessions with the Jewish Council, the Jewish Council came to a consensus decision on the fact that both Jew and Gentile, underneath this church is a member of the body of the church through salvation by grace.

And grace alone through faith and nothing of works. So it is one thing to be saved by grace and having that understanding. But. But the question then goes with, are there any rules to this? Are you just saved and you can just do whatever you want to, or are there certain rules that we have to apply as members of the church, which means that if not in salvation, the process salvation. Are there any rules to the conduct of you as a Christian in relationship to other Christians? And there’s doctrine and theology for that, how you relate to your sisters and brother fellow believers? And that’s where we’re going to embark today.

See how, see how far we go embark today to look at. Now let me just give you a little background on this to sort of set the stage. As you’ll know, from the time of Adam’s fall, which he was separated from God, right? So every baby born into the world since the time of Adam’s fall has been born in isolation from the life of God. We learned that in Ephesians 2, right? You’re born with a demonic spirit controlled by the prince of the power of the air. And your whole focus of life is evil chaos. You’re not in the order.

You don’t have a relationship with God. You’re completely set apart from God. You have no knowledge of God, you have no communication with God and you have no life with God. All right? You are totally a demonic possessed individual. And you can see that in the terrible twos and threes of our children, all right? They have no condition of anything but chaos in your life. But see, at the God at the same time, when he did this, he allowed your own schedule as, as shown by the doctrine of divine election, which we’re. I’m putting out, I’m putting out podcast now on sanctification because we’re going to need to roll that through at this time.

Again, this is our second time through it. But it, but instead of in writing form, I’m doing in a podcast so we can listen to it at your leisure. God, at the same time on your divine election schedule, draw desires to draw men back to himself, all right? That is the orderly process of, of Christ completing this prototype host body system and giving us the vehicle to go home. Now, if you recall, in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit didn’t come live in the lives of the people unless God needed the Holy Spirit to be inside them to control them for specific tasks.

And once those, those tasks were done, God withdrew the Holy Spirit from them. That does not happen in the New Covenant. Our lives Today, because we are sealed with the Spirit as the down payment associated with Christ’s fulfillment of this host body system. And so while man was separated in isolation from darkness and lost, God set a plan in motion to recover man. That is the redemption process. Okay, so the redemption process is the. Is the ability for God to draw man back to him, have the man positively respond to that drawing the Holy Spirit’s calling and accepting of Christ in his finished work by faith.

And upon that condition, they are then provided salvation, Holy Spirit’s baptism, sealed in the heart and become part of the one body of Christ, the church. Two separate events. One is you, one is the church. We’re getting everything about you in Ephesians chapters 4, 5 and 6. And we’re getting everything about the church. Now, Starting in Acts 15, we’ll conclude this. We get then into Paul’s teaching to the people as the church, and starting in Acts chapter 16. So God’s plan was clear. We got that in Ephesians 1, 2 and 3. And it’s also revealed in the Old Testament prophetically.

It’s revealed in the pages of the New Testament, actually, and, and also theologically. So the question that ultimately really must be resolved here now is if man is lost and man is isolated and man is in the darkness, and God has a plan to save man, to turn off the darkness and turn on the light, to forgive his sin, to redeem him, to bring him back to himself, the question is, how then does we, the the people, appropriate that salvation? Do we just get it, that’s it? Or do we need. Do we have to do something with it? So we need to understand that that man has got a problem and God’s got a plan.

But we have to now connect our problem with plan, just like we’ve done in Ephesians. The problem was we die. We come into this world dead to trespasses and sin, meaning we have no relationship with God. God calls us divine election. We accept that call and we’re saved. And now we have a part of his plan. We’re now moving individually in the direction of what he has predestined our lives to be. The same thing has to happen with the church. Okay, we have a problem. How do we deal with one another as a body, as a single body member of Christ.

And because of that problem, God has developed a plan and we’re bringing those two together in Acts chapter 15. So really, religion seeks to answer that question. Answer in Christianity is for by grace. Are you saved through faith that of not of yourself is A gift to God, not of works, least any man who should boast. The answer is this. God’s plan is appropriated by grace to faith. That in other words, God freely offers it as a gift to us and all we have to do is believe in his finished work and that he’s offering it to us and then complete the taking.

There is no works system. You can’t go out and cut trees, you can’t go out and walk 50 miles. You can’t go do anything. And get this, it is a true faith based system. And you, and we’ve talked about this, I just want to reiterate this one more time. You cannot produce your faith as part of this process. God gives you the faith. The issue is your obedience and, and acceptable. You see that starts the old obedience track through life. You, you have to be obedient to accept that faith that he gives you. And in, in accepting that faith now you’re able to believe in his finished work and you’re able to be saved.

So this is not doing this that, I mean there’s, there’s nothing you need to do in performing being good, going through any rituals in the church. Think about religion, think about your self assessment. What rituals are you going through that you think you need to do in order to be have a relationship with Jesus Christ you don’t have? Going to church is not a requirement, nothing at all like that. You’re to have fellowship. Now fellowship today in our vernacular is the corporate church where you go and you mingle with people depending upon the, the status of the religion that you’re going to.

And it’s, it’s, it’s by self doctrine, whatever, as long as you’re meeting that then you can fellowship with those people who are members of the church. Now you got to remember membership to a church is not part of your salvation and it’s not party part of you being as one body of Christ. Members of a church is a cult. You become member of society, you become member of something that’s not ordained from a corporate point of view in scripture at all. Okay? So if you’re a member of the body of Christ, if you have a, if you have a salvation experience and you become departed, it doesn’t matter where you’re at geographically, where you’re at racially or anywhere else in the world.

