Not Under Law

Cassy: [00:00:00] Where are we now? We are permanently fixed under the unearned favor of God, and there's nothing that we do in our behavior that is going to justify us before God. We've been justified by a completely different means

Welcome to Martha, Mary and Mayhem. This is Cassandra Barbato, your host.

Amber: And I am Amber Jenks, your co-host.

Cassy: Welcome. We're excited. This is season two. We actually finished a whole season.

Amber: We did it. We didn't quit.

Cassy: Yeah. Eight episodes, and now we are recording , our second season.

This time, though, we are moving on to , a very new topic. Identity in Christ.

Amber: Yes.

Cassy: Having a right perspective of who we are in Christ is absolutely imperative. It's impactful for our everyday life. We could probably sum [00:01:00] up the entire season and say your sins are forgiven.

I mean, this is really kind of foundational.

Amber: And forever.

Cassy: Forever, yes. That's good news. It doesn't change. So if you wanna know, what is this season gonna be about? It's gonna be about the forgiveness of sin, the righteousness of the believer, the right standing that never changes. And, who... what does that say about who we are, who God is to us, and, what's coming in our future?

Just all that stuff kinda wraps up in that identity piece.

What if we did something crazy and we, like, actually prayed this time and asked the Lord to join us on our endeavors?

Amber: That would be good.

Cassy: So w- we're gonna go ahead and ask the Lord to anoint this message, anoint this conversation, anoint this season, would you just join me in prayer as we pray over the, next eight episodes? Lord, we thank you that we have an opportunity to just share your Word, and we're sharing it in, in new and exciting ways [00:02:00] as we move through the ages, Lord.

The, the opportunity to share the gospel through a podcast is, is exciting stuff, Lord. And I just pray that you would anoint our words, that you would give this message to the right people, that it would break bondages, that it would set people free, Lord, and, that you would just use it for your glory and your kingdom, and we say all these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Amber: Amen.

Cassy: I think we're gonna start with the new covenant. I think it's just a good place to start. First of all, I mean, what is a coven- like, what are the covenants?

Amber: So a covenant, defined by Merriam-Webster, is a formal binding agreement or solemn promise between two or more parties. Helps Word Studies, it is defined as a set agreement having complete terms determined by the initiating party, which also are fully affirmed by the one entering , the agreement. So in this circumstance, the [00:03:00] initiating party is God.

Cassy: Mm-hmm.

Amber: And then we enter into it-

Cassy: Mm-hmm ...

Amber: by accepting Jesus as the affirming party.

Cassy: Yes, and so God who cannot lie has-- He has established a covenant, a new covenant with the House of Israel. And, there's a lot of things we could deep dive in. Paul does call the believer a part of that house. We are, we are a part of this new covenant. But I wanna read it because I don't know that everybody is really familiar with what our-- what's the covenant that God made with us through the bloodshed of Jesus Christ.

And this can be found in

Hebrews chapter eight, verse 10 says this: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days," says the Lord. "I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, [00:04:00] saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." It's a fabulous, fabulous end to the, the description of the covenant. But verse thirteen, let's just read that, 'cause he says, "When he said, 'A new covenant,' he has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear."

So Hebrews, fantastic book. Love the book. It is really contrasting the old covenant and the new covenant, and actually describing how the old covenant was a type and a shadow. It's really supposed to be kind of like imagery of the coming one, right? The coming covenant. Even the sacrifices are meant to demonstrate the sacrifice of Christ.

They're types and shadows, just pictures of what we have in the reality of Christ. [00:05:00] And so the writer of Hebrews, who was writing this to, to help the, people understand that the, the old covenant has passed away and we've come under a new one, is giving them what that new covenant is outlining here, and telling them it's supposed to replace the old one.

But we've m-- This is new, where the other one is obsolete because we've entered this new covenant. But a couple of things I really wanna point out in this is, first of all, it says that it's-- God is the one who's initiating pretty much all the way through. He's the one who's doing the stuff. He is going to put the laws into the minds and the hearts of his people.

