Part Two Bible Proof That Your Worthiness or Your Unworthiness Has Nothing To Do With Your Right To Receive Healing and Prosperity Chapter Four Does Galatians 5:4 Teach That A Christian Can Fall From Grace and Lose His/Her Salvation? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Healing and Prosperity Are Your Inheritance and Your Unworthiness Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With It We've established several things in the first three chapters of this book. Let's go over just a couple of them again. God singled out one man, Abraham, and made a covenant with him. That covenant included his physical seed, and it prophetically included a seed who was not of his physical descent - Gentiles. As a result of that Covenant, none of Abraham's physical seed (Jews) had to get saved. They were born with it. God gave it to Abraham by Covenant. That may make you scratch your head, but check it out. A Jew was born saved. That's not 59
all, though. He was born with healing, prosperity, and well being for his family. All this was his right, by the Abrahamic Covenant. Four hundred and twenty years later, God had to deal with the sin problem, so He gave what we call the Law - the Ten Commandants, plus all the other laws. He also included a sacrificial system, and said, "If you break one of these laws (or sin), make the right sacrifice and you can keep the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. But if you don't make the right sacrifice, you're going to lose the blessings of Abraham's Covenant then and there." This lasted until Jesus Christ came. When Jesus came He paid the price for all those sins that were covered by the blood of bulls and goats. God reached way back in the Old Testament to all those sins that had been temporarily covered by the blood of bulls and goats, and pulled them all up under the blood of Jesus, and Jesus' blood cleansed them. At that point in time the Old Testament people had all their sins washed away. When Jesus came, He became the final sacrifice for sin under Moses' law. When a Jew accepted Christ as his Savior he didn't have to kill any more animals, because Jesus was the final sacrifice. When he received Christ, everything that he had in the Abrahamic Covenant continued to run for him without interruption. When a Gentile received Jesus as his personal Savior, he was grafted into that same Abrahamic system and had the same identical set of promises that the Jews had, because he was grafted into Abraham's Covenant on an equal footing with the Jews. So, he now had salvation, healing, prosperity, well being for his family members guaranteed to him by the same Abrahamic Covenant that Abraham 60
had and every Jew had down through the Old Testament centuries. Glory to God! See the author's book, The Unbroken Force of Abraham's Blessings. When the Apostle Paul began to set up churches, there was a group of Jewish people (Judaizers-Unworthiness Peddlers) who followed him and attempted to keep the new Jewish converts under the Jewish law. In addition, these Unworthiness Peddlers were insisting that Gentile Christians had to keep Moses Law also. They were especially insistent that Gentiles be circumcised. But, more than this, they were attempting to place both Jew and Gentile under a perversion of the Law which consisted of this: they had perverted the Law by separating it and disconnecting it from The Abrahamic Covenant, and they failed to see that the Law was given to enable the Jews (the physical seed of Abraham) to maintain the Abrahamic blessings. Instead, they set it up as a doctrine of works, in which the Jews had to earn what had already been given to them in The Abrahamic Covenant. These people were called Judaizers, because they went into the churches that Paul established and said to both Jews and Gentiles, "Yes, you have to receive Christ as your Savior to be saved, but you also have to keep Moses' law or else you're not saved." Why Gentiles Are Now Part of The Abrahamic 61
Seed Group On An Equal Footing With The Jews Look at Galatians 3:29, 62 29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. In other words, "If you belong to Christ..." Who belongs to Christ? Christians - us. So, if you belong to Christ, you are also Abraham's seed. If you're Abraham's seed, you're heirs of everything God promised in the Abrahamic Covenant. Notice that Gentile Christians are heirs of the Abrahamic promises of healing, prosperity and well-being for our families in addition to our salvation by inheritance, and not by religious flesh works of the Law. Do you see this? Look at Galatians 4:1-3, 1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; 2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. 3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: Gentiles Were Never Under The Jewish Schoolmaster and Never Will Be The Ten Commandments were designed to be a schoolmaster to the Jews. But Gentiles were never under these laws. How many sermons have you heard in Gentile Christian churches where they hammered you with the
law? You were never under that law. There has never been a day when a Gentile was ever under the law. As a matter of fact, the law is what cut Gentiles out of the Abrahamic Covenant until Christ came. You were never under the law. But for the Jews, the law functioned as a schoolmaster. A schoolmaster is the same thing as a school teacher. A school teacher is one who teaches you certain things until you get to a certain age, then you're out on your own. He's saying that Moses' law was a schoolmaster to us Jews, not to you Gentiles. Although the Jews were heirs, as long as they were children they were no different from a servant, because a servant's child and the governor's child were both treated alike - they both had to go to school. He said, "So you're an heir - so what? As long as we Jews were under the law we might as well have been pauper's children, because we all had to go to school. We were all on an equal footing." Look at verses 4-5, 4 But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. When the fullness of time came, God sent Jesus Christ, who paid the price for sin and abolished the law, so that the law was no longer a schoolmaster. Then Christ redeemed those who were under the law. Who was under the law? The Jews were. Were Gentiles under the law? No, they were not. Have they ever been under the law? No. Was there any part of the law that pertained to 63
