Grace and Law I: Our One Portion

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and we are starting a new podcast series today and it is called The Law and the Gospel and it's based on this book by Ernie Reisinger and I'll mention it again in a minute.

Normally I will have someone to help me, Steve Crampton. He's a constitutional lawyer, a member of Christ Church where I'm one of the pastors, and he's also a man who is on the board of Media Gratia. Steve's been a really good friend to the ministry, but more importantly a man who has walked with the Lord and spent his life thinking about the implications of the righteousness of God, the application of that in his law to our lives as believers, but also in society and how to work that out in practical ways.

So Steve's going to be joining us in a few weeks, but I wanted to have a couple of sessions where we look at some introductory issues before we look at the highlights from this book. Now our theme is the relationship between the law and the gospel in the life of the believer.

In the New Covenant, what place does the law have? How is that to be understood in light of grace, especially when we look at the writings of Paul in the New Testament. If there is kind of a surface level reading of key texts, it can come across as if Paul is saying that the law has nothing at all to do with the Christian, that the law is only bad news, and that any attempt to apply the law into the New Covenant life is an inappropriate, you know, theologically dangerous idea.

That maybe, you know, we're legalists or maybe we've slipped into the camp of the Judaizers where we say, well, yes, Jesus is wonderful, but what we need for real holiness, for, you know, for godly families, for obedient churches, is we need Jesus plus some of the law.

And so how do we understand those passages? How do we understand the interplay of these things? And that's what we'll be looking at in the coming weeks. Now there are topics throughout Christian history that often rise to the surface of the kind of the Christian culture, and they become the focus of heated debate.

And I'm referring to topics that are debated by genuine believers, so I'm not talking about kind of heretical ideas that are on the outside edge of Christianity throughout the years, but within true Christianity there are different degrees of emphases on these topics, and if we're not careful, you know, we kind of tend to polarize ourselves.

I think that in those topics, oftentimes the wise course, the biblical course, tends to be kind of between the extremes. The relationship between the law and the gospel in the life of the believer is one of those topics that has frequently resurfaced, especially as the church deals with issues of lax morality or perhaps a wrong grasp of the nature of justification.

The good news is that if it's a topic that has resurfaced among genuine believers, then that means that there are probably some very good resources, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can go with our open Bible and a good book from the past writers, and they've already done a lot of the heavy lifting for us.

There's a couple of books I want to recommend on the topic of the law and grace, and one is the one I just mentioned, and this is the one we'll be primarily focusing on. Steve and I will be trying to hit the high points from the chapters of this book, The Law and the Gospel.

Now, who is Ernie Reisinger? Reisinger has passed away. He was a pastor as a Reformed Baptist. He was a leader. He was the first American on the Banner of Truth Trust's board. He was also instrumental in laying the foundation of what later became the Founders Ministries, and this is published by Founders Publications.

So Founders Ministry is an effort within the Southern Baptist Convention to kind of return the Baptists to their more Reformed roots. So his book, I think, is not only very helpful, but it's up-to-date.

So when we read his book, if you get this book, we'll put the information in the show notes. It's not as if you're reading someone from 400 years ago that you might find difficult. Reisinger does a good job of speaking to modern humanity, so we're going to use this as our guide.

There is another really good book that I want to recommend that was published decades ago, and it's by a man named Ernest Kevin, and it is called The Grace of Law, and it deals with these topics from the Puritan perspective.

So what Kevin does is he reaches back into the Puritan writings and perhaps you're not aware that the Puritans, this was a debated topic, as the some of the Puritan pastors saw the heavy emphasis on regeneration and grace and justification that is received through faith alone, imputed from the life of Christ, those emphases at times could be abused, and as they saw the abuse of those, they tried to correct that in their preaching and in their writing.

One Puritan, Richard Baxter, was kind of a leader of a small group that reacted so strongly, I would say, and I think that most would agree, that his reaction was so strong that he actually went too far, and his answer to the lax view of obedience or of the law or, you know, of holiness, his reaction to that was as bad as the original problem.

His cure was as bad as the disease. He went into Amaraldianism, which we don't have time to talk about, but basically Baxter viewed justification as something that, you know, you had now by faith freely given, and we would agree there, but at the end of your life you needed to add good works.

John Wesley loved Baxter's view a hundred years later and pointed to Baxter and said, see, me and my followers, the Arminian Wesleyan Methodist, we are in line with the Puritans. Really he wasn't, but he was in line with Baxter.

Owen, John Owen and other Puritans, wrote against Baxter's view and tried to do two things. Tried to show how the free grace of Christ really does produce in the believer a love for God's law and a holy lifestyle, while at the same time, so answering this lawless drift, but at the same time answering Baxter's error.

