Sunday School | Faith or Works

Introduction

Okay. So it's called Red Letters, Stuff Jesus Said. And what we've been doing the last few weeks is just kind of working through a list of things that you wanted to talk about. And so I'm gonna add, as we go through, some of the things that I also want to talk about, things that Jesus said. But that's our bullseye. We may stray a little bit into the Old Testament from which Jesus draws or into other parts of the New Testament that reflect on things that Jesus said, but the center of our bullseye is the red letters. What did Jesus say?

In last week's discussion, as we left, I asked you guys, are we done here, or do we want to, like, kind of have some chance for Q and A? And so there was enough hands that said, let's kind of process this. And so today, we're at least going to begin, and I've some other material here. We'll see where we go, how long of a discussion you want to have. But I want to review what we talked about with divorce last week.

The Teaching on Divorce

You might recall, if we kind of run through, if you load it up in your brain, we looked at what Jesus said about divorce and remarriage. You might recall we looked at Luke 16, which is a short little statement that has no context, and then Mark 10, where you get a little bit more context. And then in Matthew five and Matthew 19, Jesus adds a little bit of color to it.

The essence—well, what was the essence of what Jesus says about divorce? Don't do that. Don't do that. That's pretty much the right answer. Jesus forbids divorce except when? For infidelity. And it's a little bit less, it's a little bit vaguer than that. He says sexual immorality, but the bull's eye of that, we think, would be infidelity. So what Jesus is saying is that the marriage covenant is so significant, so picturesquely of the relationship between Jesus and His church that once you're in, you don't get to get out. You're locked in.

However, he also says that the act of sex is so significant that if you cheat on your spouse, if you commit adultery, if there's immorality, infidelity there, then that marriage can be dissolved. That's a sufficient act to dissolve the union. Right? And I want you to see something. What Paul does with that in 1 Corinthians 7, he takes what Jesus has said in Matthew 19 and he expands on it.

And one thing that we didn't talk about last week that I'll just add here is interesting—the way that Paul treats sexual integrity in a marriage is that the act of sex is not only so significant that if you have sex with somebody who's not your spouse, it can dissolve the marriage, but he also says—what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7—is that the act of sex is so significant that you may not refuse to have sex with your spouse. It's kind of a two-edged sword on this, right? You can't have sex with anybody else, and you must have sex with your spouse.

That relationships in which there is one where one or more, but really one partner refuses to have sex with their spouse is totally off the table. We are not allowed—the way that Paul puts it, we are not allowed to deprive one another except by mutual consent and for a little bit of time while you're praying and then get back in bed, is basically what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. He's very, very clear on this.

So we can, in our culture, treat sex very casually in multiple ways. It can be so casual that we're willing to have sex with people that aren't our spouse, and that's totally off the table. Or we can treat it so casually that we're like, Well, so what about that? I'm not going to do that. I don't want to. And the Bible is very clear. You may not have sex with somebody who's not your spouse. You must have regular sex with your spouse. Okay? It's a big deal.

So that's what Jesus is saying here. Marriage is permanent, but infidelity is so great it can be grounds for legitimate divorce and remarriage. And then we talked about some other circumstances. We talked about, What if I already blew it? What if I divorced unlawfully and remarried and am stuck in a state of perpetual unrepentant sin? And I think the answer to that is no, we are not. You may not always be able to make restitution, but you can always repent.

We can have an orientation and attitude towards our behavior that looks back and says, I was wrong. I thought I was right. It seemed right at the time, but I look back with a greater maturity and greater wisdom, and I was wrong, and I'm gonna stop justifying myself. I'm not gonna get another divorce. I'm not gonna compound the problem, but I'm gonna acknowledge that what I did was wrong. I'm gonna yield that longing that is very strong in many of us, certainly in me, to justify myself. I'm gonna acknowledge it that I was wrong. And where possible, we make restitution, but sometimes it's not.

There was a moment a couple of years ago, you may have caught it, it was fleeting, where Kanye West was in his right mind. Did you see it as it just happened there for a moment? He put out an album called Jesus is King, and it was—I’m not guessing there's a lot of you that are huge Kanye fans, but, you know, maybe. Who knows? But this album Jesus Is King had a really profound lyric, and I want to read you this. Here's what he said, and then we're going to exegete Kanye West.

