Evangelical Obedience - Part I

Evangelical Obedience and the Law as a Rule of Life

Well, this morning we take a slight pause from working through the text of Exodus as we prepare to begin chapter 20 and with chapter 20 the the Ten Commandments, which will take us all the way to the very end of April.

So we're gonna be in it for a while and we want to do diligence to prepare and be as prepared as we can be to get the most out of that time of studying the law of God, studying the Ten Commandments. So as I mentioned last week, we want to have the next, this week and the next three weeks, to consider this matter of evangelical obedience, something I had mentioned even a few weeks prior to that.

Evangelical obedience, and I thought a working definition of evangelical obedience can be found in Hebrews 12, 28. But before we look at that, let me give a reminder of some of the things that we've held out.

I mentioned what our confession, the Second London Confession, has to say about the law. This is from chapter 19 on the law, paragraph 6, and I've mentioned this for a few weeks now. Very vital to understand what this is saying.

Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others in that as a rule of life. Informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs them and binds them to walk accordingly.

So the great contrast we make is between being under the law as a covenant of works, being bound to fulfill it or else perish, as opposed to having the law as a rule of life. Not being under it as a covenant of works, but having it as a great use as a rule of life.

And we want to make great use of the next few months as a church body. The Christian life is a walk. The Christian life is, because of the flesh, a war. And our confession goes on to describe sanctification in terms of warfare, in which war, although the remaining corruption, for a time may much prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying spirit of Christ, the regenerate, in other words the reborn part, does overcome.

And so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, pressing in after a heavenly life, in evangelical obedience to all the commands which Christ, as head and king in his word, has prescribed to them.

So there you have that phrase, evangelical obedience. And of course, this is in contrast, especially in the 1600s when this was being written, to legal obedience, a contrast we made about a month ago.

So we want to lay the foundation of evangelical obedience. What is evangelical obedience? How can we walk in evangelical obedience? What are the dangers of legal obedience? How can we avoid those dangers?

How can we have these things as guiding lights in the weeks ahead as we study the commandments? And so we left off in Exodus 19 last week,.

The.

Assembly of Israel, the congregation of Israel at the base of the mountain, shook to the core. Remember we talked about the shell-shock experience of this theophany breaking out upon Mount Sinai, and how even the consecration was not enough to cause them to go up the mount.

Their hearts failed within them. Moses alone was called to come forth, but even he could only come close to the summit. When he got there, he'd have to be hid in the cleft of the rock. He could not behold the Lord of Glory.

But that great mediator, of course, was taken to the very height of God's presence. And from that, God gave him his law. The law inscribes not on the heart as it needs to be, but on stone and broken as soon as it was written, which is why Moses breaks the tablets over Israel, as we'll come to see in the narrative.

And the writer of Hebrews is contrasting that experience of Exodus 19, the great terror of God's presence on the on the mount, all that it means to approach him under this covenant of works. And he contrasts that with the grace that comes through the mediator, who is Jesus Christ.

And he says to the believers in Hebrews 12, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, that burned with fire, blackness, darkness, tempest, the sound of the trumpet, the voice of words, that those who heard beg that the word should not be spoken.

You have come to Mount Zion. To Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. And of course, the conclusion of this mount that we've come to, the fulfillment of Exodus 19, as the people of God in this covenant, which is in Christ's blood.

The result of this is, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God.

Acceptably,.

With reverence and godly fear, for God is a consuming fire. God has not changed. His law has not changed. But we are in a new covenant with a new mediator standing by his grace. So let us have grace. That's the first thing we want to focus on this morning.

Let us have grace next week that we may serve the week after that, acceptably, and the last week with fear and reverence. Now you'll notice there's sort of this pendulum swing. When I say evangelical obedience, you might feel this tension.

Evangelical is a fancy way of saying gospel, right? The gospel is the evangel. Evangelical is that which is of the gospel or accords with the gospel. So we have evangelical obedience. Now evangelical is gospel.

It's filled with grace. Then we have that word obedience, and already that feels a little cold, and you know, it sort of chafes, and we don't really like it. Let's get back to evangelical. And so you'll notice this pendulum swing.

Maybe you'll feel it over the next four weeks. We go from evangelical and highlighting all that we love about that word, and then the pendulum swings to obedience and all the demand, and you know, it's just gonna draw legality out of us.

