Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for this class and this particular study. As your word says, it is always good to be strengthened by grace. So we pray that you would open up your gospel to us today, even as we study by contrast harmful ideas, ideas that are anti-gospel. I pray that we would make this comparison in a way that is fruitful for us, in a way that honors you, in a way that causes more belief in us, more faith, more trust in you. I pray that for every single person that is here and every other person who listens to it by audio. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so week six in this class is titled When Legalism is More Attractive than Grace. A couple years ago, I taught something similar in the lectures on Galatians class, and I called this the psychology of legalism. Very different notes, though. Hopefully improved. But the psychology of legalism. But I just wanted to make it simpler as to what I mean by that. When legalism is more attractive than grace. The first idea I think we want to get in our minds is that legalism is a worldview. It's not a personality type. It's not a kind of person that you could sort of find a cattle branding on that says legalist. It's not a name we call somebody. It's not a way to marginalize other people. In fact, I think we'll recognize it in doses in our own heart. It's a worldview. It's a way of thinking. Now, to be more accurate, legalism is a truncated worldview. It's a distorted way of thinking. It's a small way of thinking. It's a part of a worldview not very well thought out in a lot of ways. And so that's what this installment's going to be. A psychological profile of the man or the woman standing in one of two things. And that's why I gave a little space over here. I want to draw an opening picture, a little theology to set up our psychology. And that theology is going to be two circles, one of which is going to be called the Covenant of Works. Oh boy. This is horrible. And the other circle is going to be the Covenant of Grace. These are the only two ultimate covenants there are. These are the only two ultimate ways of relating to God. I'll just draw a stick figure in both of them. The first thing this could represent, if I was to put this man up here with a kind of crown on his head, would be the head of this particular covenant, and that would be Adam. And then in here, that would be Christ. But I'm not going to do that, because we're just going to do some psychology here of the kind of man or the kind of woman that's inside of one of those two relationships. And these are the only two places you can be. Now let me define my terms here. The covenant of works is that arrangement by God to the whole human race in Adam. Now inside of that, there was a particular refined lens called Israel and he made that law through Moses to that ancient people. But the setup was the same. The kind of relationship between God and his people was the same in Adam and in Israel. The relationship of God to man was conditional, and it was based on perfect obedience. So let me draw above the circle the kind of relationship between God and man was conditional. And what was the condition? Perfect obedience. Now this was not a mistake that God made. This guy still needs perfect obedience. But we're going to put perfect obedience outside of this circle because it's already been done. In the covenant of grace, the relationship is unconditional. In the covenant of works, he says, do this and live, don't do it and die. Do what? Perfect obedience. So, if you haven't done that, then by this covenant you deserve to die for every single thing you've ever done and every single thing you ever will do on this planet before Jesus comes back. You will deserve to die for every single breath you take and every single thought you think, every single motive of your heart, your most religious work on your best day, you deserve to die for that, in God's opinion, and His standard is perfect obedience. The good news is that he sent Jesus Christ to be a second Adam, a second head of a new race, and because of that, because he fulfilled this for us, there still is that condition, but he did that for us. Therefore, for his own good reasons, his own pleasure, his own glory, he saves a people, he takes a chunk of those people, And He puts him in this new race. And He does it entirely as a gift for His own purposes and His own glory. And we call that the covenant of grace. You say, well, isn't there a third option? No, there is not. There is no third option. There is no third way of relating to God. Because God commands perfect obedience of all human beings, when we first come into this world, we are in which of these covenants? We are in the covenant of works. We have to be born again to be united to Christ. And because all of us are born into the covenant of works, we have the echoes of Eden ringing in our souls. We have the echoes of the covenant of works, and that is our natural default for every single one of us. And that's going to be very, very important to see when we see why we believe what we believe about pretty much everything. We are all natural-born legalists. We have been commanded perfect obedience. We've been commanded to get everything right. And by the way, that forms a natural desire. Which natural desire is good? Is it a good natural desire to want to hook your kids up to the fullest in terms of, forget about college, how about regeneration? If you could guarantee that they'd be in heaven, raise your hand if you would do that. And if you could, wouldn't that be a good thing? Yes. So this sense that we have that we're supposed to do everything right is good. That's not what's bad. But Romans talks about this, and Galatians talks about this, that the law is submerged under sin in some way. And so when we have that script, when we have those commands, when we hear that echo, we hear that being alienated from God. We're on this side of the garden. And so we're alienated from God, trying to make all this right. We're alienated from God, and because we're alienated from God, we're alienated from each other. Read Ephesians 2. We're alienated from nature. We're alienated from our surroundings. All the things that we're going to rearrange, we're alienated from those too. Those things bear thorns and thistles for us. That was part of the curse in Genesis 3. As one theologian has said, we are wired for works. And that