If you find other believers, they’re part of you. And many religions today separate that. If you’re not a, if you’re not a member of the Baptist church, oh, you can’t fellowship with methods Or Presbyterians or Catholics or whatever, because they don’t believe the same thing. You see, our belief system is based upon the doctrine of association, not doctrine of spirituality. Now because that is the crucial issue of Christianity. Because you miss that, you’ve missed everything. Because if you never get to God, you’re stuck in this, in this grind, okay, of, of trying to fulfill your relationship in Christ by being a member of the church, You’ll never get to God.

So the very first issue that had to be dealt with in the early church as it came to the principal in the Council of Jerusalem and they wanted to settle the question, how is a man say, because once you’re saved, you, you’re now you are in, you have the sealed Holy Spirit and now you’re in the one body of the church. And the sanctification process is your ability to progress in your relationship with Jesus Christ in both areas. So how is a man brought to God? Well, the Jews had always felt, many of them, by the way, until even today, that in order for a man to come to God, he had to become a Jew first.

And part of the problem with the Old Testament evangelism by Israel was the fact that they, rather than going out and evangelizing Gentiles, they only saw it as Judaism as a kind of isolated thing. And for any Gentile to come to God, he had to become a Jew in the New Testament. And much the same way religion, religion, okay, Judaism is a religion. And God fulfilled the law of Judaism, which took away the religion and made it a relationship with him. Today, the corporate church is the same way. They focus you on their added doctrine, as you understood from last time, in order to manipulate you into their cult of a corporation.

Now, I’m not going to argue the point whether or not the corporate church is a good added function or not, because we can have many, many debates about that. All right, What I am telling you is this. If you affiliate yourself with a religion that is not 100% spiritually focused in accordance to the rules, ordinances, doctrine and theology of the Bible, you’re sinner. Fundamental baseline foundation. You are to live your life in accordance with one thing and one thing only, 100% scripture based. So it is your job to determine whether or not, if you’re affiliated with a corporate church, whether or not that corporate church is 100% focused on biblical principles with no added anything.

And if there is, then you’re told not to associate with the world, right? That’s what scripture says. And if they add something to the spiritual side of this, then you. They have placed the world inside the scripture and that’s what they’re focused on. All right, so Christianity was introduced, faith in Jesus Christ was introduced and salvation through Jesus Christ was being accomplished. But certain Jews who came to be known as the Judaizers wanted to make Gentiles Jews before they could be Christians. Okay? Now history, Jewish history shows that the Judaizers were the leaders of the Jewish faith.

And they were legalists, they were lawyers. This is how we look at our government today. The lawyers have told the church how it will operate inside that specific governmental territory bound. And in doing so, they have moved the church out of, out of spiritual conditioning into a world trophus primarily on their agenda. You might think about it. It might be like going to a Gentile and saying this. I want to announce you that God has a wonderful plan for you. And he wants to bring you into fellowship with Himself and He wants to forgive you of your sins.

And it’s all by faith in Jesus Christ. After you become a Jew, after you’ve been circumcised and abiding by all of the ceremonies of Moses. That’s Roman Catholic Church today. Matter of fact, I listened to something on Friday going back just to see, see what this new Pope is doing. And, and he’s doubling down on the fact, well, tripling down or quadrupling or whatever. He, he’s, he’s, he’s doubling down on the fact that every time they take communion, he actually converts the wine into blood. Every time he does that by ritual. That is not scripture. Okay? You find the same thing in a lot of Presbyterian churches that follow more closely to the Roman Catholic viewpoint of doctrine.

And you also have now been aware that almost 6,000 United States churches assigned a pact with the Roman Catholic Church to promote their doctrine of religious order. Now what the Jews wanted to do was they wanted to lay this on the Gentiles. They wanted to have a, they wanted to put burden on the Gentiles mainly because they had had it themselves. Oh my gosh. Think about your self assessment. How many of you have your belief system set in such a way that nobody can do anything in the body of Christ except the way you did it.

Now Christ didn’t say he has the same plan for everybody, he has the same plan for salvation. But every, every situation is completely different. And you should have picked that up at creation itself in, in our substat of creation by understanding we all have a different DNA. And the basis of that DNA, three quarters of that is tied to Jesus Christ himself. So our one quarter makes us uniquely different than everybody else. Now, Paul and Barnabas had, prior to chapter 15, been all over the area of Galatia and Cyprus. They had seen many Gentiles come to the faith of Jesus Christ.

Little churches had begun in those areas, small groups, and things were really happening. Gentiles were getting ahead over and being saved all over the place. There were certain Jews of the circumcision party that were threatened, the legalist party, the government. They could see Gentiles dominating the church. Loss of control, fear, all of the things necess that, that go directly against biblical principles. They could see Gentiles overcoming the, the, this complete situation. And they had this rationalistic identity and this ego problem about everybody having to become a Jew to get to God. And so they trailed Paul and Barnabas.

If you call from last week and started announcing to these Gentiles that you’re not really a Christian yet because you haven’t become a Jew, oh, think about all of the churches in your past life, all of the churches that you’re familiar with today. If you’re not a part of our church, you’re not, you’re not going to heaven. And so you got to go through the ceremonial thing of being circumcised. Now change the word circumcised from a medical procedure to indoctrination, all right, Just in your mind, change that. The word circumcised to indoctrination, because that is the baseline of Acts is whether or not you needed to be indoctrinated in some process in order to be saved.

Well, there’s a real conflict with this. You got a couple of people, Paul and Barnabas telling everybody to get saved by grace plus nothing. And then you’ve got a trail of Judaizers running around telling people you got to be saved by faith plus works religion. And that’s the issue that better be settled. Because if we don’t have that right doctrine of salvation, then nobody gets saved. Do you understand how critical this is? It’s the same thing today. If you don’t have this settled in your mind and in your belief, then you’re no different than the Judaizers were at the time of the early church.

So, and the apostles were there and the elders of the church of Jerusalem were at this council, and they were all considering the problem. They were having major arguments. And so Paul and Barnabas spoke concerning their view. And then circumcision party got up and spoke their view. It was like a. It was like a Court, remember, everything is adjudicated. Your salvation is adjudicated. You understand that everything in this Christian life is judged. If it’s judged, it means it’s got to get adjudicated. Somebody’s got to say right or wrong. And that somebody in our life is Jesus Christ and that somebody in the legalism is the court.