So that's important to note. It's not something that we do. It's something that God is doing. And then it says that he will be their God, and we shall be his people,

and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, everyone his brother saying, "Know the Lord," for all will know me. and how do we know the Lord? Because he's [00:06:00] living on the inside of the believer, right? Through the Spirit of God. And so the, the knowing the Lord in the old covenant was something that came and went.

The Spirit of God would come on people, and there would be people that would prophesy in his name, but it wasn't a permanent indwelling. This is a new type of relationship with the Lord. as we move into the end of this is that he's gonna be merciful to their iniquities, and he will remember their sins no more.

That's something that I don't know that a lot of believers are meditating on and, and considering when they're interacting with the Lord. I think a lot of times we are spending our time thinking about how I've got to talk to God about all my sin. But he said he's remembering it no more. And there's-- we can get into the, the work of the cross.

We can talk about Christ. He paid for our sins and all these things. But for the believer who already has heard that message, they know that, that Christ [00:07:00] died for their sins, and then moving forward into their walk, it's so... it's vital to understand the covenant that we are a part of. God is not remembering our sins

Amber: . That's really a lot to digest when you think about it. It

Cassy: is. '

Amber: Cause we remember our sins forever, and it's

Cassy: And every, every- everybody else's too, right?

Amber: Yeah. Yeah, like every 20 minutes we remember the thing we did when we were 12 years old, and we bring it back up and then we mull over it, and then we remember every transgr- gression against us, and every time, Sally stole our pencil or Billy pulled our hair or whatever.

Mm-hmm. but Christ remembers none of that, holds none of that against us. It's, it's washed. It's gone.

Cassy: Mm-hmm. What if the Lord actually said, "What are you talking about?" while you're talking to Him about your sin.

Amber: Yeah.

Cassy: I was telling you earlier the time that I was really lamenting over what I would consider the worst thing I've ever done, and the Holy Spirit, I heard Him on my inner person [00:08:00] say, "I knew you at the cross."

And there's a sense of why are you bringing this up to me when I have already paid for it?

Amber: Yeah.

Cassy: If we can grasp this, we actually live completely different, and our perspective of our relationship with God completely transforms because we're no longer under a, a give and take with Him of I've gotta give, I've gotta be right, I've gotta do, I've gotta do, and then, and then God will bless me, and, or then God will be happy with me, or then He'll be pleased with me.

It's a, a total renewal of mindset of I am permanently in the favor of God.

Amber: And if the one who died for All my sin-

Cassy: Mm-hmm ...

Amber: if He can forgive me and not remember it, then why am I trying to carry it?

Cassy: Yeah. And we do.

Amber: Because the perfect one- Yep ... that became the sacrifice is like, "No, I'm good.

I got you. I'll handle [00:09:00] it, and then I'm not even gonna hold it against you. It's washed. It's gone."

Cassy: We're beating ourselves up for it.

Amber: It's so freeing to think of it that way.

Cassy: Mm-hmm.

Amber: Because you don't, you don't need to bring it back up. You're done.

Right. It's gone. It's forgiven. It's washed.

Cassy: Yeah. And so I think we were kinda trying to focus this episode on being under grace and not under law. We're, we're no longer under the law. We're under God's favor.

Amber: S- I was gonna say, so what is grace, Cassie?

Cassy: Grace is the unearned favor of God.

Amber: Unearned?

Cassy: Unearned, yes.

That's so important because it's no longer grace when you earn it.

Amber: Correct.

Cassy: So here's... This is kinda... Think about this. If we're trying to get grace, we automatically cut ourself off to it because it's something that is freely given. And so for the believer, we receive grace so simply. It is by faith and faith alone.[00:10:00]

And that, that favor that we have with God was bought and paid for. It is an, it is a absolute gift.

Amber: I really like the illustration that y- you hear grace and mercy a lot- Yeah ... throughout scripture and in, even in church mercy means not receiving the punishment you deserve.

Cassy: Mm-hmm.

Amber: But grace means receiving good gifts you could never earn.

Cassy: Yeah. And that's right in this covenant. He literally says, "I will be merciful to their iniquities." He- we're not gonna get what we did deserve, right?

Amber: Yes. "

Cassy: And I will remember their sins no more." We enter into that grace of God there, that unearned favor. And, what does favor, what does God's favor look like?