part is good. God didn't make a mistake in that command. But we have to take into consideration there are two different worlds stuffed into this time and place. There are two different races. There are two different heads of those races. And therefore, there are two different kinds of mindsets marching to two different drummers. Now, as Christians, we still hear the echoes of, do this, do this, you're going to pay for it, you're going to pay for it if you don't. And we have that sense. It doesn't mean we're not Christians. Every single one of us hears God's law through that sense of alienation, and that's what the devil wants to do, and that's what our consciences serve as a sounding board for the devil with respect to that. So back to that verse that was misused. We talked about it a couple times so far. Romans 6 14. Paul does in fact say that you are not under law but under grace. And I've talked about the way that that verse is misused by antinomians to say the law doesn't matter anymore. That's wrong. But it does mean something. It's in the Bible. Don't let people that misuse scriptures tear out those scriptures for you. What Paul is talking about is this. We are no longer under the law in terms of the covenant. We are under grace. Grace is the basic way we relate to God, not by our performance. So, if we can read it in context, we'll see Paul immediately sailing between the extremes of antinomianism, being against law, and legalism. He says, for sin, here's the whole thing in context, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law, but under grace. So Paul was using that as a grounding for why you're not going to keep on sinning. And so he was sailing between those extremes. He was saying to the antinomian, you see, the law doesn't matter. And he was also saying to the legalist, who's saying to Paul, Paul, you're going to say that Sin doesn't matter. Remember, he says, let us continue on sinning that grace may abound. That's what we're charged with saying. And Paul says, may it never be. But how does Paul solve that problem? Does he bring you back under law? Does he bring you back under your own performance as a means of relating to God? No. He says, because we're under grace, that's what's going to kill the power of sin. Because we're under grace, that's what's going to transform the heart. Grace is going to work where legalism doesn't. Now, before I get to the big idea, Paul's not saying that the law doesn't work. The law is good. The law works for what it works for. The problem is, we hear this and we don't know what the law is for. We think the law is going to create a motive and make that beat go away. We think the law is going to be a sufficient motive for us to start obeying the law. And it's not. Paul is saying that this grace breaks the reign of sin. not by remaining in the mindset of the covenant of works, but by grace being the power that transforms the heart. So here's my big idea, and this is what the legalist can't see. Legalism doesn't work, grace does. So when we get under when legalism is more attractive than grace, the flip side of that, the big idea is going to be what the legalist can't see, and that is that legalism doesn't work, grace does. Now, the attraction to legalism is going to be We need some work here. We need some motion here. We need to whip these moral sloths into shape. Of course, legalism is offensive to God. Of course, legalism is mean. Yeah, I don't want to be guilty of legalism, but we need to turn to it because it works. But the big idea is going to be that legalism doesn't work. The main thing that it's promising you, it doesn't work. But grace does. So, here's my outline. Number one, legalism's promise, which is order and control. Number two, grace's problem, which is passivity and excuse-making. And then number three, if we have time, I'll get into a tale of two hypocrites. We're all hypocrites. There's only two kinds of hypocrites in the world, honest hypocrites and haughty hypocrites. But I'll explain that when we get to it. Okay. Legalism's promise, order and control. Legalism can be worked down to a science. And much like the scientific and technological enterprise, legalism presupposes order and control. It assumes order and control. Order in its view toward the world, control in its ability to reshape and refashion that world. One of the main important reasons for treating the subject in this way as legalism is a kind of worldview, not just a cold that you catch or a personality type. is that it prevents us, it helps us to avoid the mistake of depending on a legalistic personality type, as if legalism could be chalked up to a certain disposition. One of the things you don't want to do in church is say, legalism, I know what that is. I remember that guy, or I remember that gal, or I remember that group of people, or I remember that particular thing they did. I remember the frowns. I remember the rules. I remember that weird fetish they had about this or that head coverings, beer, movies, whatever. I remember that and I don't want that again, so I'll watch out for that." Well, what's the problem with that? Is that you're looking at symptom level. Really, really, I'd say, obscure symptom level. That is a fatal mistake. To commit oneself to avoiding legalism only by avoiding a gloomy sort of personality or a high-strung personality, or an overbearing personality, or whatever, that is to guarantee that legalism will come back to bite you in a form of a personality type that you would have never expected. And I've seen it again and again and again and again. I have seen very, very winsome legalists. Happy legalists. Happy to dominate you. Happy to turn you into their cellmate. Ecstatic. Very gregarious. Very good with people. That's not what to look for in legalism. It is far better, it is truer to the biblical explanation to see legalism as a universal problem stemming from a universal pattern of relationship between a holy God and alienated sinners. That's why I drew that, so I did that theology at the beginning. This theology explains the psychology because there's only these kinds of people, the only kind of people you have to deal with, the people God tells you are on planet Earth. Legalism is a universal problem stemming from a universal pattern of relationship between a holy God and alienated sinners. Legalism is a truncated worldview within that universal situation. Legalism is a simplistic, simple-minded