The true gospel message is this: once the Spirit of the living God is quickened within you, there is nothing you ever again need outside of yourself. For instance, Christians teach that someday Jesus is going to come back and then everything is going to be wonderful. But what they haven’t realized is that On the day of resurrection, He that was among them breathed on them and re-generated within them the life, the nature, the seed and the character of God that was in them. John 20:22
The gospel was not to get people in any way to just correct their outward behavior, but to realize that the living, transcendent, resurrected Spirit of Christ was now in them. What they needed was not rules and regulations, but to have an unveiling and understanding that the new creation-life, that new creation-man that was in them had the very life and nature of God that they could learn to live by.
Galatians 1:3. “Grace be to you, and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil world.” Now again, what was the present evil world that Paul was talking about? I can guarantee; he wasn’t talking about sin. As he goes on in Galatians, he tells about how he was so well bred in religion, and how he was exalted in his religion. But he said he gave all that up as dung that he might know Christ and go on in the reality of the gospel. The present evil age that Paul was delivered from was the religious age of his day.
There are two gospels presented and both are in operation today. There is the gospel of law, and there is the gospel of grace. In Most of the Christian churches that we go to, teach us a mixture of those two. They say, “God is great. You were saved by grace. You know, even before you were born, Jesus died for you.” Well, that is the message of grace. But then – I don’t know how you were taught, but if you were in church very long, you were certainly taught after you were saved how you needed to behave. My pastor told me in the 1st Assembly of God church that I began to attend right after I was saved; he said, “Gary, you never work your way to the cross, but you better work your way away from it, ecbause God loves you. That has been proven because He went to the cross and He died for you. But now that He is in you, and now that you understand that you are forgiven, from this point on you have to live a holy life.”
In the 1st Assembly of God, it was not quite as bad as some, but it was no smoking, no drinking and no going to movies. They gave you a little card to sign that you wouldn’t do any of these things. And I gave the card back to the pastor, and I said, “Well, I don’t come see anything wrong with those things.” That was my beginning of once you are saved, they say, “You come to Jesus just as you are, but once you to Him just as you are, then you must begin to live according to what the scriptures teach,” and I’m not saying not to do that. What they miss is that once you really have the revelation of what you know in your head, once you really have the revelation that the Spirit of God dwells in you, nobody has to teach you not to do this or not to do that.
We all have a new nature on the inside of us that is birthed. And that is what the ministry should be geared towards, ministering to that new life, not trying to get that old life to change and to act better, to quit sinning, or whatever it is, and try to get you to change by an outward law. The new life in us needs to be fed. Galatians chapter 2 and verse 16 – Paul says this, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus.” At least 13 years I studied the Word, and I read this over and over and over. “A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Christ”, yet I always felt guilty! That was mainly due to the fact that when I went to church, all I heard was, “You can’t do what you are doing.” Or if I’d go to my religious leaders, they’d tell me, “Well Gary, God can’t bless you as long as you are living this way. As long as you are puffing on a cigarette, or you are going into some of these places where you shouldn’t go, you can’t expect God to bless you, because it even says in Deuteronomy, ‘If you obey my laws, if you obey my commandments, then you will be blessed in the field, you’ll be blessed in the cattle, your families will be blessed. You will be prospered.’ But living like you do, the law has a whole other set of curses that come upon you.”
I often share that according to Deuteronomy, if you keep the law, you have 15 verses of blessings that come upon you. I just named some of them. Your children will be blessed. You’ll be blessed. You’ll be prospered. – 15 verses, if you keep the law. But the worst thing about keeping that law is, as you go on in and really understand what the law says, you can’t break even one of them, because if you break one law, you are guilty of all! One day as Kenneth Copeland Was speaking at our church he shared Galatians 3:13, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.”
That is why Paul said here, “There is no man that can be justified by the law in the sight of God”, because the only way the law could possibly justify you is if you keep every bit of it. We have all kinds of churches today that teach you that you must keep the law. But what they don’t tell you is that you must keep the law according to their concepts. And if they really taught the law like it is taught in the Old Testament, you would see all kinds of weird things happening in church. Well one of the laws is, “Keep the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.” Now, no matter how much the Christians argue about that point, there is no way that they can get around this. The Sabbath Day was Saturday. Yet the people in Christianity that are teaching the law, outside of the Seventh Day Adventists, they break the law by celebrating the Sabbath on Sunday. But then they are trying to get you to keep all the other laws that they think should be kept.