So welcome to Church of the Holy Spirit. He said this, he said, What if Eve made apple juice? Are you going to do what Adam would do or say, Baby, let's put this back on the tree? By which, I think he means to say this: Sometimes we mess things up so royally, you're not going to do it. Okay? You turn that apple into apple juice, what are you going to do? Put it in a baggie and hang it on the tree? Like, you can't—you can make apple juice out of an apple. Papa. But you can't make an apple out of apple juice. Right? Sometimes the destructive process runs one way. And sometimes we do something that is like, I can't go back. I can't fix it. I can't undo it. And part of what it means, you guys, to live in grace is just being able to say, you know what? It was wrong. It is simply beyond my skill to heal it. I acknowledge it, I cry out for mercy, and I move on. Right? And so thanks to Kanye West's thirty minutes of sanity and insight. There it is. Okay? Now, maybe that buttons it up and we can move on, and I'm happy to do that. Or maybe we've got an hour or more worth of questions and comments and pushback and engagement and questions on any of this stuff. So Jesus and divorce. You can't do it, but there are some circumstances where you may, although you're not required to. You're allowed to, if your partner commits adultery, you don't have to divorce. John Piper's sense is, actually, you shouldn't because if you're gonna be like Jesus, then you're necessarily gonna be forgiving. But we're not that much like Jesus, and he gives us a little bit of space for something so painful.

Questions and Clarifications

Questions? John? I think you mentioned many lessons back—wait, wait, go louder. I'm having a hard time. I think you mentioned many lessons back one of the Old Testament prophets, after God's command to marry a prostitute. Yes, that's right. And he killed her back. Yes, yeah, very good. So there's an example there of infidelity in marriage. When Hosea marries Gomer, and Gomer's chosen profession is prostitution, God knew, you know, everybody knew what was going on here, but he—the whole point of that picture—is even though she's a faithless wife, you don't divorce her, you take her back, right? And his point was, this is the way I treat you. You are a faithless bride, and I will be faithful to you. So we can emulate that, but it can be so miserably painful that we may not need to. Right? But we can. There's not only can you divorce, but you are free to then remarry again based on what Jesus says in Matthew 19.

Scott? Okay. Wait. Are you saying that—hang on. Are you—Where Jesus came down on divorce versus Moses? Oh, yes. Jews had looked at marriage and divorce. Gentiles, you had Samaritans, had different people coming to Jesus. Yes, for sure. And so establishing kind of a new baseline. Old years? Yes, okay, so I think, so what Scott's saying, so of course Christianity is an outgrowth, is that a fair way to put it, is a progression of Judaism. God appears to Abraham, creates a people, and then the Jewish people come, and within that Moses says, this is how you should live. These are the rules. This is framework in which we operate.

When Jesus arrives, He's not only continuing the fulfillment of all that Moses spoke, but he's also inviting all these Gentiles to the party, right? We've a whole bunch of non—and nobody knew this in the beginning. Like, the disciples were shocked that we're gonna let all these European, Anglo, African, Asian, like, all these non-Jews get to come to the party. It was a very strange thing. And so what Jesus is reestablishing is both continuity with the true things that Moses said that had become distorted in his era, and then also instructing people coming from a non-Jewish background. So Christianity brings a confluence of the Jewish worldview and the Jewish people, and then all of these non-Jews, which must be 98% of you probably don't have Jewish blood, probably, right? Steve? Jewish blood? Little bit of Jewish blood, right? Okay. But what he does with the Moses thing, you might recall, one of their claims was, hey, Moses commanded us, da da da, about divorce. And Jesus says, well, hang on a sec. Time out. Moses didn't command you anything. Moses permitted you to do this, right? Because your hearts were hard. So even the rules on divorce in the Old Testament, he's like, this was an accommodation because you've already turned the apple into apple juice, right? There's already—we are so far past the ideal, and so what do we do? Given that we are not on plan A or B or C or D or E, what do we do now? And that's kind of the way that Jesus is taking it.

When Is Remarriage Acceptable?