worldview, very understandable given that universal situation. So what's so attractive about legalism? In a word, legalism works. At least that's the idea, that's the slogan. I know legalism's bad in some way, I can't really tell you right now, but I need things to work a whole lot more than I care about whatever we were just talking about. What were we just talking about? I don't remember. But legalism works, and I need things to work because I'm an American, I'm a pragmatist, and I need immediate results, right? We're actually more... See, we think in America, we've got all these nice gadgets and iPhones and we wear nice clothes and stuff, at least some of us do, and we think that We're somehow going to be more commercial, more friendly. We're going to have some really goofy heresies and ridiculous things that we've got to take care of. But at least we're nicer than those people back there in the Middle Ages, and those Puritans, and all that different stuff. And I'm telling you, out of our desire to see quick results to things, we think that's morally serious when what really it is is just commercialism, narcissism, give it to me now, let me see results, Holy Spirit. We don't say it like that. But that's what we mean, and we're actually more susceptible just in a different way. than people in the past toward legalism. But that's the tagline, legalism works. Now, when you want to get saved, yes, we're saved by grace alone. I believe the doctrines of grace. But when you want to get things moving in the real Christian life, which has nothing to do with the doctrines of grace, said the inch deep Calvinist, right? Nothing to do with it. When you want to get practical things done, relational things done, morally serious things done, legalism is the devil that you know. As we all know, it's better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don't know. So legalism, whatever else might be wrong about it, at least it works. So if I have to turn to it in a pinch, which is all the time because you're always anxious about your kids and yourself and saving face on Facebook and all that stuff that, of course, none of us actually care about, but we do. Legalism works for that. Now, legalism looks like it works to the person who doesn't know their Bible. The basic reason why legalism doesn't work is the same as the reason why dead people don't tend to do a whole lot of work. They're dead. They're the most unemployed people on the face of the earth. They don't tend to move or do productive things. And for the same reason, if you know the nature of man, let's draw a little Venn diagram here. In the real world, we have a doctrine of man and man's in sin, and we have a doctrine of law, too. Now if we combine these two ideas, which I think we should, because they're both true. So if you've got your doctrine of man right from the Scripture, and you have your doctrine of law right, here's the real world right here, where they're both true. So what do they both tell us? Well, man is totally depraved, totally morally incompetent. Yeah, I know, and we've got a new heart. We don't have that problem anymore. Yeah, you've got a new heart, but you've got a dead heart right next to it. Well, wait a minute, doesn't Ezekiel 36 say, I will take out your heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh? Well, here's what God did for his own mysterious purposes. Read Romans 7. He left that heart of stone like a monkey on our back. Are you familiar with it? I am. I do dead, stupid things all the time. Stupid, dead things that don't move in a Godward direction. Okay, so if you really believe that, that's still there. Now, what do we believe about the Law? The nature of the Law teaches us this. The Law identifies my sin. Romans 3.20. Romans 7.10. The Law identifies my sin. It reads me my rights. It tells me, actually, you're worse than you thought when you just felt guilty about this. You actually don't even know the half of it. You didn't even scratch the surface of it. That's what the law does. It identifies my sin. And when the law does that, in that very same motion, second thing, the law intensifies my guilt. Romans 7, 5, and verses 8 through 13. The law identifies my sin, and the law intensifies my guilt. In other words, it takes the dead person in the grave, and it stuffs them all the way down to the other side of the universe. You're worse than six feet under. It's an infinity problem. Those two actions are not a movement toward life and motion. Those two actions of the law against a dead heart are movements toward death. The identity of my sin and the intensity of my guilt does not, cannot produce any God-word motive in me. Now, as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit on us. We actually do have God-word motions, but that's not what rubbing the law against your corpse is meant to do. The Holy Spirit giving you different motives, new motives, is what does that. Legalism promises all sorts of things that do that. Workability. Saving face. Making sense of things. It's the same thing when we come to Calvinism and we say, yeah, I want to believe that God's sovereign, but I just have one objection left. What about my kids? Because I was going to save them. I mean, I was, which is what you mean, I can't trust a sovereign God. OK, I got that down. That was five years ago. I'm a Calvinist now. But what? It doesn't apply to everything else in life? Workability. Now, that's for the insider. What's attractive about legalism to the outsider? In other words, what's attractive about legalism to the newcomer to legalism? Remember when Jesus said to the Pharisees in Matthew 23 that you go to all these lengths to make these converts and you make them twice as son of hell as you are yourselves. Now he's saying that to the religious teachers in God's church, of God's people. What is attractive to legalism to those people, to the new recruits? to the one who has not yet ordered and controlled things. In other words, if you're new to this, let me sell you on legalism, and this is what I would do to sell you on it. Well, not to put it too crassly, but oftentimes legalists find ready recruits in people who have never been invited to the cool kids table in their life. And this is their first shot, because this is a morally serious thing going on here. And of course, we all want that order for our kids, for ourselves, not for Facebook, but we want it for really serious things. And