Title: Angelic Conflict part 333: Future work of Christ [Bema seat] – 2Co 5:10; Gal 5:1-9; Mat 6:19-24; Joh 15:1-17.

Title: Angelic Conflict part 333: Future work of Christ [Bema seat] - 2CO 5:10; GAL 5:1-9; MAT 6:19-24; JOH 15:1-17.

 

a. The Bema seat of the church, 2CO 5:10. Identifying good and bad things.  

 

2CO 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat [bema - raised platform] of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good [agathos- only God is good] or bad [kakos - evil or worthless].

 

The verse doesn't use the noun ergon for "deeds" but instead uses a neuter plural article which is better translated "things." And these things are done through the instrument of the body, therefore, though we can classify some of these things as thought only there are a great many things that demand action in word or deed.

 

2CO 5:10

for it is necessary in the nature of the case for all of us to be openly shown as to our true character before the judgment seat of Christ, in order that each one may receive [a recompense with respect to] the things which were practiced through the agency of our body, whether they were good or bad. [Wuest: Expanded NT]

 

The CWL is not only suppression alone; what not to do in the avoidance of evil, but it is also expression or output of positive things that are good. So it is through the agency of the body. It is not only restraining self; it is the outliving of Christ who indwells.

 

Christians turn to so-called "worldly" things because they discover in them an anesthetic to deaden the pain of an empty life and heart. The anesthetic, which is often quite innocent in itself, is not so serious a matter as the empty heart and life. Little is gained when pastors succeed in persuading the afflicted to just get on without the anesthetic rather than succeeding in filling the life and the heart with divine life and power.  

 

The last two nights we have talked a lot about motivation or intent. This is in the soul or thinking and any false intent or motivation makes any deed or thing bad. God the HS will not empower us or lead us on an endeavor in which we have wrong motivation.

 

GAL 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

 

The teaching is that Christ died on the Cross to give us the advantage of having this liberty or freedom. This liberty consists of the Christian's freedom from the law. Under the law, the person has no more liberty than a child in its minority under a guardian. The child has no freedom of action nor right of self-determination. He must move within a set of rules prescribed by his guardian. He is not old enough to act alone. He must always act under the restrictions of his guardian. So is it with the person under the law. Here were these Galatian Christians, free from the law, having been placed in the family of God as adult sons, indwelt by the Holy Spirit who would enable them to act out in their experience that maturity of Christian life in which they were placed, now putting on the straight-jacket of the law, cramping their experience, stultifying their actions, depriving themselves of the power of the Holy Spirit. They were like adults putting themselves under rules made for children.

 

GAL 5:2 Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

 

Paul is not speaking here of their standing in grace as justified believers. He is speaking of the method of living a Christian life and of growth in that life.

 

If the Galatians put themselves under law, they are depriving themselves of the ministry of the Holy Spirit which Christ made possible through His death and resurrection, and which ministry was not provided for under law.

 

In the Old Testament dispensation, the Spirit came upon believers in order that they might perform a certain service for God, and then left them when that service was accomplished. He did not indwell them for purposes of sanctification. The great apostle had taught the Galatians that God's grace guaranteed their everlasting retention of salvation, and so they understood that he was speaking of their Christian experience, not their Christian standing.

 

GAL 5:3 And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law.

 

If you're going to accept a part of the Law you have to keep the whole Law, which the Judiazers were not doing. They had convinced the Galatians to observe the Jewish cycle of feasts. Law and faith cannot be mixed just as legalism and grace cannot be mixed, and neither can licentiousness and grace be mixed.

 

ROM 11:6

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works [with wrong motivation], otherwise grace is no longer grace.

 

What has occurred in the CA is a teaching that isolates certain parts of the Old Testament law as binding upon Christians and disregards other parts. The Christian is not obligated to obey any part of the Law. The age of grace, the CA, is the time where the believer receives freely the power of the word of God and the power of the indwelling Spirit and he freely, in his own self-determination, exercises his liberty to apply that power and good motivation to perform the works that God has predestined him to do. He is not obligated to the statutes of the Law. He is completely holy, righteous, and justified before God and is answerable to God alone. It is an insult to Christ to be given His new law which is so supernatural that it requires the power of the indwelling Spirit which He could only give through His death and resurrection and to turn back to the OT law which demands no such power. However, this is not to say that many of the ethics of the OT scripture are to be ignored as many of them are reiterated in the NT, such as Proverbs for example. The Psalms and writings of the prophets that pertain to the glory of God and of Christ are to fully recognized and increase our understanding of the Godhead. All the OT should be studied in light of dispensationalism by rightly dividing the word of truth.

 

GAL 5:4 You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

 

"You have become without effective relation to Christ ... you have lost your hold on grace.

 

The idea is that the Galatian Christians, by putting themselves under law, have put themselves in a place where they have ceased to be in that relation to Christ where they could derive the spiritual benefits from Him which would enable them to live a life pleasing to Him, namely, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Christ has no more effect upon them in the living of their Christian lives. God's grace still has a hold upon them in their position, but their practical hold upon grace, receiving freely from God's storehouse of wisdom and power, since they are seeking justification through the Law.

 

GAL 5:5 For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.

 

Our faith in doctrine enables us to exercise faith in the fact that doctrine will transform our minds to submission to the will of God and then to produce divine good.

 

This is not at all the righteousness that every believer receives at salvation. Gal 5 is all about the Christian experience which is to be wrought through the ministry of G/HS and the word of God. Here in lies our spiritual growth before the production of love as a fruit of the Spirit in verse 6. Through the Spirit, by faith in doctrine, we have a happy, confident expectation of experiential or practical righteousness. This is the positional righteousness of the believer at salvation being experienced in his everyday life. Spiritual growth through a deep understanding and faith in one's position in Christ must come before all spiritual production or divine good deeds.

 

The word wait [apodechomai] speaks of an attitude of intense yearning and an eager waiting for practical righteousness just as we yearn for our returning Lord.

 

Here it refers to the believer's intense desire for and eager expectation of a practical righteousness which will be constantly produced in his life by the Holy Spirit as he yields himself to Him.

 

The same word is used in PHI 3:20 as we wait eagerly for our returning Savior. We are to intensely yearn for practical righteousness in the same way that we yearn for our returning Lord.

 

PHI 3:20

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait [apodechomai] for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ

 

GAL 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.

 

The English translation in the NASB is somewhat weak.

 

"means anything" - ti[ti - any] ivscu,w[ischuo - power or ability] = "neither circumcision is of any power nor uncircumcision"

 

The baptism of the Holy Spirit at salvation transformed every believer into a brand new creature and not some ritual made with hands. Nor in the believer's life is any ritual going to be a source of power. Power is found in faith in doctrine, the indwelling Spirit filling the believer, and the subsequent agape love, the greatest power in the universe.

 

Paul then breaks off his argument in order to make an appeal to the Galatian readers, as he did in GAL 4:12. He uses words that depict a running analogy.

 

GAL 5:7 You were running well; who hindered you [another runner cutting in to slow his progress] from obeying the truth?