So in verse five he talked about the fact that everybody had to be circumcised, they had to be indoctrinated into the life of the Jew in order to be saved. Now you got to go back to those Gentiles, perform medical operation, and then we’ve got to get them into the law of Moses. And you’ll never become a Christian until you become a Jew. That was the dissension that was the argument to at hand. If you recall from our first point in looking at this, the question was, do we get saved by becoming a Jew? By going through certain rituals and certain works following the dissension, we saw the discussion.

In other words, what did they do? They created a small group, they went to committee and the committee outside of the public transparency decided what they were going to do. And then they came back and announced to the public what they were going to do. No different than church today, guys. So we saw that in verses 6 to 18 last week. And you’ll remember in that discussion there were three major speeches. One by James, the half brother of Jesus Christ, one by Paul and Barnabas collective. And the first one was Peter. And Peter defended salvation by grace alone, apart from Judaism.

And the way he defended it was in the case of Cornelius. Remember, Cornelius was the first Gentile saved. And that process took place by Peter, Christ, that that was Christ’s plan. Why? Because he needed to get the Jews on the side of the church and he had to take them through that process. And Peter was the leader of that group. God had given him the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which is this earthly process. And he had to walk through that process of, of changing a Gentile by faith into the church which was the combined Jews Gentiles church, in order for Peter to have his mind change.

And he went back over the last 10 years and he spoke to this council with regards to that process. And he ended up telling this Jewish council that we do not want to put the law on the Gentiles when the law has been a terrible burden that none of us could tolerate. Why would you want to go do that? Was his question. Why would you put something on them that didn’t even work for us? So verse 11 we consider that we have been saved by grace. And so they have. So we’re going to have two standards, one for us and one for them.

As Peter asked, are we going to have two standards or we’re going to have one church? See, the whole doctrine and theological basis of being in one body of Christ was that they, they had to come together as one people. That doesn’t mean that you live next door to each other. That means that your minds, your beliefs, your conditions of worship is the same. And so Peter’s saying, are we going to have two standards? We had, we had the law for a long time, some 4,000 years, and it couldn’t save us. All it could do is condemn us, tell us what we were doing wrong.

It had no salvation of grace in that law. So Peter’s argument, are we going to ask the law from the Gentiles? And by doing that, the crowd, the Sanhedrin, is stunned, stunned. So to the point that in verse 12 it says that they went silent. They had no more to say. See, salvation in Cornelius case was, was purely by grace through faith. It was no works. God never told him to be a Jew. God never told him to be circumcised. Nothing like that ever happened to him or his household. They were to follow up by words from Paul and Barnabas in chapter in, in verse 12.

And they gave another reason why salvation is by grace. And that is because God approved of the message of grace dispensation. Understand, Acts is the transitionary book from Judaism to the church. And all through the book of Acts, as we studied previously, there are dispensation periods. As this transition process began at Pentecost and ended with the death of Paul in chapter 28, It comes a little group of Judaizers after Paul Barnabas, two people that they had preached to telling them how and how to believe, who to believe and what to do. And Paul and Barnabas. Because Paul was commissioned by Jesus Christ.

Paul had to be bold and forthcoming to the leadership in order for them to complete the finished work of Jesus Christ. What about you today? Okay. Think of self assessments. In those days, if you recall. Because the Jews had to understand that what was happening in the New Covenant was actually from heaven. There had to be miracle signs and wonders. And in the process of moving from the Jew to the Gentile church, everybody that got saved in that period of time, that dispensation period of time, were shown salvation through miracle signs and wonders. They were shown.

They didn’t receive salvation. They were shown salvation. In other words, Christ had to convince the Jews that the same thing that he did at Pentecost with them, he’s doing to Gentiles. There’s no difference, liking it to twins. And it’s really, when I thought about this, I, I sort of chuckled because I said, okay, twins, let’s use a, a boy and a girl twin. And you buy, let’s, let’s just for purposes of giggles, you buy a Barbie for the girl and a kin for the, for the male. Dolls, okay? Play toys. But the girl doesn’t want Barbie, she wants Ken.

And the boy doesn’t want Ken, she wants Barbie. Now what do you do? Same thing here, okay. What you’re providing is you got the, the population at large that wants to hear the truth. They come from thousand miles away into Jerusalem, if you would call it Pentecost, to hear the truth. And you got the leadership, the parents who provide one thing to them and then something that somebody else comes along of leadership and tells them something different. And now you got total confusion. You got total confusion in your house with twins that don’t want what you gave them.

Okay? Same thing. So they have to solve this and they have to solve it in a way that allows the foundation of the church to expand so that they can get on into the process of making the church work. Okay? That’s where we’re, that’s where we’re at right now. Okay? So we got the thing about salvation by grace. And we got to think that nothing in the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of God, okay? That’s, that is heaven. That was Paul’s focus. Nothing in the thing, thing of focused on the Kingdom of God, the development of the Gentile church, the mystery of the church by Paul, that you had to become a Jew first.

Okay? But what we have to understand, this period of time is the most Jewish time there’ll ever be. Why? Because God walked with the Jews throughout the Old Testament 4,000 years by law. And we, we are learning all of the things in the study of, of Ezekiel and Daniel and Esther and, and lamentations. And soon, Jeremiah, you’re learning the history of the Jewish people during the time right before captivity and during captivity for the 70 year period as to what they did. And it was the most Jewish time there will ever be. But when Israel will reign and rule and dominate in Revelation will be the most Jewish time as well.

