The ABC’s of the Christian Life (10): Following Jesus Christ Rightly #6a – Understanding Law & Grace

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Well, in recent weeks, we've sought to show what it is and how it is that we may follow the Lord Jesus rightly, that is, live the

Christian life as prescribed in Holy Scripture. And understanding our subject this morning is critically important, in my view, if we're to fulfill our desire and design to live rightly before him.

This is not an easy subject, but it's an important subject, and it really is foundational to know our

God better and to know how we relate to God. Understanding the matters of law and grace, a great deal of error exists among professing

Christians because they fall short, they fail in this matter of understanding what the

Scriptures teach regarding law and grace. In fact, there are whole books, of course, in the

New Testament that address this matter. The book of Galatians principally teaching the churches, a number of churches in the region of Galatia, which is in modern -day

Turkey, how they had embraced error, respecting law and grace, and Paul sought to correct them.

And so, to address this important matter, we want to consider the

Apostle Paul's instruction to the churches of Galatia. At some point, maybe before long,

I think that we'll work our way through on Sunday morning through the epistles of the Galatians, it would be good for us.

These churches had failed to understand, believe, and practice as Christians live, as Christians under God's grace, even though they had been initially instructed rightly by the

Apostle Paul himself, the Lord used to start these churches. He had taught them the way of grace in the gospel, but they had departed from that teaching regarding grace, for through the influence of false teachers, they had sought to live before God based upon the law of God as a covenant.

And this matter of law and grace and this matter of covenants, in some ways, is perhaps one of the most difficult issues to comprehend rightly in all of Scripture.

But again, it's very, very important that we do so. And so, the churches themselves were to be blamed, and Paul spoke some very direct words to them.

They were to be rebuked, and they were to be corrected. And so, we want to dive into Galatians chapter 4, in which we read of Paul's rebuke to these churches, and we'll read through the passage, and then we'll attempt to explain it somewhat, and then stand back and try and address the principles on a wider vista.

Galatians 4 .21. Galatians 4 .21. Galatians 4 .21. Tell me you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a bondwoman, the other by a free woman.

But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the free woman through promise.

Which things are symbolic, for these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is

Hagar, for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is and is in bondage with her children.

But the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written,

Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear, break forth and shout, you who are not in labor, for the desolate has many more children than she who has a husband.

Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the

Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what does the Scripture say?

Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.

So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which

Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

Indeed, I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.

And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ.

You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. For we through the

Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love.

You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from him who calls you a little leaven, leavens the whole law.

I have confidence in you and the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.

So Paul was writing churches that the Lord had begun through his ministry, but after Paul had left that region,

Paul's teachers came into those churches and promoted errant teaching respecting the nature of salvation in the

Christian life. Paul had proclaimed to them the gospel of God's grace, that sinners are saved by grace through faith alone, apart from any merit of works that fallen man does.

He had preached the gospel of grace, faith in Jesus Christ. But these false teachers said that Paul had taught them error, that God actually bestows his salvation upon those, yes, who believe on Jesus Christ, they claim to be

Christians. But in addition to faith in Christ, God bestows salvation on those who keep

God's law in order to merit and obtain God's forgiveness of sins and to become righteous before him.

And so it was Christ plus one's own efforts, and between the two you could obtain salvation.

And so essentially where Paul taught them that a saving relationship with God was through a covenant of grace, and we'll explain that in a few moments, based on what

Christ did, the false teachers, or Judaizers, they were Jewish teachers, taught that a saving relationship with God was attained through what they did.

That is, it was the reward, God gave a reward according to a covenant of works.

Covenant of grace, covenant of works. Paul taught that salvation was by grace, the false teachers taught salvation was by the merit of keeping

God's law coupled with faith in Christ. They claimed to be the true

Christian teachers. Well in order to illustrate to them their error, Paul called upon a familiar

Old Testament record and account to illustrate these two covenants, the two ways that the

Galatians had been taught on how to obtain salvation. Paul called upon the two wives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, and each of their sons,

Isaac and Ishmael, sons born to Abraham through these two women. Sarah was his legitimate wife, of course, and Hagar was the handmaiden to Sarah.

