Is Grace Really That Good? Part 3 | Don Keathley

[Music] Heat. Heat. Good morning, everybody. Glad to have you with me today, especially this morning here at the digital cathedral. We're going to wrap up this short little series that we've been doing, uh, with a question. Is grace really that good? And I think we've, what we've been discovering is that it's even better than we thought it was. So good that Paul said we're never going to discover its depths until the ages and ages and ages to come are fulfilled. Right?

What we've been doing in this series is talking about words. Words are so important. And I want a grace culture. One of the trailblazers of kind of talking about grace, teaching grace, been doing this now for, I guess, close to 25 years. I want us to understand words. Words have been so ingrained within us that we've come to understand them in a particular way and, and to be honest with you, religion has hijacked it's the best word that I know to describe it has hijacked a lot of words and, and perverted them from what Paul meant post-resurrection. So Jesus said this, words are important. Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." Out of the abundant, what's in your heart is going to come out your mouth. If what's in your heart is a God that is judicial, angry, hostile, that's going to come out. If, if your belief, uh, in the rapture is in there, it's going to come out. And the reason that that's in there is because we've taken words, manipulated them around a fit of theology, a particular, particular idea that that denomination or that church wants to put forward. I have no dog in the fight. I'm not an Armenian. I'm not a Calvinist. I'm not a charismatic. I'm not word of faith. I'm just, I'm, I'm a guy that's looking for truth. And these last years, I have discovered so, so much truth. And when it's come in conflict with what I had thought for decades, the Father's given me a lot of grace. I've been able to make adjustments. I'm not too proud to say I was wrong in days gone by. I know that my theology is fluid. It continues to adjust. It continues to be that new wine, and I want to be that new wine skin, flexible, able to move with what the Spirit of God is showing today.

But the truth is this, when it comes to words, when you hear one definition for, uh, sometimes decades, you just come to believe and accept that that's the actual description and definition of that word. So, I want to finish today on 10 words that I think are extremely important for a grace culture to acclimate to, for a grace culture to just have like tools in a toolbox so that you can come out, pull them out, and apply them when, when they're needed to help people. I'm looking at these words from a post-resurrection perspective. The fact is that grace and religion look at the same word and they define it differently. Religion looks at words with a limited basis, uh, through a transactional perspective. When Paul looked at words, and the words that we're getting into, he saw them from an unlimited, already accomplished, done fact. Uh, religion looks at words like unconditional and it becomes conditional. When, when conditions are applied to unconditional, "God loves you unconditionally." If God loves you unconditionally, but see, those, those that, that totally destroys unconditional. And religion has taken unconditional and made it conditional. They've taken the word inclusion and made it selective. There's no such thing in religion is everybody's included unless it comes to sin. Then they believe all have sinned. That word "all" is a big operative word. And Paul, when Paul says "all," he's not speaking about exclusion. He's speaking about inclusion.

Let me give you a real good example. And these are not any of the words that I covered, but maybe I should have. The word salvation is the word *soteria* in the Greek. And if you stop 10 people at the mall and ask them, "What does salvation mean?" If they're a church person, they'll tell you that means you've accepted Jesus into your heart as your personal savior. You've prayed a prayer of salvation and you're ready to go to heaven. That's not what *soteria* means at all. *Soteria* means to be made sound. It means, it means to be made complete, whole, uh, free. Let me give you a good example. In Luke chapter 19, when Paul deals with Zacchaeus, remember Zacchaeus, that little guy climbed up a tree so that he could see Jesus. Jesus comes by says, "Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house for dinner tonight." Now, Zacchaeus was a tax collector. He was not a popular guy in society. And Jesus was first of all criticized for going to his house to eat. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. He was a rich man. He had a couple nickels to rub together. Jesus gets over to his house and the very presence of Jesus causes him to say, "You know what? Everything that I've stolen from people, which was a bundle, everything I've taken by, by illegal means to support myself, I'm going to, I'm going to give it back." And, and he says, "I'm going to give it back multiple folds." Now, here's what I want you to see. I think it's about that ninth verse of Luke chapter 19. Jesus says, now watch the words here. Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house." Zacchaeus didn't pray a prayer. Zacchaeus didn't look at Jesus and say, "Jesus, I, I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior." Zacchaeus didn't bawl and squall and say, "I'm so sorry." But in fact, he did repent, which is the other word, one of the other words religion has hijacked. Stop 10 people, ask them what does repentance mean? To them, it means a deep sorrow, sometimes accompanied with tears and crying and begging God and telling God how sorry you are, please forgive me, I'll never do it again. That's not what repentance, *metanoia*, means. It means a change of mind. Did Zacchaeus undergo a change of mind? Absolutely. And when you change your mind, you change your direction. So his direction was entirely different than it was. He repented. He changed his mind. Jesus was there. He changed his mind. It changed his direction. His life changed. Do you see just in those two little simple illustrations right there? We've taken two words, salvation and, and repentance, which are, which are the access, the axis, axis upon which religion, what religion turns. They have so ground that salvation means a ticket to heaven and repentance means you, you ask God for forgiveness. You tell him how sorry you are. Tell him you'll never do it again. So religion, and Paul looks at the same words through two different lenses. Religion looks at them as limited, transactional. You've got to do something. Whereas Paul looks at them as unlimited, finished. It's what Jesus has done.