The guy who created the billions of billions of stars in our galaxy, and the billions and billions of galaxies filled with every good thing. Our Earth is filled with gems and gold [00:11:00] and like living things. I mean, we're talking about a creator of all good things with endless resources. What does favor look like with that God?

Amber: It's limitless.

Cassy: Yeah. And I, I, I don't know that we can really walk the way we wanna walk if we don't have this understanding. Because when we start seeing God as somebody who is pleased with us, and that He desperately loves us and wants to bless us, then we even look at our challenges differently, right?

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: They're temporary. He knows about them. Some of them are, are not caused by Him, but He allowed them because He knows it's gonna bring a benefit. I mean, it can really touch all different kinds of areas of our life when we see Him rightly.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: But let's go, let's, let's get some receipts here. I like to give [00:12:00] receipts on the grace of God.

Now I think I made a bold statement. I said we're not under law, but we're under grace. The verse that really is clear as day that we're not under law but under grace is Romans 6:14

Romans 6:14 says this: "For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace." We are not under law. And, and I think it's clear that we know that there was a law given, right?

We've got the Mosaic law. There's the Ten Commandments. There's also a lot of other things that the Lord said and gave to, Israel. But we're not under law. We're not under the... even the, the moral law. 'cause I've heard it before, I don't know if you've ever heard this, where they talk about, well, we're not under the, the old covenant sacrifices, but we still have a moral law that we're supposed to keep.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: But we're not supposed to keep anything. We have been made into the one that has those laws [00:13:00] written in who we are, in the fabric of who we are. That's on the inner person. And I think where we get confused is we don't always see that in operation. We don't always see that in our walk.

If we want somebody to understand what established the new covenant, well, it was the sacrifice of Jesus.

Like, there's bloodshed that has to take place in order for this covenant to be enacted. Jesus Christ, He gave Himself on the cross. He shed His blood. He died the death that we deserved, and anyone who is willing to believe in Him is brought into the Kingdom of God. They are born of the Spirit. They're born again, made a new creation, and all of those attributes that come with that new creation, we're gonna unpack that.

But that initial entrance under that new covenant with God is the fact that we have His unearned favor, that He remembers our sins no more. He writes our new person on our hearts and our minds, who we are in Him. All of that is, is done in Christ i've seen so many believers. [00:14:00] They get brought in. They're excited, "My sins are forgiven," and then they get just hounded with behavior, behavior, behavior, behavior, behavior. And they end up so crippled in their, their walk with God because they, they've gone from accepting the forgiveness of sin into a relationship where they feel like they've got this dad that's mad at them all the time because they're not measuring up to Dad's standards.

Amber: I even remember being taught a song in- ... Sunday school, and it was, it was the Ten Commandment song.

Cassy: Mm-hmm.

Amber: And i- and we all sang it, and it was never explained to us this is the old covenant. You know, we sang it happy and joyfully like, "These are what we're to live by."

Cassy: Yes.

Amber: I mean, obviously, and we will get into it later on another episode, murder's still bad.

Cassy: Right. Yeah. It doesn't change the fact that the law is just and right. It's just that we walk by a different thing. We're not walking by the letter anymore. We walk by the leading of the [00:15:00] Spirit.

But we, we can't even talk about the walk if we have not established a foundation of where we are the moment we walk into the kingdom, the moment we, we've believed and received that new covenant.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: Right? We've, we've believed onto Christ, and we've received that new birth.

Where are we now? We are permanently fixed under the unearned favor of God, and there's nothing that we do in our behavior that is going to justify us before God. We've been justified by a completely different means Another verse that really kinda wraps up that, by grace through faith thing is in Ephesians 2:8, just to give another. And most of you, most of you guys who are believers, you've been in the church, you've heard this before. But if you haven't, let's read it

Amber: Yeah, it's, it's very familiar from the Bible drill days.

Cassy: Bible drill? What's that?

Amber: Oh, you d- you didn't do the, the Bible drill?

Cassy: [00:16:00] No.

Amber: Okay. So everybody was given a, a King James red leather bound hardback Bible, and you would hold your Bible balanced on your right hand, your left hand on top of it, and then they would give you a verse, and you would find it. And whoever found it the first would put their finger on it and step forward, and you would g- and it was like, it w- you would get points.