And it was believed and practiced back then, 2 ,000 years before Christ, that if a woman could not bear a child of her own, if her husband would foster a child through her handmaiden and the handmaiden gave birth in the presence of the wife, that it would be as though the wife had that baby, not the handmaiden.

And so rather than Abraham trusting the Lord to bring forth that baby from Sarah, Abraham listened to Sarah and went unto

Hagar, and thus Ishmael was born. Later on, Isaac was born.

And hence, all kinds of problems have resulted through history as a result of that. And so Sarah's son

Isaac was born through God's grace. She was too old to have a son, but she bore a son.

And his birth was the fulfillment of God's promise. God told Abraham and Sarah, Sarah is going to have a child.

God promised that. Isaac was the child of God's promise. Ishmael was born as a result of Abraham's lapse of faith, when

Abraham depended upon his own ability, his own flesh, in order to have a son through Hagar, Sarah's handmaiden.

And so Ishmael was not born due to God's promise, as Isaac had been born.

And so Isaac was the one favorite of God, Ishmael was not. Paul declared that these two sons were illustrative of the two covenants, the covenant of grace and the covenant of works.

Verse 24 and following read, for these are the two covenants. The one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, that's a reference to the covenant of the law,

God enacted with the nation of Israel through Moses. The law as a covenant, as a covenant of works, results in bondage, which is

Hagar, he says. For this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, that's where the Ten Commandments were delivered as a covenant, and corresponds to Jerusalem, which now is, it is earthly Jerusalem, where Judaism, the temple was centered, of course, and is in bondage with her children.

There is no liberty from sin through the law, only condemnation, slavery. But in contrast, the second

Jerusalem is mentioned, the Jerusalem above, that is heaven, is free, which is the mother of us all, in other words, all true believers in Christ.

And so Paul wrote of two Jerusalems. The first was the earthly Jerusalem, which continued to be governed by Jewish leaders who proclaimed that they related to God based upon the

Old Testament Mosaic covenant, by keeping the Ten Commandments. They had actually taken the law of Moses and turned it into a covenant of works.

Paul likens the earthly Jerusalem to the seat of Judaism with Mount Sinai, where God entered into covenant with the nation of Israel based upon his law, the

Ten Commandments. Those two tablets of stone was the covenant on which

God related with the nation of Israel. Paul referenced, however, a second

Jerusalem, which is the true spiritual city of God, not an earthly city, a spiritual city, the dwelling place of all those who have salvation and are the true members of God's people.

Clearly, Paul is setting forth the church Christians as spiritual

Israel. They are inhabitants of spiritual

Jerusalem in contrast to earthly Jerusalem. Paul then quoted

Isaiah 54 .1, which is a promise from Isaiah in order to substantiate his teaching.

For it is written, Rejoice, O barren, you who do not bear. This would have been a word of promise that the people of God were going to greatly expand, the kingdom was going to expand and encompass even the nations.

It's a metaphor calling upon Sarah, who had been barren, that she's going to have many, many children through Isaac.

Break forth and shout, you who are not in labor, she was barren. For the desolate, that would be

Sarah, has many more children than she who has a husband, that would be Hagar, who had a child,

Ishmael, before Sarah. And so this was God's promise of the kingdom of the

Messiah, of the Jerusalem above, that she would be like Sarah, although for a time barren,

God would see to it that she would bring forth many children, and so Paul was applying this prophecy to the growth and expansion of the kingdom of God over which

King Jesus reigns. And at the same time he was showing the diminishment of Judaism, who was likened unto

Hagar, who was cast off from the true people of God. You can well imagine why

Paul caught a lot of flack from his Jewish listeners, when he basically said, you

Jews who don't believe on Jesus, you're not sons of Isaac or Sarah, you're sons of Hagar.