Because all he did was put them on the shelf. He says, you reject me. I’m not done with you. I’m going to move from you to the Gentile Church. And when I get through the Gentile Church, I’m coming back to you and we’re going to resolve this. And that’s what’s going on in Revelation. So you got two into two books, bookends. You got two into the spectrum. You got the most, most Jewish time there ever was in history, and you got the most Jewish time there will ever be in future. And the gap by scripture and process is like they were together.

They’re going to pick right up where they left off when, when Stephen was killed and God separated the Jews from the Gentiles. Okay, so. Just a couple other more points on this and we’re going to get in to the doctrinal issue of fellowship. In Romans 1:16, the apostle Paul says this. I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto what salvation to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. You got to remember Paul’s process in taking the Gospel into a new territory. He first went to the synagogue, to the Jews, because he had an audience, a known audience.

Think of your own self assessment, your own known audience. And from there they went into the city to the Gentiles. The, the people that did did not probably know Paul as well as the Jewish community did. And what he says is this. If we confess with our mouth outward, speaking. Okay, speaking. Why? Energy. Think about this. You’re connecting your energy source to the energy source of the universe that was provided at Pentecost, right? You’re dealing in this connection. Speaking words is energy. So if we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in our heart faith by giving through Christ to you, in order for you to believe that God has raised him from the dead, Paul says, we shall be saved.

No other condition exists. You don’t have to keep no rules. You could be a murderer. Paul was. You could be any type of individual in this world and still be saved. And that took care of the doctrinal issue that needed to be taken care of so the church could begin to become the church. So now the Jews, you’ll have to realize that the Gentiles don’t have to abide by the Mosaic ceremonies. Matter of fact, not Jews don’t have to do that today. All right? Because Christ came to what, fulfill the law. They don’t have to do any ritual things that we’ve been raised to do.

And then all of the Gentiles, They thought once they went through this process, could just run out of this preaching event, this evangelism event, and live their Life any way that they wanted to live it. In doing so, they were offending the Jews. Okay, that, that what the Jews are saying. We have to abide by all of this law for 4,000 years. They get salvation by grace and can live their life any way they want to after that. Why did we have to go through this? Why can’t they go through the same thing we did? That was the conundrum of the situation after the Jewish leadership had come to agreement on everybody to be saved by grace through faith alone.

Now here’s the issues. The Jews knew the law. The Jews knew what they needed to do in accordance to fulfill the law. Law. They had been introduced to Jesus Christ. They knew who he was, but yet they killed him. And the Gentiles know, knew nothing about him. The Gentiles in the world, beginning all the way back to Nimrod, was a pagan based culture focused on nothing more than adultery, idol worship, relationship with demon spirits, a fixation to entities that they worship with deities behind them, evil spirits and demons. As we’ve learned in our study, the return of the gods.

Okay, In the sense that there were no idol there at all. The Jews had been so raised, I mean the g. The Jews had been so raised to hate and despise idols and so raised to think of them as false gods in so much a part of the opposite of that. Anything that even smacked of idols was terribly offensive to the Jews. But here’s these Gentiles, they get saved and they go back to the pagan worship. They, they haven’t been trained, okay? They’re not sanctified. So the question comes up, even though we’re free and we’re under forgiveness by grace, and we don’t need to keep the Mosaic laws, we have still better understand, we have some rules.

And Paul becomes very blunt in speaking about these rules. First he says, you cannot lose your testimony to unbelieving Jews. You can’t allow the legalist to take charge of your life under the law and lose your take your testimony, your faith by grace to the unbelieving Jew. Self assessment, your government, Your church leadership. So Paul says, stay away from pollutions of idols. Oh, Ephesians, chapter four. He says, be pure, right? You need to have a purified body. Well, you can’t have a purified body if you contaminate it with pollution. See how the church goes hand in glove with Ephesians.

Ephesians says, you responsible to yourself to be purified. And as a church, you need to stay away from being polluted by idols. Now in that day that meant foods that were offered to idols first. And if you recall, there were back door, butcher, front door takers of food for idol worship. Backdoor selling the food out to people to eat. And Paul uses that analogy as pollution of idols. You’re not to deal with anything associated with idols. Go back to Scripture. You’re not to associate with this world. Well, what’s association? Idol worship. And Paul’s analogy here was if the Jew saw a Gentile eating food that was first offered to idols, that would offend him, the Jew.

So now we’re looking at the fellowship of believers. Scripture says you should not do one thing that offends your brother or sister in Christ. Well, in order for you to do that, you need to understand what Scripture says about you being in the body of Christ so that you can actually understand what you might do. Could be offensive. Sanctification. You’re not going to know that unless you’re working in your sanctification. See that concept that Paul used in this analogy? Symbolism was the principle doctrine, theology of how you care for a weaker brother. You’re to build them up, not tear them down.

If you become offensive to a brother, sister in Christ, that’s tearing them down. Then Paul goes on in another statement which I think wraps that part of it up. In verse 21, he says, For Moses of old hath every city them that preach him being read in the synagogue every Sabbath day. In other words, remember that Moses is still being studied. Moses is still being read. We read Moses today, okay? The Jewish synagogue does the same practice as they did in the early Jewish church. They read Moses. And many of these Jews are still under the instruction of Moses even today.

And they’re not yet able to make the cut in their minds to be free, okay? The concept of freedom. The Jews weren’t free. The Jews were slave to the law. Why? Because God had to protect that bloodline. So he had to make them slaves to the law in order for Christ to come to fulfill the promise of redemption. And once that promise had been done, we became free. Because in Ephesians 1:3, he says, I give you every blessing underneath the heaven from the will of my Father through the will of Jesus Christ, to you as being a body, one, a person inside of Jesus Christ.

We have every blessing that Jesus Christ had in the heavens upon salvation. And because of that, he says, this is not a tit for tat thing like it was in the Old Testament. I’m going to give you everything. You just have to be obedient and through Obedience, you will learn sanctification, how to manifest those blessings into your life through your choice. You’re free to do whatever you want to do. The Jews in the Old Testament didn’t have that availability. Then Paul goes and says, okay, another thing about the fellowship, stay away from fornication. Verse 20. Sexual sin.