And then we go back to acceptably. Why is it that we can serve God acceptably? Then we go back to with fear and reverence. And so there's this pendulum swing. But of course as you keep going between the two, eventually it will settle right in the middle where it ought to be.

Not cheap or shallow grace, neither a legality or a way of looking at obedience as something negative, but actually holding these things together, which is the task of the Christian's life. Law and grace, as we've said now for several weeks, is the heart of our faith.

Knowing the difference between the law and the gospel, you'll make a shipwreck of your faith if you don't know how to distinguish the two. Perennial battles are fought over this very thing. It was so in Paul's day.

It was so in Bernard's day. It was so in Luther's day. It was so in Whitefield's day. It is so in our day. This is a perennial battlefield for the gospel. To rightly divide the law and the gospel and then to rightly understand how they complement one another according to the overarching purpose of redemption.

So you'll feel this pendulum swing, I trust. It's almost natural as we work through the scriptures that we're drawn from one to the next. Evangelical then to obedience. Evangelical then to obedience. What we want to focus on this morning is Evangelical.

It is grace. Let us have grace. And I want to focus on that in three parts. First, I want to say grace is something we must receive. Secondly, grace is something we must grow in. And then lastly, grace is something we must give.

Justification by Grace Alone Through Faith Alone

So grace is something we must receive. That is the grace of justification. Being justified by faith in Christ. Grace is also something we must grow in. That is grace at work in our lives. The cleansing power of grace.

That is sanctification. Something we grow in. Grace is also something we must give to one another. And that is fellowship. Now there's more that grace is and more that grace does, but for the time we have this morning we'll focus on these three parts.

Let's begin with justification. Let us have grace. Grace that we must receive. We see this in Exodus, right? Salvation is by grace. God hasn't changed the way that He saves people. We saw it all the way through the plague narrative and the miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea.

Salvation is by grace. The Israelites at the wilderness could sing the same song the Ephesians could sing. For by grace we have been saved through faith. That not of ourselves. If you went and asked an Israelite how is it that you've been freed from bondage and you're here now on your way to a land that God is showing you, they would only be able to say that.

Well, God did it. We didn't do anything. We grabbed jewelry as we walked out. That was about as much as we did. Then we complained a lot, but the whole time God delivered us and saved us and rescued us.

That's what grace is. That's what grace does. And that grace is His grace. That grace is found in Him. That grace is from Him. It's an important point that we never abstract grace from the person and work of Christ.

We'll come back to that. Romans 3 .24, being justified freely by His grace. Not grace as some abstract phenomenon, but His grace. His acts. His work. His decree. Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

And so we enter into this realm of grace now. It's not just a different hat we put on. It's a whole new realm we enter into. New air that we breathe. New life that we've received. No wonder we have to be born into this realm.

It's a new birth. It's not something you can paste or patch on to your current life. You must be born again. You must be made new as a new creation in Christ. Entering into a new realm as a new creation.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand. Paul says it's not just something I have.

It's not some compartment in my life. I'm standing in it. I'm dwelling in it. I'm abiding in it. And here I rejoice in hope of the glory of God. So our salvation from first to last and all we ever see of salvation is that it depends upon the grace of God.

When we open that up in the mysteries of redemptive history, we see that even that has always been whether a foretaste or an accomplishment of the work of Christ. Not by our own words, but by His work.

When Paul describes grace, he can't help but contrast it with the law. Christ has delivered us from being under the law. And what we mean by that is under the condemnation of the law. Paul goes so far as to say in Christ we are dead to the law.

He says in Romans 6, you're not under the law, but under grace. Our whole new status, our way of operating, and what we operate from, all of that has shifted. We're now justified by faith in Christ because Christ has endured the curse of the law.

Christ has satisfied the law's demand. And so to use the language of our confession, we're not under the law as a covenant of work. Because Christ fulfilled it as a covenant of work on our behalf. By faith, we've been justified apart from works of the law.

Now, of course, this doesn't mean that we cast away the law. There's a reason we're going where we're going in Exodus. Of course, we don't cast away the law. As Paul himself says, the law is holy, just, good.

And certainly there's a purpose of the law that accords with grace. If law is a reflection or a manifestation of the perfections of God's character, then redemption will conform us to look like Christ, who perfectly manifested that law.