Now, when you look at these words through a different lens, when you look at salvation, since we're talking about that, when you look at salvation and repentance through a different lens, it's going to change the way you read your Bible. It's going to change the way you look at your life. It's going to change the way you look at other people. It's going to change the way you look at the Father through the Son and the Spirit. You're going to look at the, at the, at the entire Trinity different. It's going to change the way that you read the letters to Paul. It is a complete shift. And what the Spirit of truth is doing today, He's bringing us back to the root, the radical grace, the root of what Paul actually taught. And once we get these, these words nailed down right, that it, that they become the door through which great revelation walks. And I've given you six words so far that a grace culture needs to redeem into the level of understanding that Paul had. For example, grace. Just the word grace. Religion has taken grace and made it limited. Made it, made a transaction. You obey. Yes, God is a God of grace, but you need to obey Him. You need to commit your life to Him. And then maybe, perhaps, He will extend grace. Grace has no limit. Grace is totally unfair. It's a direct deposit that the Father has made in your life. Apart from anything that you do, anything that you think, anything you pray, anything you believe, His grace extends. Here's how far it extends. Paul said, "Where sin abounds, grace super abounds. It super exceeds."

I want to give you the last four words today, and I'm going to have to hustle to get all through this. And, and when these words are given, you're going to see that the objective truth, the objective truth of the words embodied. When you see them objectively, then the subjective experience will naturally flow. What we've done at church is we've gone after the subjective experience without having the objective truth. In right focus, we've been into behavior modification. If I could get you to act a certain way, if I can get you to do a certain thing, then it's going to change your life. Hasn't changed people's lives. People are in church today this morning while I'm teaching here at the digital cathedral. People in church, they haven't changed a bit in 20, 30 years. How do I know? Because I pastored them. I pastored people. I had the same problem year after year after year after year. And it's because of lack of identity. We never taught identity. Never taught who we were because our identity was entrenched in our ability, our dedication, what we could do, how hard we wanted to commit. And we wrapped that all in a cloak of discipleship.

So, let me just cover real quick in five minutes. I'm not, I'm not going to expand on these, but just to get you in the flow of these words, what I'm, I'm talking about. The six words we've talked about, first one we talked about was love. There's no conditions on God's love. God's love is agape. It is unconditional. You have never, until you hit grace, you never learned about unconditional love that had no conditions. The love that you experienced in your religious days was based on you, uh, making the move and then God would respond. That's exactly opposite. God's love extends to us. We love Him because He first loved us. You'll never love Him. You'll never love yourself. You'll never love other people until you know and it's settled into your heart and into your life how much He loves you, how much He cares for you. I'm going to give you one quick scripture on these and like I say, I'm going to move through them real quick. John chapter 14. John chapter 14. I, I, I use my Bible an awful lot because, I mean, that's what we're used to. So if we could have something that we can hang our hat on, it's a little bit easier to transition to this. John chapter 14, verse 23. Jesus replied, "Loving me empowers you to obey my word." It's so good right there. See, we thought that obeying Him would then empower Him to love us. No, no. When you love Him, when you love Him, when you understand the love is unconditional, it's not transactional, then what follows that is an automatic obedience. Do you see how we have flipped that? We've put the obedience first, trying to marry and earn the love. "And my Father will love you and so deeply that we will come and make our dwelling place with you." So that's how much He loves us. He has set up His home within you. You're a habitation. You're a dwelling place because of the love that He has for us.