when we see somebody else doing that well, I know I don't want a list of rules, but I want a character example, which is just a flesh and blood list of rules. Now, it's customary to treat the subject of legalism by treating the individual only. I'm telling you right now, the last book I've ever read, and it wasn't by a Calvinist, I wish it was, the last book I ever read, you have to go back 25 years ago now, to find a reputable Christian teacher teaching about legalism as if it was a corporate problem. That's a problem, because the Bible treats it as a corporate problem, and I have a theory. My theory is, both for reformed people and non-reformed people, for Americans, we start treating everything like a bunch of individualistic narcissists. And when we say, legalism is bad, we say, interrogate that legalist in the mirror. Well, you should. You should start here. The problem with legalism is in here. Well, then you don't know legalism, because legalism never stays in its cage. Legalism is a loudmouth. Legalism is a tyrant. Legalism likes bossing around other people. The Bible treats legalism as a corporate problem. The Bible deals with legalism as a systematic way of thought, number one. And then it turns around and makes war against it, as if it were an organized system of religion. It treats it that way in Galatians 4. It uses an allegory about these two covenants, or two mothers, or two mountains. And there's this allegory. And at the very end of it, the punchline is, throw the slave woman out of your house. She doesn't belong in the church. Who's the slave woman? Well, it's Hagar in the story. But what does it stand for? The legalistic mindset in Jerusalem, the Pharisees. Get them out of the church. It's the nearest false gospel. It's the devil you know. He doesn't belong there. He can come along, but he can't drive the bus. Throw him out. And Paul ties it right back to Genesis and he says, just like Isaac was persecuted back then, so the children of the flesh must, must continue to persecute the children of the promise. That's a promise that must continue to happen. The Bible treats legalism as a corporate problem for you to resist and never let back in again. That's the way the Bible talks about it. And so we would not be doing our job if we didn't list under the attractions of legalism, the simple desire to be on the winning team. And in fact, to command it and to reign and to rule in the church. As Charles Hodge once said, every man has a Pope in his bosom. So I say, well, make sure we draw lines out there, but that's not separate than realizing that's in here. Every man, and Hodge meant every woman too, every person has a Pope in their bosom. What did he mean by that? Everybody has this innate desire to lord it over other people. Why? Because you have to. Because Adam was given a scrap of land. And if you're on my scrap of land, I have a personal moral responsibility to make sure that I give back to God all the talents that he gave me. And I have this sneaking suspicion that he's breathing down my neck, and he wants me to order and juggle all my human beings around me, because he's going to kill me if I don't. You might not put it like that, but that's the way I put it. And because we have that anxiety, we have to. Legalism can't stay in here. It has to start ordering other people around. Legalism transfers power to a ruling class of sinners. The atheist Ayn Rand explains how in her criticism of the collectivist state, because it works the same way. Here's what Ayn Rand put into one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged. She said, there is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is its power to crack down on criminals. So who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be obeyed, nor enforced, nor objectively interpreted, and you create a nation of lawbreakers. And then, you can cash in on the guilt, end quote. Cashing in on the guilt? Man, it's a good thing I've never seen that happen in church. Yeah. By principles and by performance added to the gospel, added to the law, power is transferred to a ruling class. Because whoever commands, whoever makes the rules, rules. Whoever commands, commands fear. And we all have to start juggling and doing things exactly the way those people do things. Throughout Galatians, Paul speaks of a motive, a desire, an intention, a program of legalism. He gives you a psychology of legalism, sometimes of the Judaizers, who were their legalistic overlords, and he shows you their motive, sometimes of those who were getting invited to their cool kids' table in Galatia and Antioch. Listen to the language of just a few verses, and in these verses you will hear the language of desire and the language of motive. Chapter 2, verse 4, to spy out our freedom. Really? There's people in the church that are there simply to spy out our freedom? Yes, read the Bible. So that they might bring us into slavery. That's a unique situation. That's never happened. It was just back there. Chapter 4, verse 9, now he's getting to them. He's saying to the new recruits, whose slaves you want to be once more. Really, you're going to know the gospel, know the doctrine of justification by faith alone, believe in the doctrines of grace, preach it to yourself every day, but then when you want things to work, you want to subject yourselves to these, and he even calls them, elementary principles of the world. These morally serious people who are just peddling around with the ABCs of reality. That's kind of what Paul, one commentary, says Paul means by that. whose slaves you want to be once more. You want to be someone's slaves, really? Chapter four, verse 17. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them. What? The legalist wants to put you in a place, an assigned place, so that that will make much of them? How does that work? Well, just think about it for a second. If I have the power to put you in an assigned place, don't I have some power? Don't I have some attribute of some superiority over you? Don't I have some ground to compare myself to you? If I get to put you in your place, I'm the putter and you're the putt. And it's a moral distinction that's being made. You are making much of me and allowing that to happen. I would say, in commanding your fear, instead of your fear going to God, you are worshiping me. And I highly recommend you don't do that, because I don't want to answer for that on Judgment Day. Chapter 5, verse 26. Now I speak to everybody. Let us not become conceited. And it's the same. Read the book of Galatians. Same subject. He hasn't departed from the subject. Let us not become conceited. This is conceited. This is arrogant. This is prideful. Then he turns back to the motive two times in chapter six of The Legalist and says, in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. They boast in the flesh, and he gives you one more motive, in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. They will not be persecuted for being morally superior according to the rules of that society. What society persecutes the people that it agrees are morally superior? No society. Instead, societies persecute people who are moral pariahs. Okay, so it works the other way around. So you see what Paul is saying. If you are a legalist, you are congratulated for it, not persecuted for it. That's their motive, too. Chapter 6, verse 13, that they may boast in your flesh. You're a new recruit. That they may boast in your flesh. Now, no doubt, this is an uncomfortable topic. This is the dark side of legalism. This is corporate legalism. In other words, the way the Bible talks about it. The Bible doesn't talk about legalism like, the little legalist in your heart, crucify him. He's so little, do you even need to crucify him? Can you flick him off? You're making him into such a piddly thing in the mirror. That's not the way the Bible talks about legalism. The Bible talks about legalism as if Satan's bullies have showed up, and they're actually a formidable opponent, and you're actually gonna have to think about this and do something about it. Corporate legalism. We'll get to that, but for now, just notice That part of what Paul's saying, especially in those middle parts of chapters four and six of Galatians, is that the legalist brings in new recruits so that they can serve as a reflection of their own flesh. Let me read those two verses again. Paul is reading the mail, the heart, the motive, the motive of anyone who would set up church like that. that you may make much of them, chapter four, verse 17, and that they may boast in your flesh, chapter six, verse 13. In other words, at those very moments, go back to our title, the attraction of legalism. At those very moments where you are finding all that order and all that control suddenly very attractive, here's what's really happening according to Paul. At those very moments when it's starting to look right, what's really happening in your heart is that you are being made their next project. And that means that you are a problem that they feel the need to fix. If you are following a legalist into legalism, make no mistake about it, according to scripture, the motive of their heart, number one, the premise number one was you were a moral problem that they needed to fix. And number two, you bought it. And for a chance to sit at the cool kids table for the first time, you started copying them as if they were Christ. It's very attractive. We always ask that all the time. What is so attractive about that? We have in our mind some species or some little thing and the goofiest we can make it. Let's shoot at head coverings so we don't have to make this too close to home. We're all against head coverings. Man, what's so attractive about that? But then we start to get really, really close to things that we've embraced. We can start to see what's really attractive about it. Well, in the same thought, on the flip side of the same coin, I was going to say it scared me. We've got 25 more minutes. OK, good. I thought we had five more minutes. No way. I'm losing control. I better turn to legalism. Flip side of the same coin, you can't think that without thinking this. It's just the flip side of the same coin. Grace's problem. If that's the promise of legalism, what's the problem with grace? If we're honest, it's passivity and excuse-making. I hear you saying grace, and what I really hear you saying, if I'm honest, so I'm just going to, you know, the thoughts in my heart are just going to come out right now. If I'm really honest, what I really want to say is that, yeah, that's more excuse-making. That's more passivity. That's you not doing anything about it. Very often, even reformed types can begin to think of grace as either a disposition of God or as an action of God, which is true, but then, strangely enough, will divorce that from the power of God. Many Christians have never considered the power of God's grace. Grace, that's like when God says, eh. That's like when God is just too tired to deal with it anymore, because isn't He retired by now? Old man does He. Or man disease. Adam, what was his sin? Passivity. Ah, you answer the door, Eve. Might be the serpent. Ah, whatever. I'm tired. I just worked a long day at work. Passivity. Passivity. And we don't tend to think of grace as a power. We tend to think of it as a hall pass. So here I'm mostly concerned with the power of grace to transform the heart and to motivate the will, and therefore to create real and lasting moral action in the believer. In other words, legalism doesn't work, grace does. And when I say grace does, I mean that in at least two ways. Grace is going to give all the power that actually does work, because we don't deserve that, do we? Do we create that by nature? So that's the first thing that I mean by grace works. I'm just going to mean a supernatural worldview. In other words, the opposite of that is Pelagianism. No, it's not. I'm a Calvinist. I've got the t-shirt and the mug. Okay, well, you didn't study it very much. Because if you think that any part of our nature, even after the Christian life, causes any ounce of God's grace, we have a word for that. It's called Pelagian, two words, Pelagian heretic. Okay? So, read a little bit more Calvinism. The second thing I'm going to mean is the subjective effect of grace, namely, grace melting your heart. Namely, finding out that you were really bad to somebody and they treat you well anyway. You ever watch, I'm not gonna, the book's that big, so did you ever watch Les Miserables? And the whole point to that story and that part where the guy, he gets out of prison and he steals that guy's silverware and his expensive stuff and he forgives him and it transforms his life. So that's the second thing I'm gonna mean, the subjective, effect of grace in the heart. First part, the power of grace external coming into us. Paul challenges the Galatians to remember what produces the spirit in them to begin with and how the spirit produces the works of the Christian life. Read Galatians 3 verse 2 and 5. Paul uses a phrase twice. It's a rhetorical question both times and the answer is obvious both times. And what he does is he takes what we call the front door And then what we call the rest of the house of salvation. Justification. Sanctification. Front door. Rest of life. How you got saved and how everything else works. How everything else works. Nothing sticks out of that. And he asks the question first about who gave you the Spirit. How did you get the Spirit? And he says, by works of the law or by hearing with faith. And then further down, he said, and who works miracles among you? And all these things in the Christian life. Same thing. By works of the law or by hearing with faith? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I already know about that. We're saved by grace alone through faith alone and saved front door by not by works of the law. And so what we're doing, again, is we obviously don't understand at a very deep level the doctrines of salvation. The works of the law don't do anything for you in terms of a power to create more motive to do more stuff. Nothing! That's not how it works. That's not how any of it works. We are deaf to these scriptures. When we respond, that's all you're going to do. That's all you're going to do is use words. Hearing with faith. That's all. Just preaching. Just the gospel. Just give them grace. Grace makes us very uncomfortable. And if you haven't sensed that, then you likely don't know it. If you've never read the warning label on Grace and kept reading it and reading it, you've probably only ever kept it on the shelf and never used it. That warning label that Paul deciphers for us in Romans 6, 1 and 2. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. And then how does he say, by no means? Because we're going to do this, and we're going to look at that guy's example, and we're going to copy this thing, and we're going to model this, and we're going to moral this, and we're going to do this. That's not what he says. He says by no means, and then what does he spend the next chapter talking about? what Christ did and that you're crucified in Christ and risen in Christ. The reason you're not going to sin is that that guy's a dead man. And what you need to look at for your motive is what the new man is looking at. And at this point of disbelief, we are mistaking grace for mere space. We're hearing grace, and then we're hearing that as an avoidance of the hard confrontation or wishful thinking in the place of realistic, tough love. In short, we hear passivity and excuses. And I specifically want to focus on the power of the subjective getting of grace. In Luke 17, there's a story where Jesus heals ten lepers. And Jesus, I'm certain, knew full well that only one would return and thank him for it. You remember where he says that? He says, where's the other nine? Didn't I heal nine? and that one of them comes and thanks him for it. Did that ruin Jesus' day? Do you think Jesus said, one out of ten? Well, that's not so bad. Grace worked a little bit. No, grace did not wait for its gratitude. And yet only grace could have produced the gratitude to begin. But it's not working for the nine people. Newsflash, maybe they're reprobate. Get over it and trust God. The only way the one guy turned and thanked Him was by grace. And the only way the other nine would have come back and thanked Him is more grace. than simply healing their hand. God gave that man, the one man, both the healed leprosy and the gratitude of heart to come back. The only thing that works is God's means of grace. Whatever really moves us in life, is it guilt? Is it regret? Is it brow beating? I'll show him. I'll make her see what she did. It was so bad. And then she will be properly motivated to love me as I beat her. Yeah, amen. Does that ever work? Does that ever work? It works for something. You can get somebody to move by saying, I am your father, and I say. Or this reflects negatively on me, because I'm the one you should really worry about for the rest of your life and all eternity. Does that work? It works. So legalism does work for something. It can move people to being total hypocrites. It can move people to the fear of man. Legalism can incite fear in you, but it's not a God-word fear. It's a man-word fear. Legalism can incite guilt in you, but it's not a godly guilt. It's a false guilt, and so on. It can make you want to be someone different, like that guy, and he's less than Jesus. Legalism can do all those things, but you don't want it to do all those things, because all it's going to do is stuff you and wiggle you further down into the grave. And they aren't Godward motions. So. One more thing on seeing grace that way, and I talked about this in the Romans 14 class, and that's the idea of the weakened conscience, the weak conscience versus the strong conscience. I think that has a lot to do with somebody who struggles letting God be God in terms of grace. the weakened conscience. We don't want to paint legalism out to be attractive in some rosy way. All it has to mean is to say that legalism is attracting us because that's our natural default. It might be that we slide into legalism in the form of anxiety. And I've already kind of hinted at it, but let me just go a little bit deeper there. There's the fear-ridden weak conscience that Paul gives grace to in Romans 14 and in 1 Corinthians 8. The person that's afraid of his own shadow, because he used to listen to rock music back there, and so if he hears a little drumbeat there, he'll think the devil's trying to get him. Or he used to drink over there, and so he imposes that on everybody else. Or he used to read these sophisticated books over here, when he becomes a Christian, he throws out all those books. Or any number of things, you name it. The fear-ridden weak conscience. And the fear of one's own passivity in any given case turns into what I call the high-maintenance conscience. Let me just write that up there. The high-maintenance conscience. You know what high-maintenance is, right? OCD. Sproul came up, I don't know if Sproul came up with this at all, but he said, but he used it anyway. So maybe he did. And that's the idea of the tyranny of the weaker brother. And when he talks about Romans 14, he talks about