He didn't just do it sort of chafingly and regrettingly. He was, as David, one who delighted in the law of his God. One who walked in it and saw its light and was led and held by it. One that could turn it over in his heart by day and by night, meditating on all the richness of who God is.

Far from moving us against the law, grace enables us to fulfill the law. But as we'll see in two weeks' time, we only fulfill the law in an acceptable way because of Christ. And that's because in Christ there is grace.

And by grace, we have faith in Christ. And by that grace, we have received the Spirit who causes us to walk in the law as a rule of life. Anything less than that is not grace. So grace is not against the law.

Grace is that which, by walking with the Spirit, causes us to fulfill the law in an acceptable way. And one day, that will be fully realized, fully consummated in our lives. We will never break the law again.

We will be as Christ is when we see him, John says. Anything less than that is not grace, but rather a travesty or a mutilation of grace. I was reading Robert Trail over the past couple of weeks, who had a book in the 17th century called The Vindication of Justification.

Robert Trail, who was in the midst of many controversies, again, this perennial battlefield. And as new forms of legalism were rising up and as Catholicism was returning to England, Puritans like Robert Trail took great pains to clarify the gospel according to justification.

And justification seemed to be something that didn't have the rigor, didn't promote the kind of zeal and holiness that it needed to. And so Robert Trail wanted to vindicate justification. Did they say, no, this is the Galatian error.

This is what it means to try to turn the gospel into works of the law or try to make faith rather some act of legal obedience. And so he's sort of riffing from Romans 6 .1, where, of course, Paul is answering the same charge.

Shall we sin that grace may abound? And so Robert Trail says this. Do not some abuse the grace of the gospel and turn it into lawlessness? He says, yes, some do, ever did, will do. But it is only the misunderstood, the unbelieved doctrine of grace that they abuse.

The grace itself no man can abuse. You see what he's saying? You can twist the doctrines of grace. You can twist the preaching of grace. But if you have that grace, you cannot abuse that grace. You can twist the doctrine of grace.

You can mutilate and malform the teaching of grace. But the grace itself, no man can abuse its power, prevents abuse. And so he goes on. Why else does Paul not seek to prevent this abuse? When he addresses this in Romans 6 .1, does he address it by mincing grace smaller so that men don't choke upon it?

Oh, I got to I got to reel it back. I'm saying too much grace. People are going to twist this into lawlessness. I better chop it up really fine and make sure they know they really have to obey, too. Is that what Paul does?

Does he mix law with it to make it more wholesome? No, only by plainly asserting the power and influence of this grace wherever it really is. Do you see what Trail is saying? If you actually have this grace, you will not be able to abuse it.

Its power and influence will prevent you. And that's why Paul doesn't try to recreate or repackage grace. He simply says, God forbid those who think and act that way, their condemnation is just. In other words, they've never had it.

They don't have it because if they had it, they wouldn't think that way. That's not the way that they would act. And then he makes a very important point again, getting back to how we must never abstract grace from the person and work of Christ.

And this is what Trail says. This grace is all treasured up in Christ. This grace is offered to all men in the gospel. This grace is poured forth by our Lord and it works by faith and it's drunken as we act in faith and it becomes in us a living spring which must, which must break out and spring up in all of our ways.

And so we're exhorted to drink more and more and more of this grace by faith. That's how Paul deals with lawlessness. We are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, apart from works of the law.

If we lose that, we lose everything. If we lose that, we don't have a gospel. If we lose that, we lose our own souls. We are justified by grace alone, through faith alone. Let us have this grace of justification.

Sanctification as Growth in Grace

Secondly, let us have this grace of sanctification. In other words, grace isn't just what we receive from God by faith, but it's also something we're given to grow in. Grace is something that we grow in.

This growth is by grace, toward grace, away from sin. Romans 6, as Paul continues this argument in Romans 6. Present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, your members as instruments of righteousness to God, for sin shall have no dominion over you.

Why is it that sin has no dominion over a believer? Is it because believers work so hard to memorize the commandments and they strive with every fiber in their being that they're not going to mess up again?

They're going to obey that commandment. They're watchful over every commandment and they uphold that law before them. They live by that law. They breathe by that law. That law is life to them. Is that how they're able to have no dominion of sin?

Paul says it's exactly the opposite for those who live that way. You who would be justified by works of the law, Paul says to the Galatians, how is it that you receive the spirit? Was it by obeying the law or was it by hearing and believing?