Could you summarize when remarriage is acceptable? Yeah, sure. So I think that what the Bible teaches that remarriage is acceptable any time divorce is acceptable. So there's no such thing as lawful divorce but unlawful remarriage, okay? So the rules for remarriage are predicated on the rules for divorce, and there are two very clear categories in which the Bible says divorce is permissible.

Number one, in the case of sexual immorality of the other partner, which we generally take to be infidelity, and desertion from most specifically, desertion from an unbelieving spouse. But generally speaking, what we take that to mean, the way that we clarify the sexual immorality and desertion from an unbelieving spouse is that if your partner commits adultery, you are free to divorce and remarry, and if your partner leaves you, if they initiate the divorce and they abandon you, you are not bound in such a circumstance.

Those are the two that have very clear Biblical grounds. The third one that we tend to really want to add to it, and I'm sympathetic to, is if you're in a situation that itself is abusive and you have grounds for separation. There is not explicit Biblical language about abuse, but my sense of this, so this is a little bit like, just dial your confidence down a little bit, is that if you're in an abusive situation, all legal protections are available to you. So you can call the police. You can separate. You can move yourself into a place of safety, all those things. I can't tell you that the Bible gives you permission to remarry in that situation. There's no text that I can point to for that, but that tends to be certainly very clear from Jesus is infidelity. Number two is desertion, and that we very often have deep sympathy for an abusive situation. At the very least, can call the police and move into a place of safety.

Is that sufficient? Okay?

Kim? Why do you think God was silent about multiple wives? Oh, Kim, you know. This is really troubling. But here's the problem, Kim. He wasn't even silent. Right? So he had numerous, infinite, numerous opportunities to be like, yeah, and stop that. We get language like, "Don't boil a goat in its mother's milk," and nothing about polygamy? I'm like, really? That would have taken you, like, really? And then you've got funny language where it tells David, I delivered—God says to David, I delivered your master's wives, plural, into your arms. To which I'm like, well, wait, what? Right? So it's very, very strange. My guess—and this is just weird—my guess is that there are circumstances in which men were allowed to have multiple wives, and probably my guess is that this is an economic necessity in a world as warring as the ancient world where the ratios of men to women become grotesquely lopsided, and there are far, far more women than men because 30,000 men in a small community just got wiped out, that there's some provision allowed that one man can have multiple wives to provide for them. That would be my best guess, but I don't like saying it, and I really hate saying it in front of 200 people, and I hate saying it when the tape recorder is running. But that would be my guess. It's very strange. So thank you for that. Okay?

Lily? I do think the scripture is safe enough to that point to say that the absolute preference and best good is to be the husband of only one wife. Like, it's prescription both for priests and elders, and if you're a kingdom of priests, it makes sense that this would be a more stringent requirement under the new covenant because the standard now is Jesus, it's a higher standard. I think that's part of why the shift is so great, also that that very real economic reason of women without the institution of marriage and multiple wives, you would have just an extraordinarily vulnerable population. Yes, I think that's right. And certainly, so the New Testament does affirm that you can't be an elder unless you're a one-wife kind of guy, right? And when you do see the depictions of polygamy in the Old Testament, it always goes sideways, right? I mean, it always goes badly. But I think it might be in that category of, again, this is not plan A. It's not plan B. We're down the line here in a very broken world, I think.

Okay. Okay, there's another hand before I come to John that I thought I saw on this side of the room. No, no, no? It was my—I think? Oh, Robin? Yeah. Well, I was just thinking about Solomon and how wise he was supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, so the official love song of the Bible is Song of Solomon that extols the virtues of marriage. There's this line in here that I'm fond of using with Kelly, which is, Virgins there are and concubines beyond number, but you're my favorite. You know? And you're like, Ugh. It's just so, like, what is—it's discordant, to be sure. Yeah, it's very, very odd.

John? This is not a group that's mentioned in the Bible. Wait, I'm sorry, bro. I just can't hear you. Go again. This is not a group that's mentioned in the Bible, but the Cherokee Indians, put into practice, had been decimated in the war, the surviving men would take up the slack for the ones who were no longer there by taking extra lives. Yeah. And I could see the economic situations where some would have to say, like, have to say, but choose to say, hey, the best way out of this is to allow one man to provide for more than one woman.

