How should we read the bible?

Like Jesus did! not to learn doctrine or win arguments but to find out who we are. Jesus' parents would have told him about his miraculous conception, about the angels, the dreams, the prophecies. So what do you think his approach to the bible was (what is now OT)? It was probably something like 'if all that my parents say is true then there must be something in there about me!?' And what do you think he found? A lot about him! when he was in the synagogue in Luke4 he found the place in the scrolls which we know as Isaiah 61 speaking of the messiah and after reading it said 'here i am!' (it wasn't received very well) He found his true identity in the word and believed it! 1 John3:1 says that we are NOW 'sons of God' Our lives need to be built upon God's opinion of us as joint heirs with Christ, as IN him, ONE with him, As he is so are we in this world etc etc.This is The process of true change in our lives, discovering our true God identity, what he has made us, what he thinks of us. We live out of the image that we have of ourselves, let's make sure that the image we have is the same as God's by looking into the word to see who we really are!

Reasons why we struggle to accept grace from God part 1

We have been well trained in the world's system of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' or we could say 'do good get good do bad get bad' from a very early age we've learned that if we behave well then we are rewarded and when we don't there is punishment of some kind. It is true that there was a time when man related to God in that way but what Jesus did at the cross has totally revolutionised the man God relationship. He took the punishment for our misbehaviour past, present and future and then gave us the same right standing with God that he has. There is only one response to this - 'oh thank you, i receive what you've done as a free gift' (or similar!) and we CONTINUE in that same attitude knowing that there is nothing we do or don't do that will effect how pleasing we are to God because of Jesus. If you need the relevant scriptures i will give them to you, just too many to put here!

Reasons why we struggle to accept grace from God part 2

Because the law that Jesus delivered us from is written in our bibles (Gal4:5)! And because, as we have already established in part 1, we gravitate to a system of works and put ourselves back under what Jesus removed us out from under! It makes sense to our natural mind and so we say 'yes God is holy and I'm not so i must do these things so that i can be holy and then i can fellowship with God and get my prayers answered' You reach for your copy of the 10 commandments and off you go but you have made a fatal mistake because although the law is holy, righteous and good (Rom7:12) it has no power to make you holy, righteous and good! Only Jesus can do that so we must put the law into the context of what Christ accomplished on the cross, he delivered us from it, we are no longer under it's demands.

Reasons why we struggle to accept grace from God part 3

Because Jesus in certain situations reinforced the law! Matt5:17-48 is part of what we know as the beatitudes or sermon on the mount and these verses have been so misunderstood and used to condemn people when the true meaning is so profound when interpreted in the light of Jesus work on the cross and what Paul reveals about the purpose of the law. We have already used Gal4:5 which illustrates that Jesus has rescued us from slavery to law (things you must do in order to please God) but go back a chapter to Gal3:24-25 and here we see that the law's purpose was to lead us to trust in Christ. Go to Rom3:19 and see that the law was to make everyone guilty before God and more specifically in v20 the law gives us knowledge of our sin, knowledge of our inability to be pleasing to God through our law keeping. And the clincher is beginning of v20 'by the deeds of the law, no man will be made right before God' kowabunga!! Do you realise what these verses are saying? The law was not given to make us right/pleasing to God, it was given to make us realise that we cannot be pleasing to God by our own efforts! So what was Jesus saying in Matt5:17-48? He was using the law for it's true purpose to bring men to the end of themselves and call out for a saviour, a rescuer, a redeemer from the faulty system Heb8:7 he was actually highlighting the fact that they could not keep the law - if your right eye offend you pluck it out!

Reasons why we struggle to accept grace from God part 4

Because it seems that the law is written in the epistles (letters to the church) because they tell us what to do! Let's just simplify what we mean when we say 'law' It is anything you do, thinking that by doing it you will be pleasing to God. You must know that because of the finished work of Jesus you are already as pleasing to God as you ever can be and ever will be. Col1:22,Eph1:4,1pet2:9. If you had a million years in which to try and make yourself pleasing to God it would not even come anywhere close to how pleasing you are to him today because of Jesus. The reason for instructions in the epistles is not that by doing them you will be right with God but that because you are now right with God you should aim for/expect to see morality, love, self discipline and all the other fruits of the spirit Gal5:22-23. Now these things are possible through the indwelling presence of God. i.e - Col3:9 - why should we not lie? Col3:13 - Why should we forgive each other? The tendency has been because of our bent toward performance orientated relationships that we skip all the powerful truths of our oneness with Christ, our completeness in the Godhead and the gift of everlasting righteousness and dive straight into doing the 'commands' not realising that appreciating our new identity in Christ will produce the commands effortlessly.

Reasons why we struggle to accept grace from God part 5

Because we actually think we are doing ok as far as God's standards are concerned and therefore qualify for deserved favour with God. The pharisees of Jesus day were under the same deception, they had made the law 'keepable' which it wasn't. Their interpretation of the 614 individual commandments that made up the law brought it to a level that man could meet (They didn't add as it is sometimes said that Jesus came to releave us of their additions but the real law as God intended must be kept by a christian) and that's what prompted Jesus to clarify that the law was not just about obedience in deeds and actions but in thoughts also (Matt5:27-28). As we have already said, he was using the law for it's true purpose to convince man of his guilt before God and therefore his need for an alternative method of relating to God which he would ultimately provide through his work at the cross. God's people down through the ages that have made this same point have been labelled 'antinomian' by their opposers, meaning anti-law or against God's law but the reality is that these men including me have an awesome respect for the law to the point that we recognise it is so perfect that no man can keep it. The problem is that we have failed to see exactly what the law demands of us and that if we fail to keep just one of the commands we are guilty of them all!(Jam2:10). What I find myself doing is taking a gauge from other people's behaviour and then judging myself by that rule and then I appear to be doing well giving me the allusion that by my relatively good behaviour I can expect good from God. This is faulty reasoning (2Cor10:12) because if want to relate to God via this method then our gauge is perfection and not imperfection, Its his holy law in its entirety and must be kept consistently in thought and action and if we use this standard we will quickly realise that it is futile and we must humble ourselves and receive his free favour.

Falling from grace is not falling into sin but into law!

Galatians 5:4
Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, you are fallen from grace.

Do you know that the only way to disqualify yourself from undeserved favour is to try and earn favour? The only response to undeserved favour is 'Thankyou'!Heb13:15. But because we have not seen the totality of what Jesus did at the cross we are still trying to earn favour from God by doing good and not doing evil. Their is great confusion within the christian church about what covenant we are actually under and as a result we have a mixture of old and new. The old said 'do good and i will bless you' and 'do evil and i will curse you' but the new says 'believe on Jesus and i will bless you' Eph1:3 no conditions attached, no small print, no if's or but's!