How is it that sin has no dominion over us? Is it because we live and stand on and dwell in and abide by the law? Is it because we walk with these heavy stone tablets in front of us, bearing us down, dragging them toward glory?

No, Paul says, in fact, that aggravates the condition of sin. When the commandment comes, sin revives and we die. Why? Because of this covenant of works, this obligation, this burden that neither we nor our fathers could bear.

When that commandment comes in this covenantal context, it damns us. It ruins us. It bears us down. It's a yoke we can't escape. Now we have this dread, this fear, this almost hatred toward God. That was Luther's experience.

The more he tried to work from law toward law, the more he began to despise God. How could God expect this of me?

I can't do this.

Why would God demand this of me and yet and yet give me no grace, no help along the way? But why? What is Paul's argument? It was a great discovery to Luther, of course. Sin shall have no dominion over you.

Why? Because you're not under the law, but you're under grace. Notice what is corollary. It's because you are under grace that sin has no dominion over you. It's confirmed by the very next verses. What then?

Shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. The main point is clear. It's because you're under grace that sin has no dominion over you. And what Luther had to discover is what Paul had to discover when he converted to Christ.

I do not set aside the grace of God. If righteousness could come by the law, he died for nothing, for no reason. And so Paul had to learn that he had set aside the grace of God. It's nice to have grace, but what really matters is us keeping this law, keeping these stones, walking in the works of the law, putting a hedge around the law.

This is what gives me my security, my comfort, my assurance, my zeal. This is what will motivate me. And Paul recognized in his own life all of that led to death, frustration, antagonism, dread. He had saw in himself that all he had done was set aside the grace of God.

Maybe that's how I enter in, but now I've got to work to keep it. Grace was something that could be put to the side. And Luther, likewise, of course, being an Augustinian monk, he had much to say about grace, but he didn't understand what Augustine had come to understand in the Pelagian controversies.

And so Luther, like Paul, learned, I cannot set aside the grace of God. And in my flesh, I'm prone to always set aside the grace of God, to assume it. And so you and I were as easily bewitched like the Galatians were bewitched.

Legality, as we've said, is the default of our flesh. With little effort, with little thought, we creep back toward merit theology. Salvation as though it must be earned, or at least we maintain it. God meets us halfway and then we're no longer operating by grace.

We're no longer walking with the spirit. We're setting aside grace. We think that grace is somehow a last resort or at best a pat on the back. You know, it's all about your law keeping, your effort, this hedge, this way.

But don't worry, grace is there to encourage you. A little pat on the back. Grace is a safety net, your last resort. You try as hard as you can in the works of the law. The law is going to motivate you.

When you fall, grace is the safety net that will catch you and get you back to square one so you can keep trying in that way. No. Treating grace as something that is initial or initiatory, treating grace as a last resort, as a safety net.

Treating grace as a pat on the back, something that can begin to motivate, but the law has to take us the rest of the way. All of these things completely misunderstand what Paul means in Romans 6 .14.

Sin has no dominion because we are not under law, but under grace. Real growth in grace will be a result of loving the Lord God, of apprehending His mercy rather than dreading His condemnation, beating the flesh, sweating and striving to cultivate and produce change in ourselves by ourselves.

And I trust you know this by experience, that when you've operated in that way, you haven't gained fruit. In fact, you've lost fruit. We think somehow laying aside besetting sins comes from the demand of the law, the weight of the law, the fire of the law.

And if we fail there, then grace will pick us back up and get us back to that place. But as we know from experience, it is always grace that brings our surrender. It is always grace that not only humbles us, but then buds all the things we sought for by ourselves and could not find, that produces transformation in our lives.

Only then do we surrender. Only then do we lay aside. What are you tasting that's causing you to lay aside besetting sins in your life?

What does Peter say?

Peter says that to lay aside all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking, that laying aside that comes from something. It comes from tasting something. It's the same, it's a variation on Paul saying, sin has no dominion because you're under grace.

Here's how Peter would put that in culinary terms. Laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking. Why? Why are you laying that aside? It's because you've tasted the wrath of the Lord, His justice, which will hunt you down, the things that you must stand and account for at the end.