And of course, Gentile idolatry was all wrapped up with sex. Matter of fact, that’s what started sin in the first place. Now we’re going to get into Ishtar a moment. And prophetesses and prostitutes and priestesses were prostitutes and the temple worship in the big temples like Diana in Ephesus. In. In not Ephesus. The, the Antioch and elsewhere were simply orgies. They were doing group sex inside the church. That’s you. That’s your history, guys. And so James says we must tell them to avoid any kind of Gentile worship, any kind of sexual activity or implication that has to do with adult idolatry.

This is the moral issue of the church. The moral issue of the church today, it was the same moral issue of Lucifer in the garden. The whole baseline and moral issue of the church today happened with Lucifer and Eve in the garden. This is not something new. So Paul goes on in First Corinthians 6 and deals with this moral basis plus and he says, it’s wrong to join yourself sexually to somebody outside of marriage. Why? Because that’s the heart of God. That is the, the order of God in regards to the benefit, your fringe benefit of being able to pleasure yourself because you’re joining Christ to a harlot.

Now remember that. That’s called soul time. Everybody who you’ve ever had sex with is with you today. And the sinful nature of that individual has enjoined with your nature and it never goes away. Now you must understand that that is a very powerful statement, not only from Ephesians 4, of being pure, but looking at the church from a morale morality basis. It’s wrong in the sense of fellowship. Because in the Old Testament, the Jews had such a strict law regarding their moral conduct and in fact, strict laws associated with marriage as well. And as Gentiles were living the life of Riley, we’re marrying and unmarrying and marrying and unmarrying and sometimes not marrying at all and hadn’t doing all of this stuff, just living it up and the Jews couldn’t handle it.

Why do they get to do that when you told us we can? And so Paul says to them, in conduct with the opposite sex, in your conduct sexually in general, in your Marriage situation. Be sure foundational point that you’re not offensive, That you are not following Gentile patterns. Take off the old self, put on the new. It’s not only a moral issue, but is a fellowship issue because Jews can’t tolerate it. And I’ll go one more. We Gentiles use the fellowship to get sex. We want to get close enough to our brothers and sisters in Christ that our focus is not the morality associated with building the church.

It’s the immorality associated with self indulgence. Paul goes on and says this. A couple of other things. Abstain from things strangled and from blood. Those are dietary laws. There’s nothing wrong with eating meat with blood in the new economy, new covenant. But in the old economy, those rules were given to eat it, to set Israel apart as a distinct nation so they couldn’t get together with the Gentile world. You see, the laws were set up to protect that bloodline. And if God allowed them to do the same type of things that the Gentile world was doing, the two worlds would have blended together and the bloodline would been corrupted.

So the Jews of all couldn’t eat the same things. They couldn’t have the same schedule in terms of calendar days. They had a different calendar. They had sabbaths, the Gentiles didn’t. They had feasts, the Gentiles didn’t. They had ceremonies and rituals of Gentiles didn’t. Okay. And so forth and so on. It was in order for God to control the mindset, the thought pattern of the Jews in order to protect the bloodline. The whole focus of the Old Testament is protect that bloodline. And creating a nation state of people. For whereas bloodline would come out of. Okay, you just couldn’t have it come out of some pagan bloodline.

You had to set apart a nation of people. You had to create that nation of people in size to be a nation. You had to give it some sense of order and discipline and rules, regulation. And that became Mosaic laws. And you had to hold them accountable because that is the only way to set them apart from the Gentiles. So Christ could actually be Dawn. That’s the whole focus of the Old Testament. All of the rest of the history go back to Joshua, judges first, 2 Samuel 1 second kings, all of those is this history of the Jews and how they dealt with that.

And they couldn’t handle it. They became immoral. And when they became immoral, what happened? Ne. Nebuchadnezzar stepped in and says, I’m now going to take you captive and from this day forward, nation of Israel, you’ll never be a nation. Until when Revelation. Jews couldn’t get together with Gentiles. Their clothes were different. They did everything God did everything he could do to keep them separate from the Gentiles. He did it so that they would be a pure witness unto Christ. But in the New Testament, because Christ came to fulfill the law and he paid the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, we became free and a Jew and the Gentile became together.

So what did God do? He rubbed out all of the old stuff. Now you recall Melchizedek came to try to teach them that. And all along the way John the Baptist, I mean he tried to give them bits and pieces along the way of the changes that were going to happen, but they wouldn’t buy it. So Paul continues on. Peter picks up in Acts chapter 10 prior to Cornelius and calls out the fact that we couldn’t do things which God had. We, we could. We, we shall not do unclean things that God has cleansed. Okay? In other words, God gave us the moral standard of sexuality and that is the standard by which we should be living by.

And by not doing it, we’re living in an uncleans life. That’s the way God designed it. There’s no more clean or unclean in the new new economy. It’s sin or holiness. That’s it. The only distinction in our life today is not clean or unclean. It’s sin and holiness. So that ritual of Old Testament economy is over. And those of the Jewish community that are still living in that Old Testament economy have self defined themselves as unfree. They’re restricted. So you have the apostles trying to migrate through the minefields of the mind between Jews and Gentiles to bring them, what, together as one church.

You don’t have that in Ephesians. When you’re looking at yourself, you see two focuses on this thing called Christianity. One is self salvation and the other is church becoming one with Christ. And you can’t do that without sanctification because you don’t know how to do it. So. Some people think because I’m safe and I have the freedom to live my life the way I want to do. Oh, I want to do it, when I want to do it, how I want to do it. Nobody can tell me I can’t do it. That’s what we consider freedom because I’m saved.