If your performance is right, then you are accepted. The true teaching of scripture is that there is nothing at all that you need to do to win God’s favor or grace. Once He died, He died for all, and He took away the sin of the world. All the churches teach that, don’t they? He paid the penalty for your sin. That is the gospel of grace.
Carol and I were driving to the beach one day and saw a man with a huge sign that said Homosexuals are going to hell. Religion teaches you that if you don’t stop that lifestyle you will go to hell. That is not the gospel of grace. The more you struggle by performance, trying to overcome, and trying to keep the law because you feel guilty, or you feel unacceptable to God, it just keeps you trapped in that bondage, and you can’t get out of it. In fact, in 1st Corinthians 15 and verse 52 says this: “The strength of sin is the law.” That should tell everybody you want to give strength to the sin in your life. Put a law on yourself. You are going to go on a diet, or you are going to quit smoking, or if you are a prostitute, “I’m going to quit prostituting my body.” The more you put that on yourself, the stronger it becomes. It was meant to be that way!
The law was never created for anybody to make a performance so that they could be acceptable to God. I can hardly say anything in a message without bringing up the verse that says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not holding their trespasses against them.” This is one thing that we need to understand in these days, the love and the character of God. If God is not holding sin against you – and I’m so glad that is in the Word and that is what it says, that God is not holding you accountable for your sins. If you really, really understand that you will become so free, because you realize, what can you possibly do to live as God on this earth? Only by living by the spirit of God within you can you live as God on this earth.
You show me one person who can live as God on this earth. You might say, “Well Jesus did.” You are correct. But how could He do that? He lived as God on the earth because he had a revelation even as a child that God was his father. He never lived by His human carnal life. He was a human being in every respect that we are. He was born as we are both human and divine. He lived the way He lived, because He knew who He was. We will also live as he lived when we discover the truth of our being.
When we understand that when the scriptures talk about a new creation-man, it’s not talking about our old human nature made new again. It is talking about a brand-new creation. It is a brand-new man. That is a brand-new way of living. And those two lives can’t mix. The one life is lived by grace. And the other life is lived by law. Paul says the law was written to the disobedient. The law was written for the carnal man, for the man who knows nothing other than being a human being. The law was written to restrain the flesh.
Consider what would happen today if there were no law. If you take away all the law from one who is living by the law of the spirit of life in Christ, they are not going to be any different, because they do not live by an outward law. However, if you do that with a majority of the population, you just take all the laws out of society, what is going to happen is chaos. The law was given, not to the spiritual man, it was given to the carnal man to restrain the flesh. And it’s purpose is always to make the new creation man, those who are regenerated and born again, it is to make them realize that no matter how much they want to, no matter how bad you desire to completely conquer everything in your life that is not according to God, it is impossible for you to do it living out of this human consciousness.
When we get the revelation and the understanding that I am a new creation man, it is impossible for that new life on the inside of us to sin. It will not do anything but please God. We need to first of all, have this revelation for ourselves, and then we need to learn how to relate it to others, because I believe in a very short time, in just a matter of maybe just a few years, this message is going to so explode around the world about the unconditional love and acceptance of God.
Religion has the control over most of Christians today. I recall a scripture that says, “Babylon has fallen,” the cage of every foul and unclean spirit.” You say, “That couldn’t be the religious system. That is talking about the worldly system.” When Paul said, “God has delivered us from this present evil age”, he goes on to talk about his experience in religion. The religious system is this present evil age along with the political and financial system. It is not sin, but the religious system that keeps your mind in bondage.
Religion will tell you that to take a drink of alcohol or numerous other things are sin. As a new creation being you are free to do anything you want to do unless you sense the anointing saying no. God will not be displeased with you. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s not going to change God’s mind towards you. It’s not going to change His heart towards you. It’s not going to change your ultimate destiny. You will continue to sow what you reap but that will not stop God. And what is your mind going to do with that? I’ve had people tell me all over the United States, “Well brother, if I believe that, I’d be out chasing women. I’d be in the bars every night.” Well what does that tell you? You don’t know God. So if I keep you in a performance-based religion, you are just fooling yourself. You are just lying to yourself. But if I set you free and tell you, “Hey, if you want to chase women, go chase them. If you want to go to the bars, go for it. You think that is going to change God’s mind and His heart toward you? Do you think God is ever going to destroy or do away with that life that He created within you?” No but you will reap to the flesh if you sow to the flesh. If you set people free to sin, that is the only way they can be free from it. Because being free from sin is not restraint. Being free from sin is not, “I want to go to the bar but I’m not going to because that is not what a Christian does.” That is not freedom; that is bondage.
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