Think about that, you're Ishmaelites, not Jews, is what Paul was saying of these ones who had refused to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well Paul then declared that Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile believers in Jesus Christ, are as Isaac was, children of promise.

If you're a Gentile and yet believe on Jesus, you're a child of Abraham, you're just as Isaac was, you were a child of promise.

In other words, you're one of the elect, God promised you, God the Father promised you to his son

Jesus Christ. Just as he promised Isaac, God has promised you as a

Christian, you are a child of promise. And he argues that just as Ishmael long ago,

Ishmael was 12 years older than Isaac, Ishmael persecuted Isaac when

Isaac was just probably a toddler and Ishmael was older. Paul argued that just as it was then,

Ishmael persecuted Isaac, so it is in this first century setting, these Jewish teachers, although they claim to say you have faith in Jesus, they couple that with you have to keep the law of Moses as a covenant through the works of Mosaic law.

They were troubling the churches of Jesus Christ just like Ishmael troubled Isaac. And so Paul is identifying the true people of God and these churches of Galatia were primarily

Gentile in nature. He's identifying these Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians in these churches as children of Abraham, just like Isaac was, children of promise.

And these Jewish false teachers who claim to be Christian and yet coupled faith in Christ with meritorious works of the law are in actuality as Ishmael.

Paul then exhorted the churches to resist and reject any and all teaching that would lead them to trust in their works for salvation.

And by the way, that is the natural tendency of fallen man, isn't it? We are naturally born legalists and you give us enough time without proper instruction and even if we're not reinforced in right instruction, we will tend to depend more upon what we do or what we don't do as though that is going to commend us to God rather than what

Christ did on our behalf. And so Paul warned them that this errant teaching to which they were giving themselves would take away their liberty of conscience.

You're going to end up being miserable, enslaved, enslaved to sin, you're not going to experience any liberty, deliverance from sin through that.

That law would bind their consciences resulting in no power to resist temptation, defeat sin, or even obtain salvation.

For Paul affirmed that it was through faith that the Lord Jesus saves and empowers his people to live before him.

And so again we read Galatians 5, 1 through 6, Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which

Christ has made us free. So you've got to resist that legalism. Do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

You go to a legalistic church and you're going to see people with the life and the joy squeezed out of them.

And they may be conforming to the rules, but there's something terribly missing, namely life, true spiritual life.

I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised, he's a debtor to keep the whole law.

In other words, if you want to go there and be circumcised, that obligated you. Circumcision was the first step initiating yourself into that covenant of works, as it were.

If you want to go there, if you're going to add the least amount of your work to Christ and what he did, well then you're under obligation to keep it all without any infraction whatsoever.

And you can see how that would tend to put you in bondage. In fact, if you go that route, he says in verse 4, you become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law, you've fallen from grace.

Not that they lost their salvation, but they fell away from the teaching of grace to which they had been grounded by Paul himself.

For then he reasoned, for we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

It's not a righteousness that we attain through the works that we do, but a righteousness that will be declared on the day of judgment.

It's a hope that we have. Thankfully, if you think you're going to stand in your righteousness on the day of judgment, you are in a world of hurt.

But Christians will stand in the righteousness of Christ. And so who can condemn when the righteousness of Christ stands in your place on the day of judgment, especially when

Christ himself is the judge? There's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. We're delivered from the law as a condemning letter.

The Ten Commandments cannot condemn the Christian because the Lord Jesus paid the penalty for breaking those commandments when he died upon the cross.

The commandments still are a guide to us, but they are no longer a condemning letter.

They cannot condemn the Christian. We've been delivered from condemnation when Christ died on the cross on our behalf.

And so we're to stand fast, therefore, in this liberty and resist yourself falling back into this wrong way, old way of thinking that it's me and what

I do or what I don't do upon which my salvation hinges. No, it's based upon who

Jesus is and what he did as my Savior, as one who went and did what

I could not do, pay for my sins, and therefore there is liberty.