So Kevin, Ernest Kevin, chooses in his book a number of key texts from the Puritans, and we may be able to borrow from some of those in our coming weeks. But before we get to that, what I want us to do this week and next, is I want us to take just a little bit of time to look at a small scriptural picture of the believer and the commands of God, because I think with many of our confusing questions as Christians, I think that oftentimes the confusion comes not because the Bible is unclear or that you need to understand Hebrew and Greek, but because we have an approach to the topic.

So we've chosen a certain angle, and as we're walking up to this theological significant doctrine, we're coming from an angle that's wrong, from a perspective that's wrong, and if we can get the approach correct, then I find that about 90 of the work of interpretation is done for us.

The heart, the perspective, you know, the approach is clear, it's biblical, and then when I read those texts, I find that most things tend to fall in place without too much work. But it is not easy to get ourselves in a right frame of mind to study a doctrine, especially if we live in a day where different groups within Christianity are arguing with each other, and sometimes that happens over this issue.

What part does the law have in the life of a believer, and how does it fit in with grace? So if your favorite authors have a very distinct view, you tend to approach it from that view. Someone else may have favorite authors on the other side of the argument, and so what I want us to do is look at the scriptures, because I don't think it's that confusing.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I believe that the scriptures will help us get the right perspective, and once we have the right perspective, the biblical texts, in a sense, are free to speak for themselves without being filtered through a warped lens that we don't even know is there.

So let me read the passage that I think can be a great help to us, and it is from Psalm 119, which if you've been following our podcast in the last months, you know has been one of my favorite portions of scripture, and it starts in verse 57, and it's just four simple verses, 57 through 60.

Listen to what the psalmist writes. The Lord is my portion. I have promised to keep your words. I sought your favor with all my heart. Be gracious to me according to your word. I considered my ways and turned my feet to your testimonies.

I hastened and did not delay to keep your commandments. What we have in the passage, I think, that is so helpful is primarily we have one great statement of fact, and it is a fact, so we don't have a right to doubt it as a believer.

For those who are in Christ, for this Old Testament believer who's looking forward to the finished work of the Messiah, we look back at it, but saved by grace through faith like we are, there's a great fact that's stated, but it is a gracious fact, and it ought to shock us, and if it weren't written in the Bible, we ought to rise up in arms and say, no man has a right to speak this way, certainly not me.

A fact stated. What follows then is, I want to call three responses of the heart, and that's where we really see how the believer's heart approaches the commands, the law of God. So let's consider the fact that's stated, and that is simply that God is my portion.

The psalmist says God is the portion of the believer. Now there are a couple of things that are involved in that statement, and we don't want to miss them, and the first is this, that every believer, it's equally across the board, every believer, because of the triune work of God, has the infinite God Himself as their portion.

That's amazing. Here is a God of infinite magnitude, and so my portion is that God has become mine, and I have become His. You know that wonderful statement in the Song of Solomon, between the bride and the husband, is a perfect statement for the believer and God.

My beloved is mine, and I am His. There is that transaction that occurs in God dealing with the soul, opening our eyes and freeing our heart from the love of sin, turning it to love Him, a new heart, a new way of thinking, a new freedom where we are enabled by the amazing grace of God to choose Him, not us.

And so our response to that wonderful work of God within us that we call regeneration, or the new birth, is that with this new life, we repent, we turn away from in order to turn to, and we lay hold of, we appropriate by faith, we grab hold.

One simple way of saying it is, I give all I know of myself, and I take all I know of Christ for myself. When that occurs, you can say, with all honesty, God, who is my God, by grace, is my portion. Infinite God, timeless God, infinitely good, not just magnitude, but moral goodness, purity, benevolence, pity, compassion, tenderheartedness, wisdom, faithfulness, patience, every perfection is found in our God.

And when He is your portion, what we're saying is that every perfection comes from the presence of our God and meets us in friendship. So the Lord is my portion. What a wonderful statement, and what a gracious statement.

It's not something any of us could ever say. I have obeyed well enough, and I have been a Christian long enough, that I can now say the Lord is my portion. Christianity is not a journey where you're kind of climbing, and once you reach a certain level, the reward is this fullness.

Of course, there is growth in the Christian life, but really, we begin with that fullness. All that the Father planned in eternity past, all that the Son has actually accomplished and purchased for His people, and all that the Holy Spirit daily applies to us as a foretaste of what's coming, all of that is ours as a form of grace, the purest form of grace.

It is an absolute gift. The Lord is my portion. Now, when we say that, there is something else implied there, and that is that as humans, we need a portion. We are not self-sufficient. Now, let's be clear.

