The Doctrine of Salvation
How
"Righteousness by Faith"
Really Works
"Righteousness by Faith"
Really Works
Transcript of Lesson 8
Welcome back again to our study on The Doctrine of Salvation - How “Righteousness by Faith” Really Works
We are finishing up Section B: How did Christ Live? with Lesson 8: How was Jesus Tempted?
We are finishing up Section B: How did Christ Live? with Lesson 8: How was Jesus Tempted?
On the basis of the previous three lessons, we can now come to some practical conclusions. We want to know what difference all of this makes for our daily lives. We are all tempted constantly, both by outward and inward temptations.
How does Jesus' life help us with our daily struggles? Here is where we can apply this study to the overall concept of Righteousness by Faith – how it really works. Or in the case of Christian therapeutic lifestyle change, how “Faith Healing” really works.
First, we need to understand: How was Jesus tempted? Hebrews 4:15 tells us: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
We begin this study with the most important text on this subject. Here we learn that our High Priest (Jesus) is very close to us and very sympathetic to our struggles. He can be “touched” with our weaknesses, because He struggled with those same weaknesses.
Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are tempted.
Since most temptations arise out of the drives and impulses of our fallen nature, if Jesus did not take our fallen nature, then, although He could be tempted on some things that we are tempted on, He could not be tempted in all points on which we are tempted.
He could not have been tempted on our temptations of selfishness, pride, anger, discouragement, lust, covetousness, appetite, carelessness, rebellion, and a host of other temptations which arise out of our fallen nature.
Does Hebrews 4:15 say that Jesus lived without sin because He avoided 90% of our temptations by not taking our fallen nature? No! The text says Jesus lived without sin in spite of being tempted in all the same ways that we are tempted.
What an encouragement this should be to us, as we must live our entire lives fighting against a nature that wants to destroy us.
Because Christ lived as one of us with our fallen nature and never sinned, we have the hope and assurance that sin and failure are not inevitable results of being born into a sinful world with a fallen nature.
Now that we understand how Jesus was tempted – just like we are tempted – we can study to learn how Jesus resisted all those same temptations and was able to live without ever sinning. So, let’s ask:
What did Jesus always do?
Jesus always did His Father's will. Even when He did not want to.
Why would it be necessary for Jesus to make these statements if His own will was perfect and could be trusted implicitly as part of a perfect (unfallen) nature?
Adam before his fall did not experience this conflict between his will and God’s will, because they were in perfect harmony. If Jesus had taken Adam’s nature before his fall, would we not expect Jesus to seek both His own will and His Father's will, since with an unfallen nature their wills would be in agreement?
Instead, we find these astonishing statements of Christ repeated several times during His ministry. Jesus clearly saw a difference between His own will and His Father's will. If Jesus did take our fallen nature, then these statements are appropriate and easily understood.
Our will is part of our fallen nature, and by itself our will leads us to make sinful choices. In fact, our will is probably the biggest problem with which we must deal on a daily basis. When the will is surrendered to God, we obey. When the will is not surrendered to God, we disobey.
It is only by denying our own wills that we can have a relationship with Jesus. As it says in Luke 9:23 – “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” The reality is that we must pray the prayer of Christ every day: “Not my will, but Your will, be done.”
The following insight may be helpful here: “The human will of Christ would not have led him to the wilderness of temptation, to fast, and to be tempted of the devil. It would not have led him to endure humiliation, scorn, reproach, suffering, and death. His human nature shrank from all these things as decidedly as ours shrinks from them...What did Christ live to do? It was the will of his heavenly Father.” (Signs of the Times, Oct. 29, 1894)
Jesus' will and His nature, in and of themselves, were not in harmony with the will of God. It was the daily work of Christ to deny that will and His fallen nature which He had inherited from His mother, and instead to live by faith -- trusting and doing His Father's will.
The daily experience of Jesus in righteousness by faith is exactly the experience we can have.
The key element of our daily Christian walk is to surrender our will and desires to God, and to replace our fallen wills with God's will, which can be accomplished by faith in the Word of God and in the Spirit of Christ in order to make the right choices for our lives. Then everything else in the Christian walk will fall into place rather easily. It really is easy to obey God when the will is surrendered to Him.
Jesus came to this earth to show us how to deal with our weaknesses and our temptations. Since our primary weakness is our faulty will, Jesus had to live at our level with our fallen nature and our faulty will. To be our example, Jesus had to live the way we live.