And you have to stand fast in this liberty. Stand fast, therefore, in this liberty which Christ made us free.

Why do you want to forfeit that liberty and freedom and sense of forgiveness and go back into misery, guilt, bondage?

Now, in order for us to better understand this important Christian teaching, I wish to rehearse before us the essence and nature of covenant theology.

We're Reformed. This means we hold to and understand the Bible to reflect covenant theology.

And I want to explain what this is, essentially. It's the teaching of the apostles, of course, in the

New Testament, and it's reflected in this passage that we have read and considered. And so first understand that God created the human race in covenant relationship with him and one another.

In order for mankind to have a relationship with God, he must enter covenant with God, a covenant that God himself prescribes, initiates, and maintains.

There's no way that we as creatures can come to God. He has to come to us. That's very basic to the teaching of Holy Scripture.

The reason that God ordained that he would relate to us by means of a covenant relationship is due to the vast difference between us and him.

He's an infinite God. We are finite human beings. He is the creator.

We are the creatures. You and I cannot know God. He's an infinite God. And therefore, if we're going to know

God, he is going to have to reveal himself in a way that we can understand and relate to him.

And he does this through means of a covenant. If we're to know

God, have fellowship with God, it would have to occur through the means of a covenant relationship, one which is defined and delivered to us by God himself.

Our Baptist confession, which we do not regard as a creed, it's not Scripture, but it reflects, we think, biblical teaching, states clearly in Article 7, paragraph 1, this idea of covenant.

The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part.

He had to come down to us, which he had been pleased to express by way of covenant.

Now I want you to notice that definition of covenant doesn't even mention sin. It's talking about the vast difference between God who is the creator and we who are creatures.

He is so different than us, we cannot know him, we cannot relate to him. He has to condescend.

He has to, in some way, limit himself, reveal himself in a way that we can comprehend and relate to him.

It has to come from him. We cannot approach him, he has to approach us. The matter of sin isn't even dealt with here as of yet.

But this relationship with an infinite creator God must be by means of a covenant. And so we're saying that because God is so vastly different in essence and glory from his finite creatures, he must come to us of his own will.

And he must reveal himself to us and set the terms or grounds by which we may approach him, know him, and relate to him.

And by the way, this is unique to biblical Christianity. Every other religion of the world prescribes steps by which you can take to come to know

God. And yet biblical Christianity is just the opposite. It is God who condescends to come to us and reveal himself to us so that we might know him and relate to him.

What then is a covenant? Well, there are various definitions that have been offered. It's been said that a covenant is a union, two parties based on an oath, or a relationship under sanctions.

In other words, a relationship with certain stipulations. But really what we're saying, when

God relates to us based on a covenant, we're saying this, and it's in your notes there, bottom of page 3, because God is so vastly different in essence and glory from his finite creatures, he must come to us of his own will, and he must reveal himself to us and set the terms or grounds by which we may approach him, know him, and relate to him.

God is God, and you're not. And if you're going to know him, he has to reveal himself to you.

The fact is, God created us as covenantal creatures, as human beings. What does this mean?

Now, as Americans, we tend to be very individualistic. That's not how a lot of people are in the world, but that's how we are.

We do not see ourselves in a collective sense, but rather we're individualistic.

This is the way we are, this is how our culture is. Because we are human, and much more so because we're sinful humans, we view ourselves in isolation from others, as individuals.

But God, although he loves and saves us individually, regards us collectively. He regards us as his people or church, or those who are redeemed by Christ, or people as nations.

You have that throughout the Bible, don't you, where he speaks of nations collectively, or families.

God created us as covenantal creatures. We're bound together as a collective people, and God views us and relates to us as members of a single entity.

Well, we find that God makes covenants with these groups of people throughout Scripture, with individuals, but individuals who head up or represent peoples.