You've tasted that. Therefore, lay all this aside. Now, what does Peter say? If indeed you've tasted, the Lord is gracious. If you've tasted, the Lord is gracious, you'll lay aside these things. Not begrudgingly, not not like it's some burden, but willingly, it'll be the burning desire of your heart.

Get this hypocrisy out of me. Get this envy away. Cut off my evil speech. Lord, I've tasted that you are gracious. Therefore, I lay all this aside. Lord, I recognize I'm under grace. Therefore, sin will not rule me.

We sang this last Sunday night at SLBC from Isaac Watts. Nor all thine heavenly charms, nor thy revenging hand could force me to lay down my arms and bow to thy command. Oh, shall I never feel the meltings of thy love?

Watts knows. Love melts. Am I of such hell hardened steel that mercy cannot move? Now, for one powerful glance, dear Savior, from thy face, this rebel no more withstands, but sinks beneath thy grace. Grace.

It's the grace of God that melts the heart. It's the grace of God that sinks that rebel will. It's the grace that after having done so, builds that up again, builds up the will in a.

New direction.

In new light, a new strength. And so now, brethren, Acts 20, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up.

The law will tear down.

It has that schoolmaster ability to put you down to size, cut you down to where you need to be in humility. It has no power to build you up. And so we're commended to the word of grace, which is able to build us up.

The grace which justifies is the grace which sanctifies. There is no other grace. As we said, all of grace is treasured up in Christ Jesus. And so the grace that believers need for justification, this alien righteousness that's imputed to our account, that grace of justification also turns into the grace of sanctification.

We go from receiving it to now growing in it and more importantly, growing by it. It's a walking grace. We walk from grace, by grace, toward more grace. Because we're walking by Christ, with Christ, toward more of Christ, and all of grace is treasured up in Christ.

And so if you're struggling in your walk, if you're losing in your war, could it be that sin is having dominion over you because you're standing on law, you're operating under law, you're not standing on grace, you're not operating under grace, grace being treasured up in Jesus.

This is another way of saying, could it be that you've gone astray and you've lost sight of the Lord? And of his grace and of his word, which builds you up. It's the grace that Peter mentions in 2 Peter 3, 18, grow in the grace.

And knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so you see there it's grace that we grow in. Problem is, we take that word grow and we lop off everything else, grow in grace. And what does that do to our flesh?

I've got to grow in grace. Tomorrow, I'm really going to hit the deck, Ryan. All right. This is going to go. Here's my resolution here. I'm going to grow, grow, grow. Yes, grow in grace. And we make grace a way of operating under law.

But what does Peter say? He doesn't say you better grow, you better grow in grace, you better grow. What does he say? What are you growing in? Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

That's how you grow in grace. You grow in his grace. You grow in the knowledge of his grace. You grow in him. We emphasize growth and then we stop short. We have, if you've ever been to our home in our downstairs bathroom, we have a little framed wooden plaque that says grow in grace.

I'm tempted to pitch it now after preaching this, but maybe I'll keep it. Of course, they lop off the most important part. To just say grow in grace is missing what Peter's saying. He's not simply saying grow in grace.

And then we turn that into this legality, this merit theology. What he's saying is grow in the grace of Jesus, grow in the knowledge of Jesus, grow in Christ. That is how we come. To have dominion over the sins that so easily beset us.

Robert Trill, just going further in his book, he raises the question, of course, because he was writing in the days of these controversies, as we said, what was known as the antinomian controversy, which caused all these works on justification to fly off the presses.

And Robert Trill, of course, is answering it, basically, in some ways, responding to to people like Richard Baxter, what we might call neo-nomianism, a new way of understanding the law. And the idea was that we have to combat ungodliness and moral decay.

And what does that always look like? Preachers have a bad habit of basically turning Old Testament narrative into moralism. Right. And it's essentially what was happening in the 17th century. They were worried about addressing besetting sins in their congregations, in their society.

And it's like, let that law trumpet forth. And then Christ became something marginal or something to the side. They were laying aside the grace of God in trying to address sin and trying to make the people sanctified.

And Robert Trill is getting at this point. Is there not a great decay among professors, meaning those who have a profession of faith? Is there not great decay in real godliness among professors? Are we like the old Protestants or the old Puritans?

Now, he means, you know, the past 5 ,100 years. For us, it's more 400 years. And Trill is saying, we're not like the old Puritans. He's a Puritan. And he's saying, I wish I was like the old Puritans. Oh, Robert, if only, Bobby, if only you could see things now.