Jesus our Saviour truly experienced our feelings and desires and temptations. He knew what it was like to feel the temptation to rebel against God, and like us, that temptation arose from within His nature. Jesus had to experience this battle of conflicting wills as we do.
He had to “fight the battle as every child of humanity has to fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss.” In realizing this, we need to ask: Why was Jesus tempted in this way? Hebrews 2:18 tells us; “For in that he himself (Jesus) hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted (us).”
The word "succour" means to assist, help, support, strengthen, and encourage, especially in times of hardship and distress.
Not only did Jesus Christ prove beyond a doubt that Satan’s claims of an unjust law were wrong, but also, He overcame the world to help us in overcoming our temptations and not sin.
Jesus went through the depths of temptation to show us a way out of failure and despair – how to overcome sin and live a victorious life. He came to live at our level to give us hope. Because of His victory over His own nature and will, He can help us with our identical struggles.
If this is true: “The just shall live by faith,” (repeated 4 times in the Bible: Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38, which are really saying: “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Now, is it saying: The righteous shall live with less sin by faith? No! If Jesus calls you righteous, it means: The just (righteous) shall live righteously by faith – live victoriously, without sinning, by faith. To BE righteous, you must be LIVING righteously.
This is “Righteousness by Faith” – living righteously (without sin) by faith. This is the good news of The Gospel of Christ But do we believe it?
If we do believe it, what should be our “spiritual” attitude? Hebrews 4:16 tells us: “Let us therefore come boldly (confidently) unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (when being tempted).”
Let’s make sure we understand a couple of the terms that are used here. First:
This is what the love, mercy, and grace of God and Christ are all about: Empowering us to live without sin, if we would only believe and act on our faith.
Because Christ is truly our elder Brother, and has gone through our daily struggles, we can have full confidence that in His name (by His authority) we can approach the very throne of God, and know that our needs (to live victoriously) will be supplied.
Because Christ took our fallen nature, and was tempted in all points as we are, all fear is gone, and we can know that there is power (the indwelling Spirit of Christ) for us to overcome all of our seemingly impossible problems.
So, what can we Conclude from all of this? Jesus overcame sin by depending on His Father's power. He did not use His own divine powers or the power of an unfallen nature. “He exercised in His own behalf no power that is not freely offered to us.” (Desire of Ages, p. 24)
The power of a perfect (sinless) nature is not offered to us (in this life). For Adam (before his fall) it was natural to do right. For us it is natural to do wrong. If the power of Adam's unfallen nature had been possessed by Jesus, that would have been a mighty power that we do not possess.
Jesus' victory was remarkable, not because as the Son of God He had special powers, but because as a human He did not sin like every other human. Jesus lived a life that Satan said could not be lived. He lived a life that was supposed to be impossible to live.
If Jesus had lived a sinless life on any level other than our fallen level, Satan’s accusations would never have been proven false.
If Jesus took a perfect nature, He would have bridged the gulf between God and unfallen man - of which there are none, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God - but the gulf between unfallen and fallen man would still need to be bridged.
If, however, Jesus took our fallen nature, then He bridged the whole gulf between God and fallen man in our dire need for God.
The practical result of this study for us is that we now know how salvation works. We can experience righteousness by faith by looking to Christ -- believing in Him, what He did, and how He did it.
Jesus overcame through prayer and daily surrender. He let the Holy Spirit of God control the daily decisions of his life. And every member of the human family can access the same power of God just as Jesus did.
Christ “laid hold on the throne of God, and there is not a man or woman who may not have access to the same help through faith in God. Man may become a partaker of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4, Selected Messages, 1;409)
Our Saviour and Lord is both our Substitute and our Example. He gives us the assurance of salvation by providing both the forgiveness of our sins (past) and the power to overcome sin (now). He has demonstrated how we can overcome our tendency to rebel against God’s will and live a sinless life in harmony with God by surrendering our will to Him. Jesus proved that with God the impossible is possible (Mark 10:27).
Because of Jesus, our future is bright with hope. Because of Christ's victory in our fallen nature, the way is now prepared for God to do the impossible in us.
What is totally impossible from a human perspective is simply God's opportunity to accomplish the impossible once again in each of us today.
If we really want to know what righteousness by faith is, and how it works, all we need to do is take a long, thoughtful look at Jesus. It is so easy for us to allow the stress of daily living to obscure our view of Jesus.