Now, for those of you in this room, it's almost certainly the case that if you got married, you stood up, and you said something to the effect of, Forsaking all others, at which point your options were limited. Okay? So, be clear. Certainly, I said this cheerfully.

Okay, okay, divorce. Anything else on divorce or do you want to move on to something new? Happy to? Whatever you like. Divorce, going once, going twice. Okay, we're gonna move on.

The Passage in Matthew 25

So we've got another question about Matthew 25. So go to Matthew 25 in your Bible. Matthew 25, there's a number of things going on there, we're gonna start at verse 31. We'll take a look at this text. I think this is a very good question. It's a little bit complicated, so we've got about a half hour. Okay, we can do this.

So here's the question. There are several, and I've kind of created an amalgam from them. Matthew 25, and we're going to start in verse 31 in just a second. It says, In Matthew 25, why does Jesus seem to say that our salvation is dependent on our deeds? Does He forgive us because we trust in His sacrifice or because we feed strangers, visit prisoners, etcetera, etcetera? Okay.

This is a good question. So let me read if you're not sure where that question is coming from, let me read you this passage, and I think a very fair question.

For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes, and you clothed me. I wasn't sick, and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go visit you?' And the king will reply,

I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. Then he will say to those on his left,

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. Was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you?'

And he will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these you did not do for me.' And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

I think it's very easy to read that and think that Jesus is saying that if you want to survive the resurrection and the judgment at the end of all things, the key is to be kind to the poor and the broken. And this is a little bit surprising if you thought that he might have said that the key is to believe in me, right? You might think that he would say the key to surviving the judgment is to abandon all hope of your righteousness, to turn from your unrighteousness and to trust his sacrifice on the cross.

But he doesn't say that, and you could very—it's reasonable if you're like, well, it seems like what Jesus is saying in Matthew 25 is that we earn salvation by how we treat the poor or the broken or the weak or the needy. What are we to make of this? Do you get the question? Does it all come together? Okay.

Understanding the Message of Matthew 25

So I think it's a good question. I think it's a fair question. I think that's a good answer to it. But let's make it a little bit worse before we make it better. Okay?

If you were to read Paul's letters, by and large, you would find a Gospel message that's very familiar to you. Right? If you were to read— which of the four Gospels would you want to read to find the Gospel message that is most obvious and clear to you? John. It's John, right? I promise you, go pick up any tract, any little summary of the Gospel, and it's gonna be John. It's gonna be John 3:16,

For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son. Whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Check, check. John 5:24,

He who hears my words and believes in Him sent me has eternal life. He will not be condemned. He's crossed over from death to life.

John 10:10,

I come that they might have life and have it abundantly.

Right? We always quote John's Gospel. When we're summarizing the Gospel message, it's always John and Romans, right, because it's so crystal clear. And then we turn to Matthew and Mark and Luke, and we're like, yeah, I'm not gonna quote that. I'm not gonna quote that. I'm not gonna quote—. Right? I'm not making this up, right? Jesus has this layup opportunity with the rich young ruler. It's the same phenomena. You guys know in Matthew 19? Matthew 19, this rich guy, young guy comes to Jesus, and he's like, What must I do to be saved? And you're like, Alright, Jesus, this is a layup. Just believe in me. I'm gonna die for you, and done. And instead, what does he say? Sell and give to the poor. If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. Okay? So, why is it that Jesus doesn't know the Gospel? What is happening? And why is it in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus never follows the pattern that we see in John or the explanation that we get in Romans? But he's always coming out of here with these things that, like, I'm telling you, if you were training somebody in evangelism and they pulled this, you'd be like, Did you hear anything I just explained? Like, okay, what's happening there? And, of course, I'm being tongue in cheek. Jesus is great at everything, okay? So what is he doing? How do we understand this?

Catherine? Yes. I think it's because of God knows each person's Yes, I think this is so what Catherine is saying is that Jesus is never giving a general prescription, He's giving this individual prescription. He knows what's going on in the heart, And he's very, very good at sidestepping all the surface y garbage and kind of getting into it. He does it all the time. That's why Jesus appears to be like the king of the non sequitur. All the time, he'll say, And in reply, Jesus declared something that seems to have no relevance to what happened just a second ago. Happens all the time. And the secret to that is that Jesus is dispensing with the surface and going to the heart of the matter. But it still does leave us to wonder, okay, but what is the heart of the matter?