Gentiles? Yes, there are four things Gentiles are to obey - remember? Gentiles are not to commit fornication, eat anything strangled, drink blood, or eat meat which was offered to idols. That is the sum total of Moses' law which pertains to Gentiles. So when Paul was talking about redeeming them that were under the law (v. 5), he was talking about the Jewish race. "Jesus came to redeem THEM that WE ALL might receive the adoption of sons." Christ redeemed those who were under the law (Jews) so that all of us (Jews and Gentiles) might receive the adoption of sons, because not just Jews are sons, but now Gentile Christians are sons by faith in Jesus Christ. What Paul was trying to show in this entire book is very simple. He was showing that you can't receive Jesus and then stay saved by keeping the law. When Jesus died, He abolished the law. It does not exist anymore as an external document to damn. He abolished it. He did away with it in His own person. Therefore, if He did away with it, how is it that somebody is going to be forced to keep that which does not exist? (Of course, the Law is now written in our hearts. Consequently, we obey it as an impulse but not as obedience to an external document that damns.) The Church Did Not Begin At Pentecost. It 64
Began With Abraham in Genesis 12 A lot of modern theology is built upon the assumption that the church began at Pentecost. It did not. It began at eternity past, but for the sake of our study, we're picking it up with Abraham - it was in existence then. The church is made up of a group of people that I call the Abrahamic Seed Group - Abraham's seed. We Gentiles are grafted into the Abrahamic blessing stream. The Church is not just something that somebody set up with a theological set of jargon on the day of Pentecost. It began with Abraham, and you and I Gentile Christians are grafted into it. This system has healing and prosperity in it, as well as salvation, and you and I have been grafted into THAT! At Pentecost, the church received a power it had not had before, but it was not new. It was the same identical Abrahamic Seed Group that Jesus sent the Holy Ghost down to indwell and empower in a new way. The point is, the Jews in those days knew that Gentiles were not coming into some new, outlaw system, but they were coming into the same Jewish church that they had been a part of for 2000 years - and that the Gentiles were coming into it on an equal footing with them, which entitled them to the same salvation, to the same healing, to the same prosperity, and well being for their families that they had had for 2000 years. That's what we're a part of NOW! The church just changed forms a little bit at Pentecost, but it did not start then. When this finally grabs hold of you - that you're tied to Abraham all the way back to Genesis 12, not some 65
modern theological theory that supposedly began in Acts 2, but that you go all the way back to the beginning - it'll give you a stability that many of you have never had in your Christian life. The greatest discovery I ever made was that my roots go all the way back to Abraham, and that because of it I am guaranteed healing and prosperity, as well as salvation. Is it any wonder that it made Paul fire-eating mad when he went into the churches he had established and began to hear that the people were believing the false doctrine of the Unworthiness Peddlers concerning salvation. Does Galatians 5:4 Teach That a Christian Can Lose His/Her Salvation and Fall From Grace? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Look at Galatians 5:4, 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. This is a Scripture that the Unworthiness Peddlers use to show that a Christian can fall from grace. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but when I get excited I sometimes get rather blunt. I get to the point in a hurry and say things so strongly that I jangle people's heads. I don't mean to, but it gets to me when I hear Scripture used in order to take someone's salvation away from them. To start with, the person who believes that doesn't know what salvation is. I once heard an evangelist say to the congregation, 66
"Everybody who has been saved for the first time tonight, raise your hand." There were about ten people who raised their hands. Then he asked, "How many of you have been saved before?" There were about 50 who raised their hands, saying that they had been saved before. I thought, "How silly this whole place is! Nobody in this whole building really knows what salvation is." Let me show you something. Once you have salvation, you can't lose it. When you find out what salvation REALLY is, you'll find that it is IMPOSSIBLE to lose it. God made a Covenant with Abraham and gave salvation to him and his family - as many as were born. They didn't have to get saved, they were given it. This included his seed, his posterity - his grandchildren and their grandchildren, as long as there was the seed of Abraham, they were born saved. It was given by grace, they didn't have to earn it - they had it. Four hundred twenty years later God said, "I've got to deal with their sin problem. I can't let saved people run around all over the place and sin." So he said to a man named Moses, (I'm paraphrasing here), "Moses, I want you to set My law in place." He told Moses, "As long as the people keep My law, they can keep the salvation that I gave them in the Abrahamic Covenant, but if they break My law, I'm still going to be gracious toward them. I'm going to set up a sacrificial system through you, so they can sacrifice a certain kind of animal for a certain kind of sin. When they make this sacrifice, their Abrahamic salvation will keep on running without interruption. I want this system followed until I send my Son to earth. His name 67