And so we have, for example, we read of a covenant God made with Noah and the entire race after the flood.

God covenanted with Abraham, but also with his descendants, Isaac, Jacob, twelve sons, a multitude of others, even the nations.

God covenanted with the nation of Israel through Moses at Sinai, with King David and his descendants, collectively.

And in the Prophets we find the promise of a new covenant. We find that in Jeremiah 31,

Ezekiel 36. And then, of course, we read of the realization of that new covenant promised in the

Prophets, that the Lord Jesus Christ himself instituted, which we just observed a little while ago, the night he was betrayed.

He took the cup, drank of it, all of you, for this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

That's the realization of the new covenant, promised in the old, realized in the new.

The New Testament, another word for testament, is covenant. We have the

Old Covenant Scriptures, the Old Testament. We have the New Testament, New Covenant Scriptures, the new covenant promised in the old.

Well, of all the covenants that God has made in Scripture, they can be classified into one of two kinds.

We've already mentioned the terms, covenant of works or the covenant of grace. There's been different attempts to describe all the covenants in different ways, but I think that the best way is to view it in this manner, one of two kinds of covenants.

Every covenant in Scripture is either a covenant of works or a covenant of grace. The covenant of works is a covenant

God made initially with Adam and Eve in the garden, a covenant to which the entire race is bound.

Again, the idea of collective were covenant creatures. When God made a covenant with Adam, He made a covenant with all of Adam's descendants, collectively the human race.

The entire human race is bound to that covenant that God made with Adam back in Genesis 2.

But after the fall of Adam into sin, God made known His promise of another covenant, thankfully, which is a covenant of grace that God had planned and purposed in eternity, through which

God calls sinners to receive salvation by His grace. And so right in the life of Adam and Eve, the two kinds of covenants were declared.

Covenant of works that God made with Adam initially in the garden. You can eat freely of all the trees, but stay away from that one, that tray of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so God's relationship with Adam and Eve was based upon Adam and Eve's obedience to God's law that He had set down in that garden.

After Adam and Eve fell into sin, God made known again this promise of another covenant. He promised that the seed of the woman would one day come and deliver

His people from their sin. And so these two kinds of covenants, this covenant of works, this covenant of grace, are very different in nature from one another.

The covenant of works is a relationship with God based upon what we do. That's the law of God.

The covenant of grace is a relationship with God based upon what God has done on our behalf through Jesus Christ His Son.

And so you can either relate to God in one of these two ways, the covenant of works, and you'll be damned forever, because nobody keeps

His law perfectly, or the covenant of grace, where great sinners can be pardoned and embraced by God in relationship with God because of what

Christ did on behalf of sinners. And so the covenant of works,

God established a covenant of works with the entire human race after He had first created Adam and Eve.

He placed them in that paradise, this Garden of Eden. God established this covenant with the entire human race through Adam who's described as a federal head, a representative of the human race, the common father of mankind.

And so when God made His covenant with Adam, God bound the entire race through all of history to this covenant.

Everyone born in this world comes into this world relating to God based upon a covenant of works.

Every person born into this world. God made this covenant with the entire human race through Adam.

Our confession of faith states it this way, and this is biblical. God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, by which

He, God, bound Adam, him, and all his posterity, all his descendants to personal, that means you and me, entire, complete life, exact, with no defection, no departure, and perpetual obedience.

Promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it and endued

Adam, him, with power and ability to keep it. Adam had the ability to keep God's law.

He didn't, of course, but he had the ability to. You and I don't have the ability to, we're sinners.

Adam wasn't a sinner initially. And so what is the nature of this covenant and what are the terms of this covenant of works?

Well, God established this covenant in relationship with Adam and his descendants conditioned on Adam keeping

God's law. And it wasn't that difficult. You can eat of every tree, be perfectly satisfied in this beautiful paradise, but don't eat of that tree.