Shima? I feel like a lot of the statements like that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are accompanied by, like, a statement that says, and this is what the kingdom of heaven is like. Or I feel like in the synoptics, he's always comparing it to, okay, this is what the kingdom of heaven is. This is the gospel of the kingdom. And and I think it's just getting to another aspect of the gospel that we don't maybe see in the letters in John. That's kind of like the kingship of Jesus and this new king. What what is this new kingdom gonna be like? It's not where the emperor is wealthy and gets whatever he wants. It's where actually the poor. Yeah. It's like, you know, he's describing it like juxtaposing two different kingdoms and kind of explaining why it's so different.

Okay. So I think what okay, I'll try to recap what Alex just said. So when we see, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and maybe more Matthew than anywhere, Jesus loves to talk about the Kingdom, right, and Matthew really focuses in on this, that one thing that we can understand is that what Jesus is describing, he's painting a picture saying this is what things will be like, actually, genuinely be like in the Kingdom. The rules of the Kingdom are different. The rules of the Kingdom of how we treat one another are just all the way different from what we're accustomed to. And so He's not necessarily giving us a requirement, but He's giving us the result, right? That this is how this is going to happen, and I think that's part of the answer. I'm gonna refine that a little bit, but there's something here that what Jesus is giving us is the end state picture. This is what it's gonna be like forever and ever and ever, right? Very good. Okay. Lily and then John. I think John is talking about the root and Jesus in the synoptics is talking about the fruit. Yes, okay, root and fruit, right? So, you know, we don't see the heart, only God sees the heart. And that's why John is like super mystic. He's like talking about God's heart for us and the heart that he wants to build in us through his Holy Spirit. But Jesus is like, practically, y'all can't even see that hardly. So I think that's part of why he focuses on the fruit so much. He wants us, in his kindness, he actually wants us to know that we can see evidence of his work in our hearts. And we should be looking for it. Okay, good. Yes. So there's so we're gonna we're gonna see, and I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a model to help you understand all of this, but these are these are remarks of the fruit and the fruit. Okay. I got too many. Alright. So, John, I'm gonna actually skip you right now because I've already called you twice, I've a whole bunch of hands. So, Herrick? It brings me back to John 21 where he's asking Peter over and over, you know, do you love me? And he says, take care of my sheep. You know, and his sheep are the people that can't take care of himself. He tells Peter that he won't be able to take care of himself someday. Yeah. He may have to have other people take care of him. So it brings me to Go lighter. Do you really love Jesus? And if you do, are you gonna listen to his commands? Yes. You know, out of your heart and do it because you love. So Herrick is just pointing out that this is true not just in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but it's true in John. It's true throughout the Scriptures that there is an end goal, right, that we ought to love. These things that he's advocating for in Matthew 25 are good and right. But it still leaves us with the question, are they the basis of our salvation? Are we saved because we do that or not? So how does this work? This is where we've to get to. And I have thoughts, but I'll get DFP.

We are very adept in Western culture at separating what I think from what I do, from what I believe, from we—we parcel ourselves out, which is not a thing, scripturally speaking. And so when I believe in Jesus, my life reflects that belief in Jesus. They—they cannot be separated. And what Jesus is, in effect, saying here, I think, is, look. This is gonna be the fruit of the people who believe in me. That it is not possible to believe in me without feeding the hungry and caring for the poor and so on. And I mean, James is probably the best, you know. Show me your faith. Yeah. For that. But, yeah, what we believe is what we do. There's not a difference. Yes.

Yeah. So do you all hear that over here? For the tape, Dan is just observing the reality that Jesus sees us as integrated people, right? And what we do necessarily flows out of what we believe. And so even if he's talking about the doing, they're all wrapped up, and I think this is right.

For the sake of time, though, let me offer you a model, a way to think about this, okay? I want you to think about the Gospel message in three distinct phases, phase one, phase two, phase three, okay? Because I think you have to recognize that there are numerous calls to righteousness, numerous calls to morality, and they are either class one or class three. They are not class two. Okay, here's what I mean by this.