Are we like the old Protestants or the old Puritans? I answer the decay and degeneracy is great, but what's the cause and what will be its cure? Is it because the doctrine of morality and virtue and good work is not preached enough?

Oh, this cannot be. There has been for many years now a ministry in this nation which always has this as a constant theme. Yet the land has become Sodom in its lewdness, and this tree of profanity is so overgrown, the sword of the magistrate can't lop off its branches.

Is it because men have too much faith in Christ? Or too little or none at all. Would not faith in Christ increase holiness? Did it not always do so? Will it not still do it? Was not the holiness of the first Protestants eminent and shining for this reason?

The certain spring of this wickedness in the land is ignorant and unbelief in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, he is exactly right. What is a default in a fleshly approach to sanctification in a congregation, it's the same thing we do as individuals.

We have this legal pattern, this merit theology that creeps into our walk, somehow we're trying to strive and sweat and earn, and we've laid aside the grace of God. We're not doing it from grace toward grace.

We're doing it by the flesh, by our effort, by our zeal, as though it was legal. But holiness only comes from faith in Christ because faith in Christ gives you access to this grace in which you're standing.

It gives you more of Christ himself. Do you see grace considers the redemption which Christ purchased on the cross? It prods and stirs and convicts and carries closer and closer, which is to say, apart from the grace of Christ with me, I'm unable to walk.

I'm unable to obey. I'm unable to be sanctified. I can't grow in holiness. I must have Christ and I must have his grace. So this is the distinction that is made. And this isn't just, of course, part of sanctification, but it gets to even where sanctification brings us, which is repentance.

And even here, men like Robert Traylor, the Merriman that I mentioned a few weeks ago, they made a distinction between legal repentance and evangelical repentance. For this very reason, legality will go everywhere with you.

There's no refuge from it other than Christ. As soon as you step away from that shadow of the cross, legality is there to convince you, here's what you must do. Here's the only way until you've spent all your strength and all your hope and you have this certain dread and distance from the Lord, your God.

That's legal repentance. The conviction, the right conviction that you've broken the law of God that can only produce fear, fear of judgment, separation from him. It's that Adamic instinct to run, cover and hide.

You don't want his presence. His presence is the worst thing. It's worse than your sin. His presence is worse than hell. That's legal repentance. And it leads to legal sanctification, but evangelical repentance, repentance that recognizes, Lord, you have convicted me and you are right and you are holy and you are just and I am lost and I am ruined apart from your grace.

Save me.

Cleanse me, hide me in my savior, draw me close to him, let me taste that he is gracious, let me draw near to him that I willingly put off all these things that have encumbered me and tripped me up. Let me be led by his glory and his beauty and his goodness and his mercy.

I'm an adopted son. I'm an adopted daughter. This this nearness, that's not a dread, it's not a legal fear, it's evangelical. That leads to real repentance, real sanctification, real holiness. That's what the Shorter Catechism gets to in eighty seven.

Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin. And apprehension of the mercy of God and Christ, you see, that's the key, that's real repentance, that's repentance unto life, that's godly sorrow rather than worldly sorrow.

You're apprehending the mercy of God in Christ and that causes you to turn, to run, to cast off, to cling, to taste, to breathe, to stand. That's the gospel. And of course. That doesn't mean somehow you're passive, there's no room for let go and let God, it just means as you're seeking to do these very things, you must always be sure that you're going from grace toward grace.

Rather than this legal repentance or legal sanctification, Paul could say, by the grace of God, I am what I am. His grace toward me was not in vain. We're ambassadors for Christ in this very way. Second Corinthians six, Paul said, as as workers together with him also, we plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

What does he mean by that?

What would it look like to receive the grace of God in vain? It would look like what the Galatians were doing. As far as Paul is concerned, they they were so foolish. They had been bewitched. They had started out so well and now they were making a shipwreck of their profession.

They somehow twisted the grace of God into merit, into legality. That's what it looks like to receive the grace of God in vain. And it's easy just in conversations, especially when someone's being convicted.

You can almost sense there's an embarrassment about mentioning grace or describing grace. It almost feels like if I say grace, I'm not taking my sin seriously. Or yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that there's grace and forgiveness, but it's really on me to kind of.