And God's blessing on Adam would continue. And God's blessing through Adam would continue on the inhuman race had

Adam kept God's law, had he kept that covenant of works. And so when

God placed Adam and Eve in the garden, He said to them, The Lord God took the man, put him in the garden of Eden to work and keep it, and the

Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. He had everything to make them happy.

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

God created Adam to be his friend with whom they would have fellowship and to be his servant to work in the garden, paradise on behalf of God.

God made Adam his mediator between himself and his creation. God made Adam and Eve kings, priests, and prophets within the garden of Eden.

Adam was to govern creation on behalf of God, for God had given him dominion over what he made.

This is the function of a king. And then Adam would speak with God concerning his creation when they spoke with one another in the cool of the day.

This is the function of a priest, as a mediator between the creation and God. And Adam was to care for his garden according to the word that God communicated with him.

And so it's as though Adam was God's spokesman to his creation, and this is the function of a prophet.

Adam and Eve were to function as prophet, priest, and king. Again, the requirement that God had placed upon Adam was that of obedience.

The failure to keep his covenant, that is, disobey or transgress God's law, would result in death. Adam's obedience to God's law gained access to life from God and before God.

And so God required of Adam and Eve absolute, perfect obedience. The least infraction of God's law would result in death.

And it's commonly believed, and I'm in agreement with this position, that by his obedience, Adam would have earned or merited

God's favor. And it would result in eternal life, a blessed condition for Adam and Eve and all his posterity had he passed that test.

But again, Adam represented all people, and so when he failed, when he broke that covenant, we all broke that covenant.

And so this is what distinguishes the idea of the covenant of works. By Adam's obedience, he would have earned everlasting life by keeping the works before God, the works of God before God.

Arthur Pink described it this way, Since paradise, which was the description of the Garden of Eden, is one of the names of heaven, we may conclude that the earthly one in which

Adam was placed was a pledge of celestial blessedness. Had Adam survived his probation, preserved his integrity, he would have enjoyed heaven on earth.

This covenant of works that God made with the human race was a reflection of God's goodness. God's law is a reflection of God's holy character.

It's a good law. God's law is a manifestation of his holy nature.

And so for people to dwell in the presence of God, they must be holy as he is holy. They kept God's law, they would be holy, and they could dwell in God's holy presence.

And again, it was good and right that God would bind his creatures to this covenant of works.

God had given to mankind free access to all that he needed to be happy and content. God said to him,

Out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. Now it was right, however, for God to place a prohibition on Adam and Eve.

By Adam's obedience, he would continually show and confess God was God, and it was his,

Adam's, responsibility to obey his creator. And by his obedience,

Adam would show his love and his satisfaction for God's provision. He would obey because he loved

God, and God had been so good to him. Adam described the appropriateness of initiating this law to Adam and Eve in this way.

In forbidding Adam to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, his maker asserted his dominion and enforced his authority.

That it was proper for God to do so cannot be lawfully questioned. As the sole proprietor of the garden, it was fitting that he,

God, should emphasize his rights by this restriction. And moreover, since Adam was created a rational creature and endowed with freedom of the will, he was a fit subject for command and accordingly was placed under the law.

Thereby, Adam's loyalty and subjection to his creator and Lord were put to the test. Trial of his obedience was made to discover whether the will of God was sacred to him.

It was both fit and just that man should remain in the state of holiness in which God had made him if he would continue to enjoy his favor.

And thus he was placed on probation, made the subject of divine government. Adam was not an independent creature, for he did not create himself.

Being made by God, he owed a debt to God. He was a moral being and therefore responsible to serve and please

God. The commandment given to him was no arbitrary infliction, but a necessary injunction for evidency and enforcing man's relationship to God.

Since he had been pleased to give Adam dominion over all the creatures here below, it was surely fitting that he should require some peculiar instance of homage and fidelity to him as a token of Adam's dependence and acknowledgment of his subjection to his maker, to whom he owed absolute submission and obedience.