I got my ticket to heaven. Well, remember what scripture says. If you continually indulge in the same sin of your old self, you need to really Consider that you weren’t saved to begin with. So as an attribute of your mindset, you have to evaluate in your self assessment if the sins that you are dealing with today are there were the same sins that you were dealing with before you became a Christian. That’s why you’re to take your old self away and put on your new self. See, before the fall, Adam and Eve in the garden was exactly what we’re told in Ephesians 4, 5 and 6.

They were beautiful, everything was pristine, they were pure, everything was great. And God still had a law, don’t transgress against me. That was his only thing. You can eat of anything in this garden except one tree. That was the law. That was it. That was the only law that existed with Adam and Eve. Now wouldn’t that be a great deal if we could have just done that? If the only thing that we had to worry about in our life today is whether or not we ate from one tree. You should be free to eat in anything you want.

You just don’t eat of that tree. Well, see, the problem that existed was that tree wasn’t a fruit. That tree was knowledge. And it’s Google knowledge today. It’s whatever you want to put in your mind. You put in your mind and you leave out the basic of everything you should be eating, which is the scripture. And say the law, the one law was there’s this tree over there, has to be in the center by the way. And you just can’t touch it. You look at it, admire it, whatever you want to touch it. But you see, every law that we have today has been propagated from that one law, donated that tree.

Every thing in your mind that is not 100% scriptural based came from that tree. Therefore you got to have more rules because you added something to the tree. You see, I said many times, we are our worst enemy. If you have problems in your life, it’s you go look at a mirror and see what you see. Because what you see is what you become. Because that your is your belief system. And your belief system was based upon what you did. And because of that, God had to write the law and he wanted in the conscious of man, God’s law.

He says because you did that, you’ve now opened up Pandora’s box to the evil knowledge of this world. And because of that I’ve got to give you laws 613 of them, not 1, 613. Because what you wanted to Google the truth. And then God not only had to give you 613 laws. But he had to set a government up as the lawgiver. And the government was controlled by man. Remember, God only works through man. He doesn’t do it himself. And the government was given the right to take life as a punishment. Wow. I hope you’re beginning to see why the Jewish Council Council had to determine fellowship laws.

Because if not, this church would have such an immoral base that we would be right back to the garden. So God, they oppose the 613 laws. He had to put a government over him. Yet the government was controlled by man. They were able to add laws to that, and they were able to take life as a punishment for breaking a law. Then along comes Moses. Not as a separate group of people on a mountain, because remember, all the way to Noah, they knew who they were, okay? They were dealing with God himself, so they knew who they were.

Mo was Noah did that. And so out comes Moses with the nation of Israel. God has now constructed his nation from 70 to over 7 million people. And he needs to put a hierarchy over those people. Why? Because he’s bringing them out of paganism. They’ve got church. It’s bringing them out of paganism. And so this is Moses. Let’s write law. Moses, you got 613 laws already that came from Adam, but I’m going to give you 10 controlling laws. And all men had to be subjected to those 10 laws. And then God says, in the kingdom, the perfect age, you get another law, you get more laws.

He gives you these laws in Isaiah 2, 3, the law shall go forth out of Zion. Oh, no longer. You’re going to have man’s law. You’re going to have kingdom law. And it’s going to come out of Zion. Zion is the heaven. Now, you see, in every period of our history, every man, whether they were a believer or unbeliever, has been subjected to some principles of law. Well, I’ve already said that. We’re going into the church age today, Defined by the church, the rules of the church. And in doing so, there’s got to be a law.

We’re not under the Mosaic Law, we’re not under the law of Adam to stay away from a certain tree. What is that law today? Now, we’re going to get into a portion of this, and we’re not going to. We’re going to pick it up again next week, but we’re going to cover pieces of this from here to the end. What is the. Look, number one, it has several titles. It’s called the Law of Christ. It’s called the royal law. Or if you go to James 2a, it means it came from the king. The royal law, it’s called the perfect law of liberty.

Now that’s a really different kind of law. Ties to our Y’ all writes. It’s paradox. The perfect law of liberty, Jesus called it this a new commandment I give unto you. We got to 10 and then we get this liberty law from Christ. See, the Moses law had a name too. The Moses law was called the yoke of bondage. It was a tough one. Back in verse 10, we saw that Peter says, boy, I don’t know why we want to put on them a burden we couldn’t bear. But the New Testament law is different. It’s called the perfect law of liberty.

Freedom, your freedom. Think about our founding fathers in these United States. Where do you think they got the concept of life, liberty and freedom? Right here. Now I think this is really exciting concept, especially when you begin to look at our, our governmental system in the United States. First thing you got to ask your question is how can you have a law of liberty? What kind of a law is the law of liberty? It sounds with a condition of man control, government. That, that’s a paradoxical type of statement. Well, let’s look at it. In John 13, in verse 34, Jesus said to his disciples, just wash their feet and show them his love.

He says, this a new commandment I give unto you. Here comes the new law. That you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. So Jesus says, I give you now. It’s a law of what? Of love. Now if you think about Mosaic law, you now can see the total difference of the Old Testament economy law and the New Testament economy law. The Old Testament was the law was, was how the law worked. Do this or you’ll die. That’s how the law work. You either conform to the law or you die.

And a matter of fact, all of the punishment almost in all of the laws was dead. Now the average guys will say, I’m doing it. And it was a law built on fear. And The Bible says 365 times, do not fear. They would make a sacrifice, they would sin again, they would be under the gun again to make a sacrifice. Then they carried it out in fear of consequences of not doing the sacrifice. And then they go back and do the same sin again. But the Bible says in the New Testament, when Jesus gave his new commandment to the disciples, he says, live in perfect love.

In doing so, That process cast out all fears. Why? Because you’re supposed to get rid of your old self and put on new self. Testament didn’t have that. We have a new kind of law. I don’t serve God because I’m afraid of him. I serve God because I love him. And it’s the law of love. That’s only a one dimensional law. You get it? I want to go back to the trade. Donate to that tree. Love me. That’s all you have to do. Just love me, Tony. To the trees, but love me. Now, if you go to Galatians 6, there’s a terrific thought in verse 2, and here you have the phrase the law of Christ.