the tyranny of the weaker brother. Well, this is my, he's like this, Yeah, yeah, if Batman is the tyranny of the weaker brother, this guy's Robin or something, I don't know. This is his sidekick, the high-maintenance conscience. This is somebody who's going into legalism simply because, and maybe only because, he's still sort of scared of his own shadow. He doesn't know what to do and what not to do. And that's pretty understandable. We can give grace to that situation. But we easily delve into legalism with this. At bottom, this is a fear that one is losing those two things that legalism promises, order and control. And so the high-maintenance conscience is so named because it seeks to maintain this order and maintain this control by any means necessary. Can't ever come to a conclusion, alcohol or no alcohol, this person or that person. That music or this for that volume level can't ever finally come to a conclusion on that and so the only thing that person can do is just live in this state of moral neutrality, but then suck other people into it because that's where he lives and There's a lot of problems with that But the person is too busy feeling fear to morally reason, and to come to some conclusions, and to act, and to bear up with other people that don't necessarily have the same conscience. The high maintenance conscience can actually begin to move outward and impose upon others its constant fixation on what's gone wrong up to this point. And this stunts decisive moral action. The idea, like Rahab, with the king in Jericho, reasoning through a hierarchy of moral objects. Oh, don't lie. Don't subvert the king's authority. Wait a minute. He's against God's people and is going to kill them. Oh, he's not privy to that information because it's an act of war. He's in the middle of an act of war against God's people. And so he's like, I don't tell my children everything. And so the king is stepped outside the bonds of humanity and he's worse than a child because the child would not be blameworthy for not needing to be told stuff. whereas this king is a butcher, and he's gravitated down to animal or demon level. Therefore, it's not a lie. He's just not privy to the information. But the high-maintenance conscience can't do that, because all he sees is, don't lie, don't subvert the king, but God's brought these people to me, and what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Six hours later, oh man, they're dead on the floor. Too bad. Okay? So this actually matters in practical life. But in all of this, no matter what our motive is or what perspective we're coming from, grace offends us at a molecular level. Grace offends us. Grace upsets us. Grace seems to go against and make unintelligible what I have to do. We don't mind grace at the front door, but if everything is really powered and given by grace, then I have no ultimate say in what happens next. And that's very unsettling. If I'm morally responsible for what happens next in the play, I'd like to have an ultimate say in everything on the stage. I'd like to have some of the say in the script. And if grace means that God can do to me what he did to Job, I have a problem with that, and therefore it is more attractive to take the side of Job's three friends. Because at least that's orderly and controlled. What do we got? Ten minutes. Tale of two hypocrites, real quick. There's a direct relationship. Remember that chart from week two, going that way? We sense more of God's holiness in the Christian life, and as we do, we realize we're sinners. The gap between what I need to be and what I am is growing, and I need a bigger cross, I need a bigger Savior. I actually needed that bigger Savior to begin with, I just didn't realize it, and so subjectively, there's a gap happening here. Well, let's apply that to hypocrisy. There is a direct relationship between one's awareness of holiness, going that way, and the scope of one's hypocrisy. The greater one's moral significance, in other words, the more information you have as an image bearer of God, to whom much is given, much is required, right? The greater one's moral significance, if you're a sinner, and we only have one group of people on this planet after Adam, right? Except for Christ. but you're given more things. The greater one's moral significance, if one is a sinner, the greater the gap will be between what one knows he ought to do and what he in fact does. So who should be the biggest hypocrites in the world subjectively? The most mature Christians. Did you follow all that? That's how it works. The more you realize you ought to be like God, And in fact, you're a sinner. It's not that you actually are a worse sinner once you realize this. You already were, but now you're realizing it. The greater the scope of your hypocrisy. Well, what's hypocrisy? That might help us. The Greek word, hypokrisis, was used for the stage actor. And it was made up of the two words for under, because it was under a mask, under, upo, and then a word that can mean decide or play the part, krini. Decide or play the part, play the role. The hypocrite did not simply wear a mask, but he was one who was literally under the radar screen of real moral action. That's why Hollywood actors can do whatever they do on the screen. And it's just a movie, just playing in front of millions of people, just playing. And that's what the hypocrite was literally at the stage actor. Jesus said in Luke 12, 1, he used this word, he said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. The word Pharisee literally meant, and that's why they called themselves Pharisees, separate ones. And they could justify it on the grounds that God had made his people separate. God had made his people holy. But they never asked, who does that separating? And on what basis? They made it on the basis of the mask, according to Jesus. Kevin DeYoung puts it like this in a blog that he wrote on what is hypocrisy. He said, the sin of hypocrisy is not that we are more messed up than we seem. That's true for all of us. The sin is in using the appearance of goodness to cloak the deeds of evil. The sin is in thinking that who others think you are matters a great deal more than who God knows you to be. In other words, what he's saying, the defining mark of the hypocrite is not that he is particularly bad, and you don't know about that. In comparison to his creed, he's really bad. It's that he is especially dishonest about that