Will you commit to keep your eyes on Jesus?
How does Jesus' life help us with our daily struggles? Here is where we can apply this study to the overall concept of Righteousness by Faith – how it really works. Or in the case of Christian therapeutic lifestyle change, how “Faith Healing” really works.
First, we need to understand: How was Jesus tempted? Hebrews 4:15 tells us: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”
We begin this study with the most important text on this subject. Here we learn that our High Priest (Jesus) is very close to us and very sympathetic to our struggles. He can be “touched” with our weaknesses, because He struggled with those same weaknesses.
Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are tempted.
Since most temptations arise out of the drives and impulses of our fallen nature, if Jesus did not take our fallen nature, then, although He could be tempted on some things that we are tempted on, He could not be tempted in all points on which we are tempted.
He could not have been tempted on our temptations of selfishness, pride, anger, discouragement, lust, covetousness, appetite, carelessness, rebellion, and a host of other temptations which arise out of our fallen nature.
Does Hebrews 4:15 say that Jesus lived without sin because He avoided 90% of our temptations by not taking our fallen nature? No! The text says Jesus lived without sin in spite of being tempted in all the same ways that we are tempted.
What an encouragement this should be to us, as we must live our entire lives fighting against a nature that wants to destroy us.
Because Christ lived as one of us with our fallen nature and never sinned, we have the hope and assurance that sin and failure are not inevitable results of being born into a sinful world with a fallen nature.
Now that we understand how Jesus was tempted – just like we are tempted – we can study to learn how Jesus resisted all those same temptations and was able to live without ever sinning. So, let’s ask:
What did Jesus always do?
- John 5:30 tells us: “I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” and
- John 6:38 explains: “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” and
- Luke 22:42 says: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine (thy will), be done.”
Jesus always did His Father's will. Even when He did not want to.
Why would it be necessary for Jesus to make these statements if His own will was perfect and could be trusted implicitly as part of a perfect (unfallen) nature?
Adam before his fall did not experience this conflict between his will and God’s will, because they were in perfect harmony. If Jesus had taken Adam’s nature before his fall, would we not expect Jesus to seek both His own will and His Father's will, since with an unfallen nature their wills would be in agreement?
Instead, we find these astonishing statements of Christ repeated several times during His ministry. Jesus clearly saw a difference between His own will and His Father's will. If Jesus did take our fallen nature, then these statements are appropriate and easily understood.
Our will is part of our fallen nature, and by itself our will leads us to make sinful choices. In fact, our will is probably the biggest problem with which we must deal on a daily basis. When the will is surrendered to God, we obey. When the will is not surrendered to God, we disobey.
It is only by denying our own wills that we can have a relationship with Jesus. As it says in Luke 9:23 – “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” The reality is that we must pray the prayer of Christ every day: “Not my will, but Your will, be done.”
The following insight may be helpful here: “The human will of Christ would not have led him to the wilderness of temptation, to fast, and to be tempted of the devil. It would not have led him to endure humiliation, scorn, reproach, suffering, and death. His human nature shrank from all these things as decidedly as ours shrinks from them...What did Christ live to do? It was the will of his heavenly Father.” (Signs of the Times, Oct. 29, 1894)
Jesus' will and His nature, in and of themselves, were not in harmony with the will of God. It was the daily work of Christ to deny that will and His fallen nature which He had inherited from His mother, and instead to live by faith -- trusting and doing His Father's will.
The daily experience of Jesus in righteousness by faith is exactly the experience we can have.
The key element of our daily Christian walk is to surrender our will and desires to God, and to replace our fallen wills with God's will, which can be accomplished by faith in the Word of God and in the Spirit of Christ in order to make the right choices for our lives. Then everything else in the Christian walk will fall into place rather easily. It really is easy to obey God when the will is surrendered to Him.
Jesus came to this earth to show us how to deal with our weaknesses and our temptations. Since our primary weakness is our faulty will, Jesus had to live at our level with our fallen nature and our faulty will. To be our example, Jesus had to live the way we live.
Jesus our Saviour truly experienced our feelings and desires and temptations. He knew what it was like to feel the temptation to rebel against God, and like us, that temptation arose from within His nature. Jesus had to experience this battle of conflicting wills as we do.
He had to “fight the battle as every child of humanity has to fight it, at the risk of failure and eternal loss.” In realizing this, we need to ask: Why was Jesus tempted in this way? Hebrews 2:18 tells us; “For in that he himself (Jesus) hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted (us).”