And what mark of subjection could be more proper than being prohibited from eating one of the fruits of paradise? Full liberty was granted him to eat all the rest.

The single abstention was well suited to teach our first parents the salutary lesson of self -denial and of implicit resignation to the good pleasure of the

Most High. Pink is good. Of course, we read that Adam failed this test.

We're going to conclude here shortly because of the time. He failed that test when he sinned.

And when Adam sinned because he was our federal head, all sinned in him. As Paul declared in Romans 5 .12,

for by one man, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread on all men because all sinned.

And what he's saying there, because all sinned when Adam sinned. All sinned when Adam sinned. All sinned in Adam when he sinned.

And that's why we have death in this world. His sin brought the sentence of death upon the entire human race for the wages of sin is death.

But Adam's sin also resulted in them losing their righteousness. They saw they were naked, remember, and ashamed.

They lost the glory that had characterized them and they hid, they ran and hid from God. They became sinners by nature.

And all the human race that was born to them thereafter was born into this world sinners by nature and at heart alienated and in rebellion to God.

All the world, therefore, is guilty before God on a multiple affronts.

You and I are guilty for more than just failing to keep God's commandments. Every human being is guilty because of what

Adam did, because we sinned in him. Every human being is guilty because we're born with a sinful nature.

And every human being is guilty for every act of sin that we commit, both in when we disobey

God's law and when we fail to obey God's law. Sins of commission, sins of omission.

And every human being is guilty for failing to do all that God has positively commanded. It's sin not to love

God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Think about that. And so when

Adam sinned, he incurred the curse of God upon himself for breaking God's law. But it did not disannul or abrogate that covenant of words.

It abides in force. God demands, and rightly so, that every human being obey his law completely, perfectly, without any infraction.

And the result, failure to do so, is damnation. And that's why no one can possibly be saved by the works that they do.

Even if you could live a perfect life from here to the day you die, everything you've done thus far would damn your soul.

And then you'd be damned for what Adam did. You'd be damned because of the sinful nature you have. There's no way a person can be relating with God based upon his own works.

And therefore, it must be by the works of another on our behalf. And God, of course, sent his son, a mediator, to be that covenant keeper.

And God sent his son into the world. And he, born without sin, kept that covenant of works as the last

Adam in a way that the first Adam failed to do.

And so the last Adam, Jesus Christ, kept that covenant of works. He kept God's law perfectly throughout his whole life.

He was born of a virgin without the sinful nature. He was without sin throughout his entire life.

He kept, fulfilled the covenant of works, and therefore he merited everlasting life.

And that's why the grave could not hold him. But his obedience to God's law and keeping that covenant of works also qualified him to be able to die on the cross in the place of others as a sacrifice, as a substitute.

And so sinners... Yes, we keep God's law because we desire to.

He's put that desire within us and he enables us to by the Holy Spirit. But that's a fruit of the covenant that we enjoy in Christ, not the cause of the covenant.

It's Christ and his righteousness, not me and my righteousness. I'm going to jettison that away altogether.

There's death in that pot, isn't there? It's Jesus Christ and him alone. And he is a great

Savior for great sinners. And so there is no sinner so estranged, so far from God, that he cannot receive full pardon and release and freedom from the damnation of sin and thankfully through salvation the bondage of sin if he comes humbly to Christ and Christ alone in faith alone apart from works.

Amen? Let's pray. Father, help us to understand these matters better, more clearly, and may they be affirmed in our souls, our

Lord, that we go forth from this place and not fall back into that legalistic spirit,

Lord, that we so easily slip into, but help us, our Father, to go forth as Christians, rejoicing in what we have secured for us through our

Savior Jesus Christ. And we are God, or as the Apostle Paul expressed, ones who anticipate.

We have hope in the righteousness that you give us so freely through Christ with view to the day of judgment.

And therefore we will not fear, but rather we anticipate even standing boldly on that day because of Christ who is our righteousness.