The Gospel message very often begins in lots of places with something to the effect of, Be holy, for I am holy. Something to the effect of, Sell all that you own and give it to the poor. Something to the effect of, Obey the 10 Commandments. Okay? And the goal of phase one of the message is to produce within you despair. That I'm to tell you, Here's the standard, Susan. And you're like, That's going to be a problem because I can't do that. Right? Now, if you hear phase one of, Hey, clean up your act, you're like, Oh, okay, okay, okay, I'll clean up my act, and then you lick the mud off your hands, and you're like, All right, clean enough? No, not clean enough. You never had a chance. Phase one, the call to holiness. You're supposed to be like, Ah, I mean, maybe, for twenty minutes when no one's looking very closely. Okay. Its job is not the rungs of a ladder that you can climb. Its job is to produce in you a sense of time out, time out, time out. I need a plan B because that's never going to work. You got it? That's phase one.

And then phase two is now and only now that I'm in despair, now and only now that I realize, holy moly, this is never going to work. Now I'm ready for, and I long for, and I desperately need a message of grace, that there is a plan B. And then, okay, you can't do it. Like, be holy, clean up your act, be good, sexual morality is a sin, gossip is wrong, pick a thing, and you're like, Well, those are all my favorite things, so I don't know what we're going do about this. Right? Okay? Then, when you shift from being the remember Jesus says, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Once you finally get to where you're like, this is worse news than I knew. Then, now you're soft. And now you're like, Okay, but what's plan B? And plan B is, Okay, what if somebody did everything in category one perfectly and they were willing not only to live a perfect life on your behalf, but they were also willing to take the blame for every terrible thing you did when you were miserable over there in category one? If we could find somebody that was willing to be an absolutely perfect person and suffer an absolutely miserable death, and they would make a trade with you, would that be of interest to you? No. And if you've walked through phase one, then you're like, Yes, that would be of interest to me, but that's absurd. Nobody can do that, and if they could do that, they wouldn't do that. And they say, Yeah, yeah, that's probably true, but I know this one guy who has absolutely done this. And you're living in category two, you're like, Well, yeah, but the only reason it's sweet to you, the only reason it's desirable to you, and you're like, What do I have to do? What do you want? What mountain should I climb? No, you missed the grace part. It's a gift. Come on. That's ludicrous. It's just an absurdity. But no, it's really true. And the reason it sounds sweet is because you remember phase one when you're like, I'm screwed. Like, there's nothing I can do. Now we move into phase two, like, Grace, it's transformative and I want it, and can I really have it, and is this a joke? Is there a string tied to this coin? Like, can I really, really? Is this really for me? And when you find out that the answer is it really is actually for you, even though you're bad over here in category one, you are richly invited into category two.

Then what happens is that you say, Okay, it's incredible, it's all I want, but how do I say thank you? What does it look like to be like, in light of this, I know that I can't earn it, whole point is I can't earn it, and that sunk in. But even though I can't earn it, I still want to live like, I don't know, what do you want me to do? How do I say thank you for something like that? And now category three is, the answer to that is, obey me. If you love me, you will obey me. Right? And now we get again to the language of what does it look like to be a Christian? It looks like radical, humble, sacrificial obedience. Not to earn it because I worked through all that. I know I can't, but I would like to increasingly become what you wanted me to be in the first place, but that I couldn't be as an act of adoration and love.

Then when I find out that I'm even bad at saying thank you, loop back into category two, live in His grace. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Man, you are nicer than I could have possibly imagined. How do I thank you for that? And now I'm going to live this. So the Christian life, it starts in this category one, clean up your act. Well, that's not going to work. Is there a plan B? Yes. You're kidding me. If it's too good to be true, it's not true. I know, but this one is. Okay, great. What do I look like? What do you want me to do? Just name it. Give me a hoop to jump through. Anything I can do to demonstrate for you that you are better than anyone I've ever met in my entire life, that's what I want. Get it? And if you airdrop into a text, you could airdrop into a category three text and not recognize that it got here from one and two. Or you could airdrop into a category one text and think you're in category two, but you're not. Right? So there are texts that say, Hey, be perfect. Oh, I didn't think that was the Gospel message. Well, it is because it's what drives us into His grace, or it's how we express our gratitude. Okay? So how are we doing? Does this land? Does this make sense?