It is not because we're sinful that we need God. It is because we're created beings that we need the Creator. The angels are not self-sufficient. The holy angels in heaven are constantly dependent upon God and His favor, and it's not because of their sinfulness, but because of their creatureliness.

We are dependent beings by nature, but when we look at the realities of our life, while we are dependent by nature, we are also dependent because of our sinfulness, and so we have to be honest with ourselves, and we have to be honest with ourselves in front of God in this book.

With an open Bible, we say to God, God, I cannot sustain my life. Not really. I need more than what I can provide. I cannot provide a sufficient portion, so I need a portion. I need a good portion, so I need something from outside of me to be given, and I need a portion that's good if I'm really going to live life, and I don't just need a good portion, but I need a good portion that is large because our souls have been created to desire large things.

We yearn for something more than, you know, what we can buy or what the next relationship can offer. I need a portion given to me. I need a good portion. I need a large portion, and I need to have a right to that that I know is just and fair, and in Christ, God has given us a portion.

He has given us a good portion. He has given us a large portion. It is infinite, and He has given you a right to come and to daily draw upon that portion. So, we don't want to think of the Christian life as being something like this.

I have a lot of good things, and then I went to church and heard about Jesus, and I added another good thing, but the Christian life really is this. Christ is my life. I have a lot of things in my life.

He is life. Paul said it to the Colossians when John writes his first epistle. Listen to what he writes, thinking back decades earlier when he walked with Christ, when he saw Christ in His physical form.

John writes this, "...what was from the beginning, what we have heard and what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning Jesus," but he describes Him like this, "...concerning the word of life," and then he goes on to say, "...and the life was manifested.".

The life, the life of God, the divine life, came to us, John said, and I touched His human form, and God pulled back the veil and showed us real life when He gave us His Son. Christ is not just part of our life.

He is our life. He is the Christian's portion. Now, I was reading through this maybe a month ago, and I had to stop and write in my spiritual journal, which I pretty much always have a notebook near me if I'm reading, and I wrote this down, self-test.

Let me read you what I wrote to myself. So I said, okay, let me see. Am I living today, right now, am I living as if I have other portions, and so God is one of the portions in my life? Am I living as if sin and selfishness are still a valid portion?

Am I living as if the world is still my portion? Am I living as if other people around me, let's say it this way, the good gifts of God that God gives us, friendships, family, health, you know, things, the many kind gifts that God gives along the way, am I living as if that really is the portion, what comes from God's hand?

Am I dreaming of something, imagining that tomorrow something will come my way that will satisfy me? So there's always this thing in the future that will be my portion. What fuels my choices this afternoon?

Is it the fact that God is my portion? Charles Bridges, who wrote a commentary on Psalm 119, said this, the Lord can never be enjoyed even by his own children, except as the portion, not only above all other portions, but in the place of them all.

Well, as we close down the episode today, I want to give you a few of my favorite quotes that I jotted down in my journal, that some of them come from Bridges, some from other places. Let me give you three of them.

And the first is from Augustine, the early church leader in the late fourth, early fifth century. Augustine said this, all right, I'm going to give you Latin first, and then, you know, so if you don't want to hear Latin, just go to sleep, wake up in a second, I'll give you the English.

Here's a Latin, da mihi te domine, or in English, Augustine wrote this, Lord, give me yourself. I mean, that to me is just such a simple, portable request. So, I write that down on a note card, and I stick it by my Bible in the morning, and as I open my Bible there, I see the card, Lord, give me yourself.

And it just helps me to remember the appropriate response to his work in my soul. Another is by Count von Zinzendorf. Now, he is an 18th century man, an aristocrat who gave up all that he had, his enormous wealth, poured it into a religious revival movement called the Moravians.

He really became the leader of them. The Moravians were certainly not a theologically perfect group, but their earnestness for Christ puts our theologically correct, but maybe less earnest lives to shame.

And one of my favorite quotes by Zinzendorf is this, I have one passion, it is he. I have that written and put on my prayer bench, and I have marked through the word passion, and I've written above it portion.

I have one portion, it is he. I can say that every day. I cannot every day say I have only one passion. I want to be able to say that. I'm not there yet. And then a final quote, and that is again from Charles Bridges.

He goes on at the end of this verse to point out that there is something even more amazing than a sinful creature being able to look up to a holy God and say, by the gracious work of God, he has become my portion.

Here's what Bridges says, he that chooses God in Christ for his delight and his portion may conclude confidently that God has chosen him to enjoy God and to be happy in him forever. Now, how that works itself out in practice is what we'll talk about next week when we talk about the three responses that are mentioned in Psalm 119 verse 58 down through 60.