- I wrote the following to my pastor this week....
We are studying the implications of "anything not from faith is sin" (rom 14:23). Please evaluate my understanding as follows?
If a saved man reaches out to God and puts his trust in God, even if it is for only one issue that he looks toward God, then, at that time, he is walking with God according to the Spirit, and not the flesh. He may have more than one thing he is trusting God for, two, three, or many things at a time, but, it only takes one to move the man from the flesh to the Spirit. Now, at any one moment while in faith he may be distracted, or tempted, and then he may cease operating out of reliance on God and into the realm of the flesh. But he may also return to walking by faith with God at any time.
When we are walking by faith, there is no more condemnation. We are seen at that time as holy, without blemish, spotless, met in Christ. For what the law was unable to do, God did by sending His Son so that the requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The whole law is fulfilled in us at those times, because we walk with the imputed righteousness earned by, and union-ed with us in communion with, Christ.
Some of the great things we do as Christians, if not done by faith (by trusting God to deliver) are... sin?
Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. He already had done so much for the church. Could he sit on his laurels?? Did God permit him to keep on doing former works when they no longer required faith? Philippians 3:7-8
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
Paul couldn't continue calling sufficient any longer, the activities he once did in his life, in times passed. He could not continue on knowing Christ better, if he did not go where faith required. Some things that had once been righteous because they required faith, had eventually become sin because it became routine, not inspired and founded by faith! Routine does not require faith, does it?
Is this the only place where faith can live? Romans 8:24-25
But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Free Grace is on-target to not measure sanctification or justification, by obedience manifested outwardly in men. God does not measure us as we measure each other. He said, "The just shall live by faith." God's call is always to move to wherever that place is, where faith in Him holds the tension between what we see and what we have entrusted.
All that Godly routine, all that law, all that conformity, has a certain value if it weren't for the need for man's inner regeneration in faith. But because "without faith it is impossible to please God," we move and have our being in union with Christ, alone.
So, I guess it is true. Faith really has nothing to do with the law, at all. Galatians 3:12 "The law is not based on faith."
We save ourselves, we save others not to conformity, but to faith. Spiritual union with Christ is our very life and salvation.
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