All right, let's look at the word forgiveness. Forgiveness again is absolute. Just as, as love is unconditional, forgiveness is unconditional. We are completely eternally forgiven. Does that mean there's no kickback to sin? At? No, there is. You commit sin, you got a problem. You're going to pay a price for it. But not from the Father. The pro, the wages of sin, not the wages of the Father. The wages of sin is death. There is within that, that sin, the, the seed of death. You might pick the sin, but you can't pick the kickback. You, you might pick to go on drugs, but you don't know where that's going to lead. You don't know the, the finality of that simple act. But from the Father's eyes, you were never a drug addict. You were never addicted to anything. You were never unclean. You were never unpure. Right? John said it like this. John sees Jesus walking. John chapter one, he sees Jesus walking. He said, "Right there He is. There's the Lamb of God that takes away the sin singular of the world." Now, I don't have time to get into that, but I want to show you not only was it singular, but he also talks plural, the sins. I'm resisting so hard to go down that rabbit trail. So, 1 John 1:29, "There is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." Now, did He or didn't He? Did He take it away once and for all? Hebrews says that He died for sins once and for all time. Then John says back in 1 John chapter 2 and verse, uh, 2, He says that Jesus is the propitiation for our plural sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the entire cosmos. So there we got the singular, we got the plural covered as being eternally forgiven. Let me give you one verse of scripture. I said I'd give you one on each of these. Colossians chapter 2 and verse 13. I'm reading out of the Passion translation. I think I'm, I'm going to read a couple out of the mirror a little later. But, uh, for the most part, I'm going to read out of, out of Passion this morning. Colossians chapter 2:13. Watch. "He has rescued us." Is that 2:13? I got 1:13. Yeah, let me get over to two. I'm going to read 1:13 a little later. 2:13 says this, "This realm of death describes our former state. For we were held in sin's grasp. We were past tense, but now we've been resurrected out of that realm of death, never to return." Now, let's see. You got to help somebody help you misunderstand this next statement. "For we are forever alive and forgiven of all our sins." So, not only is, is love unconditional, so is, so is forgiveness.

Now, the third word we talked about was union. That is the sharing of life. No separation. Life of the Father through the Son and the Spirit. They've invited you into that circle of relationship, into that, uh, circle of, of fellowship, and there's no way you're coming out. It's a done deal. They, they have dropped their hands. They've welcomed you in. And the only place you've ever been separated is in your mind. Isn't that what Paul said? "We were alienated, separated in our minds because of what we did, our actions, our behavior." And religion has done a great job of keeping that separation alive. But there is no separation. John 14:20, "In that day you'll know." I quote this scripture so much because I want it to take root in your life so that you'll understand this place of union that you enjoy. "That day you will know. Jesus said that I'm in the Father and you are in Me and I'm in you." Which means the Father is in Me. The Father is in you. You are in the Father. The three have come into union together.

Word number four was acceptance. Fully accepted you just like you are. He hasn't told you that you have to do something in order to be accepted. He has fully embraced you. Taken you right now, warts, moles, everything that is about you. He's come into the darkest, deepest, darkest places of your life and told you, "I accept you just like you are." Now, religion makes this word. I told you religion and Paul look at the words different. When Paul looks at the word acceptance, it's universal. It's not transactional. Religion makes acceptance transactional with accepting Him by us as being the needed step to be accepted. All right, I'm going to, I'm going to read something out of here if I can find it. I'm going to read Galatians chapter 15. I got it way over here. Gal, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 9. Let me read this out of the, uh, doggone it. I don't have it there. I thought I did. Maybe it's here. Let me see. Yeah, here we go. I should have had these better arranged, but I want you to understand this, this thing of acceptance. That's, that's not it either. I get to what happens. I get studying. I get papers all over the place. I guess I have not gotten it lined up for you. Let me, I, I, I so much want to read this and I can't do it because I'm tied up on the camera. 2 Corinthians chapter, ah, here we go. 2 Corinthians chapter 15 and, uh, verse 9. Actually, I wanted to read John 14:20. That, that, I, I read that all the time. "In that day, you'll know I'm in you. Father's in me. I'm, you're in the Father. We're in union." Let me read this verse about union. This is so good. John chapter 14, 20. "In the unfolding of this day, you will know that we are in seamless union. That means there can be no division with one another. I am in my Father. You are in Me and I am in you." Now back to this thing of acceptance. It's fully divinely ordained. You are absolutely accepted. I don't want you to ever look at yourself. Never look in a mirror and say, "What's wrong with you?" Do you think God accepts you like you are? Yeah, He absolutely does. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 19 out of the mirror says this, "Jesus did not act independently of His Father. God was present in Christ when they reconciled the total cosmos to themselves." That includes you. 2025, whatever this date is. I think it might be the first Sunday of October. Whatever this date is, you have been fully reconciled. Deity and humanity embraced. That's union and acceptance. God's act of reconciliation takes every other conclusion out of the equation. No amount of trespasses can match God's evaluation of the human race. Redeemed friendship is now announced from within us. If religion had not taught you that it's out there someplace coming, you got to get it from out there into here, you would, you'd have been very easy to accept this. But because religion got you to think acceptance was transactional. It was conditional. It was not unlimited. Every one of these words that I'm giving you, all 10 of these, from the Father's perspective, from Paul's teaching, they are all unconditional. They are, they're without reservation. They are freely given. They're deposited within you. And there's nothing you can can do about it. Amen. That's good news.