The word "succour" means to assist, help, support, strengthen, and encourage, especially in times of hardship and distress.
Not only did Jesus Christ prove beyond a doubt that Satan’s claims of an unjust law were wrong, but also, He overcame the world to help us in overcoming our temptations and not sin.
Jesus went through the depths of temptation to show us a way out of failure and despair – how to overcome sin and live a victorious life. He came to live at our level to give us hope. Because of His victory over His own nature and will, He can help us with our identical struggles.
If this is true: “The just shall live by faith,” (repeated 4 times in the Bible: Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38, which are really saying: “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Now, is it saying: The righteous shall live with less sin by faith? No! If Jesus calls you righteous, it means: The just (righteous) shall live righteously by faith – live victoriously, without sinning, by faith. To BE righteous, you must be LIVING righteously.
This is “Righteousness by Faith” – living righteously (without sin) by faith. This is the good news of The Gospel of Christ But do we believe it?
If we do believe it, what should be our “spiritual” attitude? Hebrews 4:16 tells us: “Let us therefore come boldly (confidently) unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (when being tempted).”
Let’s make sure we understand a couple of the terms that are used here. First:
- Mercy: Mercy is Kindness and Good Will towards the miserable and afflicted, having a desire to help them.
- Grace: Grace is similar to mercy in that it also involves: Good Will, Loving-Kindness, but grace is more than mercy, because it also involes; Favour having a holy influence and power to strengthen us in faith, and knowledge, and a desire to exercise godly virtues and live righteously – without sinning.
This is what the love, mercy, and grace of God and Christ are all about: Empowering us to live without sin, if we would only believe and act on our faith.
Because Christ is truly our elder Brother, and has gone through our daily struggles, we can have full confidence that in His name (by His authority) we can approach the very throne of God, and know that our needs (to live victoriously) will be supplied.
Because Christ took our fallen nature, and was tempted in all points as we are, all fear is gone, and we can know that there is power (the indwelling Spirit of Christ) for us to overcome all of our seemingly impossible problems.
So, what can we Conclude from all of this? Jesus overcame sin by depending on His Father's power. He did not use His own divine powers or the power of an unfallen nature. “He exercised in His own behalf no power that is not freely offered to us.” (Desire of Ages, p. 24)
The power of a perfect (sinless) nature is not offered to us (in this life). For Adam (before his fall) it was natural to do right. For us it is natural to do wrong. If the power of Adam's unfallen nature had been possessed by Jesus, that would have been a mighty power that we do not possess.
Jesus' victory was remarkable, not because as the Son of God He had special powers, but because as a human He did not sin like every other human. Jesus lived a life that Satan said could not be lived. He lived a life that was supposed to be impossible to live.
If Jesus had lived a sinless life on any level other than our fallen level, Satan’s accusations would never have been proven false.
If Jesus took a perfect nature, He would have bridged the gulf between God and unfallen man - of which there are none, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God - but the gulf between unfallen and fallen man would still need to be bridged.
If, however, Jesus took our fallen nature, then He bridged the whole gulf between God and fallen man in our dire need for God.
The practical result of this study for us is that we now know how salvation works. We can experience righteousness by faith by looking to Christ -- believing in Him, what He did, and how He did it.
Jesus overcame through prayer and daily surrender. He let the Holy Spirit of God control the daily decisions of his life. And every member of the human family can access the same power of God just as Jesus did.
Christ “laid hold on the throne of God, and there is not a man or woman who may not have access to the same help through faith in God. Man may become a partaker of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4, Selected Messages, 1;409)
Our Saviour and Lord is both our Substitute and our Example. He gives us the assurance of salvation by providing both the forgiveness of our sins (past) and the power to overcome sin (now). He has demonstrated how we can overcome our tendency to rebel against God’s will and live a sinless life in harmony with God by surrendering our will to Him. Jesus proved that with God the impossible is possible (Mark 10:27).
Because of Jesus, our future is bright with hope. Because of Christ's victory in our fallen nature, the way is now prepared for God to do the impossible in us.
What is totally impossible from a human perspective is simply God's opportunity to accomplish the impossible once again in each of us today.
If we really want to know what righteousness by faith is, and how it works, all we need to do is take a long, thoughtful look at Jesus. It is so easy for us to allow the stress of daily living to obscure our view of Jesus.
Will you commit to keep your eyes on Jesus?