very thing. And he will rearrange his surroundings, rearrange her surroundings, including the rules for the church, in order to play that role. Now consider how total, total depravity really is. Two statements in Genesis, one before the flood, one after the flood. Genesis 6, 5, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And in chapter 8, verse 21, when he's making this great new promise, he still says, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. This sinful nature does not go away when we become born again. Now it has added to it the new spiritual nature, but the fountain of wickedness is still spewing forth lawlessness. And so the real question might be not whether or not we will be hypocrites at all, but rather what kind of hypocrites will we be? Will we be honest, transparent hypocrites or haughty hypocrites like the Pharisees? Now, one practical problem, and I'll end with this because this is practical and I have to get to this. One practical problem that emerges with Pharisees running things is the problem of introspection. What is introspection? Introspection is something that hopefully there's a little bit of, hopefully the right kind, but going on in the church. It's the inward examination of our hearts. Sometimes in our culture we'll call it soul searching. Sounds like a good thing. James 5.16 says to even do this with others. Confess your sins to one another. Sounds like a good thing. God even commands it. Now, here's what the legalist doesn't see. There is no necessary direct relationship between the levels of introspection you do and the levels of real guilt, much less excuse-making. Consider for a second the differences between people. External introspection versus private introspection. Consider extroverts versus introverts. Compare people that just talk a lot versus people that don't. Consider those who have been taught to value transparency versus not. And we're not arguing right now right or wrong. Is it the right time for it or not? All we're doing right now is we're looking at the hypocrite here and we're saying, what should we expect in church? What kind of a church do we want? Consider all these differences and you start to get the picture of a church as a potential interrogation room if we don't get this right. Consider guilt and shame. Shame is the subjective feeling for guilt. You've heard it said, I'm sure, by good theologians, that the reason you feel guilty is because you are guilty. That is true. It's not meant for us to take off our masks and beat somebody else over their mask with as if we don't have one. It doesn't follow. that just because you feel guilty, because you are guilty, that the outward expression of your guilt matches the true amount of your guilt. And that should be obvious when you state it plainly like that. We might turn to the 11 of the Pharisees right at that point when we start to sense this, and we might say, well, I don't want to be like that guy. I don't want to be in the mess that that girl's in right now. He or she confessed that thing. He or she can turn to those people for help, and now look. The transparency isn't worth it. The accountability isn't worth it. And we whisper that to ourselves and we all agree to put our masks back on. And we don't want that kind of church. If your church is not a safe place to confess your sin, your church still believes in too much of the false gospel. So by that test, let me just end it in that section right there and open it up to questions or comments. When we trade our conscience cleansing, looking to Christ for what he did for us to cleanse us, we replace that with our depth of interest. No. No. This section is only meant to make one point. And by the way, here's another bad point that I don't want to make. I don't want you guys to get this. This last section is not addressing time and place and proper kind of introspection. That's a totally different subject for a totally different day. My point right now is to say that this is the kind of thing that makes legalism more attractive than grace, is when introspection goes wrong, We say, well, I don't want to wind up like that. So it's not worth it. Transparency isn't worth it. Confessing sins to each other isn't worth it. Let's just put our masks back on, please. You're freaking me out. I didn't want to know that much. Thank you very much. I am better than you. I mean, I didn't mean that last part. So yeah, so introspection is good. Confessing your sins to others in a context, and there's a part I can't get into right now, is right versus wrong introspection. Of course there's a wrong introspection. Of course there's an improper confession of sin. Of course. Footnote that, circle it, the big red pen. But there is a kind of introspection and confession of sin that's commanded in the church. And we want to, and if we're not doing that, it's a sign that we're a cult. So the attraction is I can be more private if not exposed to people. Yeah, and you don't want to vomit everything all over everybody. But you also don't want to be dancing around like everybody's stuff doesn't stink. Yeah. Yep. So one comment, 2 Peter chapter 1, he says that we're being conformed to the image of God. And then he lists out the fruit of the Spirit. And many of you guys lack these in your being conformed to the image of God. It's because you forgot. you were already cleansed from your sins, which points it back to the cross. It's that, like, that's really counterintuitive. So if you look at a brother and he's lacking in the fruits of the spirit, what Peter is saying is that he's actually not dwelling in the cross. He's not sitting there at the cross. He's moved on from it, which is the problem. And that speaks to the efficacy of the cross for the whole Christian life. In essence, it's sort of, yeah, by turning to works rather than grace, we're giving up the very thing that has the power to conform us. So grace does what legalism promises to do, even though legalism gives the appearance that it works. Fast action. Yeah. Fast act and tenact. Spray legalism. Spray a little legalism on your smell and you won't, because it's fast results. It's instant. It's amazing. So if you're impatient, he never says, well, it's because you haven't tried hard enough. You haven't mustered up enough. Yeah. Shake the bottle. You just don't have enough faith. That's your problem. Secret sin. But don't confess it. Don't, I don't, you know, you're weird.