So I'll show you some of the yes? There was a church in, like, a part of the hunter of the world, and it said, Belong, believe, behave. Yes. Okay. So Belong, believe, behave. Right? So we come what ends up happening, we often we often have to belong. It's funny because we ask people to be like, You've got to believe in order to be part of this community. But usually it's the other way around. I have to belong before I believe. But then once I'm there, as long as we understand that the behavior yes, yes, yes, but the behavior is always not so that we can prove that we deserve to be part of the community, but as an expression of thanks that I never belonged, never deserved to be here, but I'm here nevertheless. Right? Got it? Okay.

Robin? He gets more than thanks because in the center, when you're believing and he puts his Holy Spirit in you, it's an outflow of his presence in you. This is absolutely true. This is a great—what Robin is saying is not only, it's not merely the case that I'm over here expressing gratitude, but Robin is adding to it this layer that I'm also something happened over here. In category two, some weird thing happened where Jesus moves into my life, moves into my very self, and now embodies me. In the language of Jeremiah and Ezekiel is that he will move us to follow his decrees. It's like he enables us to finally become an obedient people. And this is actually one of the texts that I wanted to go to, so it's a great segue. Go to Romans 8. And this may be a little bit surprising to you because we love Romans 8, well, love Romans 8 verse 1, I want. Here's what he says, okay?

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Right? This is, he's getting there because Romans 7 is full of, I don't do what I'm supposed to do, and I try to do, and I don't do, and I don't even want to do it, but I wish I could. All of that mangled mess of Romans 7 is like, I hate category one. I can't do it. And then he leaves category one in Romans 8 to come into category two with the exclamation,

Are you kidding me? There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And it's fantastic. But he doesn't stay in category two for as long as you think he does. He almost immediately moves over here into category three.

Romans 8 is about an outworked, for all the world to see, actual, genuine, Spirit-empowered righteousness. Listen to what he says. He says, There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. Over here, the law of sin and death—that was category one. For what the law was powerless to do, when the law says, Knock it off, Don, it's like, Okay, thank you. That doesn't do anything for me. Right? What the Law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature because there's something wrong with me, God solves it.

Look what he does. He sends his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. He absorbs all of my badness over here. Right? He condemns sin and sinful man. But look at the end goal. It is not so that I might live here by grace. That's true, but it's not the end state. He does this in order that, look at verse 4, the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us.

That is not declared righteousness, that is a lived righteousness. He does all this. He frees me from category one, brings me through category two into—in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature over there but according to the Spirit. That there's a real process by which he condemns sin, he deals with all my stuff, he fills me with gratitude, fills me with hope, he fills me with his Spirit so that I can actually do it.

I've become actually more what he meant me to be in the first place. I never could have done it alone, and if all you were doing was wagging your finger at me, then we wouldn't have even gotten off the launch pad. But if I have gone through this despair into grace and gratitude that the Spirit of God is alive in me, I actually can become increasingly over time more obedient, more loving, more patient, and to Jesus' point in Matthew 25, it could become the case that my natural orientation to broken, hurting, suffering people is to seek to do them good.

That I could see hungry people and feed them, and thirsty people and what do you do to a thirsty person? Give them a drink. Naked people and clothed them, prisoners and visit them. And that when I do that, when I'm living out the implications of my faith, Jesus is like, You know what? I love it when you do that, and it's like you're doing it to me. And this is what pleases me. It's this full process.

So this guy over here that's doing it, he is saved, he's rescued, he's forgiven because of the grace of Jesus to a person who's abandoned their self-righteousness. But it actually works. It actually matters and it transforms our lives and it's the proof that the whole thing was true. Makes sense? That's what's going on in Matthew 25.

First Don. This model works very well if we believe that the cause of all sin is pride over here, and the central feature of our Lord and Savior is humility. Yes. You go from pride to humility over there. Yes. So Don is saying this model makes such great sense of if you understand that pride is like the chief sin and Jesus' chief virtue, in fact, the chief virtue is humility, it all makes sense because as long as you're over here and you're just saying, Nuh-uh, I'm better than you think and I don't need your stupid help. You're never leaving this space.