What is the law of Christ? Well, it says, bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. One might say, isn’t that terrific? Now you know what the law of Christ is. Say what it means is this. You’re to lift your brethren up and not tear them down. So when the load gets too heavy for them to carry, you’re to help them. That’s what that means. You’re to come alongside of them as Christ has come alongside of you and help them through the difficult time. See, that’s a lot of Christ. If you go back to verse 13 of chapter 5 in Galatians, it says this.

Brethren, you have been called unto liberty. There’s integrity. No more law, no more fear, no more threats. You have freedom, you have liberty. You have freedom. Goes on to say this, your condition of these laws, Perfect love. Love, liberty, freedom, blood, Christ helping your brother. Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh. What does that mean? Don’t misuse your freedom and turn it into a license for sin. Don’t take the free grace that has been given to you as an opportunity to sin. But. Love serve one another, serving one another, bearing one another’s burdens, fulfilling the law of Christ are all synonyms.

They all mean the same thing. If you could do a word study of those various passages, you would come down to the meaning of those words are all the same. The Christian is under one flock law. Think about that one love. All other laws point to that law and it’s the law of love. It’s a fantastic thing. If you go to Romans 13, it explains it further in verse 8. I love this. I’ve used it to ward off confrontation in the biggest way over. Oh no man, anything but to love, you know, Only debt. The only debt you owe ought to owe somebody is what to love them.

Watch this. For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. The Ola said, you shall not commit adultery, you should not kill, you should not steal, you should not bear false witness, you should not covet, etc. Etc. Etc. But it’s all comprehended in this saying, love your neighbor like you love. Then he says, this love is the fulfilling of the law. You know, I like this. I and I’ve used this in counseling a lot of times before. And it fits in the nature of your home. The nature of your home should be the foundation of love.

And because of that, the home really should not have a lot of loss. You don’t need a sign that says, remember, do not hit your wife, do not punch the children. You don’t need laws like that. You don’t need a whole list of rules. Because love that I have for those people of my home precludes the necessity of writing out any specifics. That’s the law of love. James 2, verse 8. The beautiful title for this that I love are two of them here in James, verse 2 8. If ye fulfill the royal law. I like this.

The royal law. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. You do well now. What’s the law again? It’s. It’s the law of love. Every time. The law of Christ. The royal love or the royal law. Sorry. The perfect law of liberty and the new commandment. It’s always the same thing. Perfect love. So the Christian life boils down to this. To one thing and one thing only. It’s loving others. As Christ loves you. Not circumcision, not ceremonial. Not ceremonial love. When you truly love somebody, it alters your total behavior towards them. The perfect law of liberty. And that, of course, in the statement in verse 25 of chapter 1, where he calls it the perfect law of liberty.

James 1:25. And he calls it in James 2:12, the law of liberty. So the royal law, the law of liberty, the perfect law of liberty, the law of Christ, the new comm. Commandment, are all the same. Perfect law. Now, why is that important? It’s the most exciting thing in the center of your life. Without fear, without issue. You’re free to love. Now, I think of Misty and my family in relation to this. I take care of my family. I try to meet all their needs. Some I can’t, but I. But if they need something, we supply it.

Even in those situations where discipline is a factor of trying to teach, we discipline them. If they feel sorrowful, we can dove them. If they’re hurting and there’s pain and tears, we comfort them, even with you guys. And I don’t feel like you must comfort your children because that’s one of the rules. I don’t feel like that at all. When they’re hurt, I hurt. It pains me to not try to figure out how to fix things because guys are fixers. And when I can’t find a way to fix it and it just gets worse, I hurt.

And it’s not because I’m doing it out of fear. It’s because I love them. And I’m telling you, that’s one of the things that I wish I had known years ago that I now know. I’m not worried about God smashing me with some divine hammer. I’m not worried about the fact that I feel this tremendous draw to meet needs. True song ain’t heavy. He’s my brother. That’s love. And that’s the principle of this new life in the body of the Church. If, If we did everything that we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it, what we wanted to do, how we wanted to do it, with whom do we want to do it? Where’s the freedom in that? The reason why you think that way is because you’ve become a slave to good thinking.

You’ve not considered the full spectrum of Christian fellowship one to another. See, because your love for God ought to eliminate the desire for those things old self. And it should capture you to do other things new. So. See your strongest force, where you’re going to tap into the strongest condition of power is through love. You guys take a time walk back in history and remember when you were courting me and your wife, your future wife and ladies, you were being quite supported by your future husband. The silly things that you did, the crazy things that were going through your head and you were obviously dominated by this thing, this relationship.

Remember the power that you had. Remember the sense of overcoming any obstacle. Say what man has done for the love of a woman and what women have done for the. Or what people collectively have done for the love of a cause. In a country self assessment, something they believed in a belief system, love is the greatest thing in terms of motivation. You might say, well, I’d like to love like that. I’d like to have my life dominated by love. And you see, that’s the liberty and that’s the law to be free to just love and do what you want.

If you love a child, you’re not going to hurt it. If you absolutely loved your God Christ, you’re never ever going to violate his commandments of obedience. You don’t need any rules. See, we always want somebody to tell us what we should be doing, how we should be doing it. You don’t need any rules. Because his only commandment to Christian fellowship with Christ is to love him fully. You might say, how do you have that kind of love toward God and toward others? Now, here’s key principles. We’re going to close this. We could stay on this for many sessions.

We could approach it from many different ways and turn over stones and let you see it. But Galatians 5 starts it. And this is connected with what we’ve talked. We’ve already talked about the law. Galatians 5:13 says this, Brethren, you have been called unto liberty. Now just read this to you and you get it again. Use not liberty for occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. That’s principle number one. For the law is fulfilled in you loving your neighbor. Now watch this. Verse 16. Paul’s delivered to the church at Galatians. He says this.