will be Jesus, and He will die on a cross. When He dies on that cross He will be the final sacrifice for sin under Moses' law, for when He dies and then someone accepts His death as their final sacrifice for sin, there will never be anything more that he will ever have to do to get his sins forgiven and maintain the salvation I gave him in the Abrahamic Covenant." Do you understand how the system works? Here is what happened in the days that Paul wrote the book of Galatians. By the time Jesus got here, Jewish theologians has messed up their Abrahamic theology. They had detached and disconnected Moses Law from Abraham's Covenant, to the point that they gave only lip service to Abraham, like modern theology does today. They had no concept of what the Abrahamic Covenant was. They knew Abraham only as a fuzzy figure from the past. They forgot that everything was included in the Covenant. Instead, they separated Moses' law and made it a doctrine, a system, a "salvation by works" religion. They were trying to be saved by keeping the works of the law. They were trying to get, by works, what God had already given them in the Abrahamic Covenant. This is what Paul ran up against. People look at Galatians 5:4 and say, "Ah-ha, look at that!...fallen from grace. I knew a Christian could fall from grace, and there it is in black and white." Really? Is that what it says? Who does this verse say is fallen from grace? The Jew who is attempting to be justified by the works of the law. Do you remember what justified means? It means "cleared of all guilt". It's a Greek legal term. So what Paul was saying is, 68
"Because you Jews are trying to be cleared of your guilt by the works of the law, the sacrifice of Christ, who was the final sacrifice for sins under Moses' law, is not effectual for you. You are fallen from the Abrahamic grace you were born into." No Christian Can Fall From Grace, But a Jew Could, Did and Still Does Fallen from what grace? What grace is he talking about? It's the same grace in which we stand. But we need to define grace. Here it is. God singled out one man. His name was Abraham. God made a Covenant with Abraham. He included his physical descendants and said, "Someday I'm going to include the Gentiles in it." What was this covenant of grace all about? God said, "Abraham, I'm going to give you salvation, healing, and prosperity, and everyone of your children are going to inherit the same thing." That's grace. But when it came time for Jews to accept Christ as their Savior, they balked, there was no more sacrifice for sin, and they fell out of the grace Covenant which God had made with Abraham 2000 years earlier. In order for you to understand this verse, you must understand how the Abrahamic system works, you must understand to whom it was written, and you must understand what it was they lost. Listen, Jews fell from grace down through the centuries even before Jesus came - it was set up that way. How was it set up? God picked out one man. His name was Abraham. God made a Covenant and said, "Abraham, I'm going to give you salvation, healing and prosperity." That's grace. Four hundred twenty years later Moses came, and God said, 69
"Moses, I want you to link the law to Abraham's Covenant. If the people sin, all they have to do is make the right sacrifice by killing the right animal, and everything I guaranteed those people in the Abrahamic Covenant will continue for them full force. There will be no interruption and they'll lose nothing. But if they sin and don't make the right sacrifice, they lose it right then." They fell from grace. But when they received Christ as their personal Savior, since there was no more sacrifice for sin, and since that one sacrifice covered all sin, what was there to fall from. The system is finished, it's complete, and, praise God, you and I are grafted into it. Notice very closely, it was not their sin that cost them their Abrahamic blessings, it was their refusal to make the proper sacrifice in the right manner and attitude. And, the problem for the Jew is still the same. Christ is the proper sacrifice for sin now. If he fails to accept this final, proper sacrifice, he falls from the same Abrahamic Covenant grace he fell from throughout the Old Testament period. Let me stress this again. It was not their sin that got them into trouble, it was the failure to sacrifice properly. You see, the sacrifice was God's way of being gracious to them in spite of their sin. Once a Jew, or you as a Gentile, accepts Christ (God's final sacrifice for your sin) as the Savior, both you and the Jew stand in the mainstream of the Abrahamic promises. And since God doesn't accept the blood of bulls and goats anymore, there is no more sacrifice or any other act you can or need to do to be saved. Christ paid it all. Amen. Besides that, this Scripture does not apply to a Christian at 70
all. This was written to a Jew who was following that perverted theology of setting up Moses' law as an independent religious system of works and trying to earn what he already had by grace in the Abrahamic Covenant. That person fell out of the Covenant just like Jews had fallen from it for years, by sinning and not making the right sacrifice. But now they can't fall. When they receive Christ as their Savior there is no more sacrifice to be made. No matter what sin they commit, it's covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. Let me give you a Scripture to prove it. Look at 1 John 1:7, 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. Theologians agree that this book (I John) was written for Christians - the sons of God. The word "cleanseth" is written in the Greek present tense which means continuous action in present time. What this verse says is this. When a Christian sins, the blood of Jesus Christ, which is spread on the mercy seat right now, cleanses and keeps on keeping on cleansing from all sin. "Christ is become of no effect unto the Jew who is attempting to be cleared of all guilt by the works of the law. That Jew has, indeed, fallen from the grace into which he was born." This is talking about a Jew who had come up to the edge of receiving Christ as his/her Savior, but then backed off and refused Christ. He lost his Abrahamic blessings at that point, because there was no more sacrifice for his sins, for Jesus Christ was the 71
ultimate sacrifice. In order to teach this I have to go way back to the very depths of the Old Testament pages, then put it in language people can understand. And in order for people to truly understand and grasp the teaching, I have to repeat and repeat and repeat. So that's what I do. God has anointed me to teach this message and cover all the bases concerning that message. 72