You get points? And you would compete for finding. And then you would ... There were some that you committed to memory, and you would say those without doing, finding them in the word. But yeah, it was a whole-

Cassy: Never, I never even heard of this.

Amber: Oh, yeah. It was, it was very competitive.

Cassy: I would probably fail. I can't ever find anything.

Amber: That's w- well,

Cassy: that's- I'm always, always flipping back and forth. I know it's around here somewhere.

Amber: Yeah. They taught us the, the books of the Bible song- Right ... so that we could find them without having, because, you know, you don't get the cool with the cutouts to tell you where things are. Right. It's like the generic-

Cassy: Gotcha

Amber: cue Bible.

Oh, yeah.

Amber: Yeah.

You gotta be hardcore. You gotta be dedicated.

Amber: It was, it was very exciting.

Cassy: That's funny.

[00:17:00] ephesians chapter two, verse eight, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." My experience is that believers are very comfortable with their initial entrance into the kingdom of being by grace through faith.

I didn't earn it. My sins are forgiven. But as far as living in that mindset, there's a period where it's almost like I watch the believer try and set that aside and yeah, I, I was initially made God's kid. I was initially born again or initially forgiven. But now, in order to be pleasing to the Father, I've gotta walk, talk, act, and look a certain way.

And if I don't, then I really don't have... I don't really have His, His favor on me.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: But this is not a [00:18:00] one-time deal. This is a covenant, an established covenant that God is not going to change, that we have His unearned favor permanently in every moment of our life because of who we are in Christ.

We have His favor. It's a gift

Amber: I've noticed it as I've gotten older. I don't know that when I was coming to faith it was so obvious.

but now that I've been in the club for a while-

Cassy: Mm-hmm

Amber: I see it with- Generally the young adult coming to faith.

And it's like they make the commitment, they acknowledge that they believe in Jesus, and then they're like, "Now what?" Right. "Am I supposed to be a new person tomorrow?" And so they just... They become try-hards, right? They

Cassy: Try-hards. That's a great word.

Amber: They feel like that title then makes them need to act a certain way.

And then you see the fallout from that.

Cassy: Sure.

Amber: Because if you're pretending, you're... it's exhausting, right? It

Cassy: is. It... Well, that's what [00:19:00] works does. So if, I mean, if you've got like a legit, "I don't know that I really wanna dress this way. This is not fulfilling to me," great. If you're super excited about serving, great. I don't wanna poo-poo on anybody's like efforts in the Lord, right?

But at the same time, if that's where your identity is wrapped up in is in your efforts rather than the identity that was given as a gift through the faith in Christ, we're gonna... we are going to wear out.

Amber: If doing it out of fear that you'll be punished or forgotten or left behind in some way,

Cassy: we missed it.

Amber: Absolutely.

Cassy: Because ultimately you're gonna be honest with yourself and recognize that you fail constantly, or you're gonna be dishonest with yourself and you're gonna think you're doing a great job.

Amber: Yeah.

Cassy: You're doing fantastic. And so if our identity is wrapped up in our behavior and our alignment with, what we think is right, if that's where our identity is, then we are, are going to be in a mess of a rollercoaster living in guilt and shame or pride. Yes. I mean, [00:20:00] that's the, the outcome of that.

I think that there's an identity crisis in the church, and we're either identifying with our works, which is really a flesh thing, or we're identifying with the righteousness of Christ, which is a somebody else did the work, and I get the benefit, right?

By grace through faith, Let me give you a scary verse. Just, you know, we like to be scared of things. To feel convicted. This is Galatians 5:4. This is another book that is written to believers who are trying to go back to the law as a means of right standing with God.

So Paul is really laying the smackdown, and he's like, "Look, this, the old has passed. We're in the new." And he starts talking about the grace of God and all of these things, and pointing them back to the righteousness by faith and faith alone. But in verse, in chapter 5, verse 4, he says this. He says, "You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law.

You have fallen [00:21:00] from grace." Now, I don't believe the believer can lose their identity. They cannot change who they are. Once they've been born of the Spirit, they're born, they're seated, they're fixed in the Lord. however, Christ becomes of no benefit to you if you are trying to be right with God. And I'm talking about in your walk, in your day-to-day.