I say, then do what? Here it is. Walk in the Spirit. You want to know how to love. You want to know the first principle of really knowing how to love somebody? Walk in the Spirit. Walk worthy of your calling. In Ephesians. See the love of Christ shed abroad in you. In other words, it comes out as energy from you to others. It becomes out in actions, in your thoughts, in your mindset, and it’s manifested through your walk of the Spirit. Who will do the love of it? You just have to get yourself out of the way.

See, You know how you. How you know self assessment, that it’s Christ loving through you. When you love people you can’t stand and can’t help it. Somebody says to me, boy, that person, you know, I love him. I don’t feel that way, you know? Amazing. That’s when you really know that it’s the love of Christ. And it begins with the Spirit walk when your life is under control of the Holy Spirit. And then you’ll be channeled for his perfect love and the power source. Ephesians 3. Paul prays the prayer, and he says this. I pray that you would be strengthened by his might through the Spirit and the inner man.

Then he follows up and says this, that you might know the love of Christ which passes knowledge. You’ll never know the love of Christ. You’ll never be dominated by it in your life. You’ll never have it pouring through you until you’ve strengthened with his might by the Spirit. In your Internet. See, the Spirit walk precludes loving Ephesians, yourself. You’ve got to get yourself to the position of the Church. Why? Because you can’t love in the flesh. It’s got to be the love of Christ poured through the Holy Spirit. So to walk in the Spirit, walk worthy of your calling, and walk in the Spirit is a day by day yielding to the Holy Spirit.

Paul says, I die daily. Now here’s the second principle. In this one we could talk a whole lot. James, chapter one. Back to the perfect law of liberty. This to me is excellent information here for us. Beginning in verse 18 James 1:18. Now, the key here is the word of God, the Scripture, or his own will, begot he us with the word of truth. The Word definition begotten is what life. We were begotten, given life by the Word. Now watch verse 21. Wherefore, put away all filthiness, overflowing of wickedness, and receive the meekness, the crafted Word, which is able to save your lives.

See, we are saved by the Word. Then we are to receive the Word, to study, sanctify, to take it in, to absorb the Word. But you don’t get stagnant. And verse 22 comes fast on the hills of this and says, and then be what doers of the Word. And sanctifications is a process. And immediately as you’re learning sanctification, begin to act. There is never a period of time that you’re studying words without action. Now there’s a cycle of the Word. You’re born again by the Word. The Word is implanted in you by the in. In the forms of the Holy Spirit.

Even you, do you, you understand the Word, you study the Word, you become a doer of the word. Now verse 25 says this. You will see the perfect law of liberty operating. Oh well, that’s your fruits. Then. Whosoever looks into the perfect law of liberty, the Word right Scripture and continues in it. He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer. This man is blessed. Ephesians 1:3. Listen, you can’t see the perfect law of liberty. You can’t see it operate in your life. It’s not visible to your human eye unless you stay in the book. There are two principles just connected with these two laws.

In Galatians, walk in the Spirit, and in James, stay in the Word. Let’s tie that to Ephesians, Ephesians 4, 5 and 6. Walk in accordance to your calling. Purify, live meekly, humble in the Word. I was talking to some friends of ours and we talking about love and all the love of the brother. And it’s kind of squishy sentimental things that goes with it and all this stuff. And you know what, as I got to thinking about this, it doesn’t have really any guts to it, If you pardon the word. And it just doesn’t have any really solid rock bed kind of thing.

It’s strictly an emotional thing. We all sway and we hold hands and we sing and we’re one in the Spirit and then we go out and nothing has changed. We don’t see any change. Well, the reason is we haven’t learned anything. And maybe we’re not walking in the spirit anymore. We just feel lovey dovey. The fleshly love, the sensual sexual love. And see, that’s okay until somebody does something to you that doesn’t make you feel lovey dovey anymore. But see, love’s not a feeling. I don’t. Christ doesn’t care how you feel. Love is a principle. It’s a way of life.

And if you live it as a principal way of life, then your feelings don’t matter. And if you don’t ever get anything else in this Christian life, but you get that, you’ve got something. Love is not a feeling, it’s a principle. It’s a principle that says you shall love your neighbor as yourself or bear one another’s burdens. It’s a principle. You may not feel lovey, Debbie, but you may love by action, by deed, by whatever else you do. And so the law that a believer is under is the law of love. That’s what converted Galatian, Gentiles.

That’s what gave you, gives us our faith, that’s what gives us our salvation. That’s what allows us to be redeemed. And if you restrict your behavior from certain things to keep the brothers and sisters in Christ from being offended, that’s a good thing. That’s the principle of love in operations, you see, there’s no cause for your liberty running wild. And that’s why after they had established grace, they fast moved into the area of fellowship and said, but there are some things necessary for fellowship. And though God doesn’t restrict them morally, God wants you to restrict them for the sake of your love to one another.

Now if you’re a legalist, you’re not going to do that. If you’re a Christian as a follower of Christ, you’re going to seek to do that. With that, we’re going to end today. Thoughts? I got a thought, Jim. It’s interesting. The only time liberty is mentioned in the book of Psalms is 119 and it’s represented under BA, which is number 6 and 6 is the creation of man. Correct. So they tie together. A little bit. Anything else? All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you again for a morning of worship. Thank you for revealing yourself to us in our discussion.

May we ever come to know that the truth comes through you, through your word. May we ever understand that it’s only in living in obedience to you that our life has any meaning and may you show us the wisdom that your perfect love manifested through us is the foundational element of our fruits. Christ worked with us in through the Holy Spirit and walked the word of our calling in your spirit control Father, we love you we love fact that you Christ died on the cross for our s that he basically was buried and resurrected and ascended to heaven to give us a life bound for home.

Be with us as we continue the rest of the sweet Father, may we look to you in all things and understand that you fully control we ask all these things when your sons.
[tr:tra].