You're stuck here forever. It is when you kind of get to the base like, Okay, this is embarrassing, but I'm not nearly as wise or patient or good or selfless or pick a thing, whatever, you know, as I wish you thought I was. But I'm like, alright, I got no hope, so I'm gonna have to come over here to somebody who deals with losers and hopeless cases and people that cannot do it. Right? And then if you realize, but really? Yeah. Then. Like, now my obedience is not fueled out of a desire to prove to you how great I am, right, because that died a long time ago. It is simply fueled by a desire to be like, I love you because you love me, and what does it look like to respond to that?

Okay, Katherine? Yeah. That process is incredible, the way you put that. When It's a process, Katherine. Yeah. It is, it is. As with Kathryn herself, once thought she'd do it, she learned to live in grace, but even in the midst of grace, she's like, Okay, but what do I do? And we have to just love this. And so then that's when you're in this spin cycle over here, Okay, I've to try to get it right. Oh, I really can't. And then you eventually, like, I get it. I don't get it. That's the deal. And so bit by bit, he moves us into here.

Now, here's your final exam. Matthew 19, Jesus, this rich young ruler comes to him and says, Jesus, what do I need to do to be saved? And Jesus says, Obey the 10 Commandments. And he's like, Yeah, no sweat. I've been doing that since I was like six. And then Jesus says, Okay, sell all you own and give it to the poor. Is that Category one or category three? One. What is that? Category one. It is category one. He's like, Okay, smarty pants, this stuff's baby school for you. This is so easy. You've obeyed the 10 Commandments since you were six years old. This shouldn't be hard at all. Sell all your own, give it to the poor. No sweat, right? And the guy was like, right? And that's what was supposed to happen. He wasn't telling him. He was not placing that as a category two response. Jesus is not saying, Here's how you're saved. Sell it all on your own. He's saying, Can we help you get a little bit downwind of your selfishness? Can I help you see that this is not as easy for you as you're acting like? Maybe you've got some theoretical universe in which you're keeping all the rules, but let me just pick one of them and ask you to put your money where your mouth is quite literally, at which point he goes away sad. Right?

This is the thing. Now, for you, it might be— we need to say to you, little Miss Self Righteous, why don't you, like, let's start with tithing, all right? And we'll see how that works. And you might be like, Oh, you have to keep 90%. All we're looking for is 10%. And you're like, Yeah, back off me. Okay? Well, that's fine, okay? But the point of that exercise would not be to extract 10% of your wealth as much as for you to get downwind of the fact that you really are greedy and selfish. And as you repent of that, and as you realize that you can't repent of that because you just love all your stuff, then eventually the dam breaks and you realize, My goodness, he, who had all wealth in the world, left everything. Right?

The way that Paul puts it is, How does that start? Paul says, Left glory to God. Yeah, what's the Corinthians' quote? I've said it 10,000 times, but I can't get there. God, no, no, no, Kelly, help rescue me. He was rich when he became poor for your—he was rich because, yeah, but that's how he—poor for your sake so that we—what? I know this. How does this go? Back to category one with you. Anyway, Jesus gives all that he—this is ridiculous. Jesus gives—how does it go? Do you want to look at it? No, it's Corinthians. It's—I'm just having a mental breakdown right now. So, Jesus has all wealth. He gives up everything so that we in him might become rich. Though he was rich, he became poor for us so that we—I cannot believe that I'm so tangled. So how does it go? Look it up. He rich, he became poor. Can't find—Though he was rich, he became poor so that in him we might become completely mangled. We've to go. Go to church. So he is. But this whole thing, you guys, Matthew 19 is this category. Romans 8 is that, is over here. And Matthew 25 is this. Matthew 25 is the result of genuine faith is a genuine orientation towards others. When you see those moralistic, righteous inducing texts, ask yourself, is it category one or is it category three? It's one or the other. They are never category two.

Conclusion

Okay, and Kelly? Karen found it. 2 Corinthians 8:9. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

That's what I was trying to get to. All right. Go to church. That's all. We'll do it again next week.