You are missing out on the favor of God in your life if you are trying to be justified with the Father by works of the law, whatever part of the law you are trying to be justified by your behavior, your actions before Him. You literally sever yourself from the benefit of God's unearned favor in your, in your moments- Mm-hmm

as you're walking through, because God doesn't give favor earned. He only gives it unearned. And if we wanna see that flowing in our life, the favor of God, we've gotta live and dwell in the mindset that it is only by Christ, Christ alone. That's it.

Amber: [00:22:00] There are a couple different sections in Romans 8 that I wanted to touch on. the first one being

15 through 17, and it says, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption to sonship by whom we - cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children, and if we are children, then we are heirs. Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him."

And so what he's doing here is he's using this illustration, because Roman law allowed full rights to adopted sons, including the family name and estate. Paul is using this, to secure our status as believers. We are heirs. It's non-negotiable. It's there.

And then down in verses 29 and 30-

Cassy: I love this, by the way.

Amber: What?

Cassy: This passage that you're gonna read. It's amazing. It's good. "[00:23:00]

Amber: For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called.

Those He called, He also justified. Those He justified, He also glorified." So if you notice, all the verbs are in past tense. It's done. God's saving plan spans it all, and the past tense is stressing that certainty.

Cassy: We've been justified by the blood of Christ. And those whom he justified, he glorified.

That's who he's made us.

Past tense.

And that at some point we're gonna see the fullness of who we really are on the outside just as he has made us on the inside.

And so we have God's favor, and that's the covenant that we're under now.

We're not under a covenant of due. We're not under a covenant of law. [00:24:00] We're under a covenant of unearned favor. He remembers our sins and lawless deeds no more.

And I know I'm-- we're mainly talking to believers. Like, I'm assuming that the listener here is somebody that's already in Christ. But if you are not, and you don't, you're, "Okay, well, that's great and all that you can have God's favor. How do I get under that covenant?

You know, how do I, how do I enter that one?" It is really by faith in Christ. It's so simple.

Romans 10:9, "That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord." So this is it. This is, this is how you enter into the covenant, the new covenant with God. That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, that means he's the owner. Mm-hmm. He's the boss. And believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

That's the end of it. That's it. Those two things.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: Believe and confess, and now you have that [00:25:00] new covenant has been established for you. And all the things that we're talking about, that right standing, that unearned favor, that justification, that glorification, they all belong to you

Let's just do a little recap before we close out today. We looked at the new covenant. So there was an old covenant. The, the old covenant was a covenant of law. It was do good, get good; do bad, get bad. That, that's the old covenant. There's all these rules that God gave to Israel,

But in Hebrews, we can read about the new covenant, and, and this new covenant, which was established through the sacrifice of Christ, actually makes the old covenant obsolete, and this new covenant is got a lot of really good things in it. One, the law of God is now written in your inner person. It's something that's a part of the new creation.

It's not something you're trying to be. It's something that you are at your core, even if you're not fully seeing it in your day-to-day walk yet. You're God's [00:26:00] people, and He's your God if you put faith in Christ. This is a part of the new covenant. You belong to Him. These are all things that God is doing.

He is permanently indwelling the believer to the point where they have an experiential knowledge of Him that, that was not possible in the old covenant. And one of the things that I think is the most, , important things to highlight for the believer so that they understand their standing with God is in the fact that the new covenant declares that He is merciful towards our wrongdoings, towards our iniquities, and He remembers our sins no more.

This new covenant, it, it tells us that we are no longer under law, where we have to, by our own effort, measure up to God, but instead, we are under God's grace, His unearned favor.

[00:27:00] So that's all I got on this episode.

Amber: Same.

Cassy: Next episode we are going to dive into the perfection of the new creation. I'm excited about this because To me, that's where everything changed.

Amber: Mm-hmm.

Cassy: Everything changed with my relationship with the Lord when I, when I really started to grasp how right I am with God.

So I'm gonna give you some receipts from the gospel, from the scriptures-

Amber: She's got lots of them ...

Cassy: yes, on the right- how right you are with God in next episode. So join us next week for that.

Amber: See you soon