All right. The next word that he gave us was the word holy. All right. The word holy. He, he initiates it and we respond. In fact, in fact, in fact, His holiness, here's, here's God's view. "He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world without exception. Acceptance that we should walk before Him holy." Holy. Again, when you look at your life, you might think you're not holy. But when God looks at your life, He says, "You are holy and blameless in My eyes." He has such a high estimation of us. We need to adjust our vision of us to match that which He has of us, which is holy. See, religion, religion, and I'm drawn, I came from the largest holiness denomination in the world, Church of the Nazarene. Holiness was inexplicably tied to your behavior. You would strive to be holy. You would work to be holy by keeping church laws, by all, by being perfect. And we used to, they would hammer, I remember growing up, hammered that verse on me. "God said, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" So you better be holy. No, He made you holy to walk holy in His eyes without blame. The Father makes holiness an impartation to all men in His economy. In God's economy, all men are already holy. Now we're discovering it. That objective truth will translate into subjective actions.

Word number six was righteous. Again, you'll never be more righteous than you are this morning. Forget what they told you down at the church house that you got to work at righteousness, that you got to, you got to do this to be righteous. No, you're never more righteous than you are this morning. You're both holy and righteousness are not what you become. You do not become holy. You do not become righteous. It's who you be. All right. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21. Listen to this. I told you it's who you be, not what you become. This is, this is powerful. 2 Corinthians 5:21. Forgive me if I get excited about this stuff. I'm an old guy, but I'll tell you what, this, this truth of the gospel, what I have come to discover, I, I never burn out on it. It just gets better and better, good and good as we uncover one layer after the next. All right. Righteous. This is the divine exchange. "He who knew no sin embraced our perversion. Mere translation. He appeared to be without form. This was the mystery of God's prophetic poetry. He was disguised in our distorted image and marred with our iniquities. He took our sorrows, our pain, our shame and birthed, and birthed His righteousness in us. He took our sins and we became His righteousness or His innocence." It's a good, good translation there. So, it was an exchange. He took what you were and exchanged it for what He is. Now, these, these six are not conditional. They're not dependent on us to make them true. They're not dependent on our, our actions, our striving, our trying. None of that is involved in this. These six are absolutely unconditional.

All right, let me just shift gears a little bit now. I want to get into where we're at today. Can I do that? Let me just get this over here. All right, let's look at the last four words. I, I want those to become, I want those six words to take such deep root in your life that there's never any question again about your love, your acceptance, your righteousness, your holiness. None of that. It's who we be. And that's what grace is all about. Grace is about His being able to construct within us His image and His likeness apart from our efforts. From the very get-go, when man tried to be, back to Adam and Eve, when man tried to be like God, it didn't work. The simple fact is He already made you in His image and His likeness, breathed into your nostrils a breath of life. How much more could we want than that?

All right. Word number seven is the word is the word died. Died. This in a grace culture, let me read my little, little, uh, explanation as I do in each, and I'll expound on it. "The gospel of grace is not a behavior modification program for bad people. It is a declaration of new life for those who have died." Do you understand? You're, you're dead man walking this morning. And it's because you have experienced death that now life springs within you. Colossian, uh, Colossians chapter 3:3. I said I'd try to give you at least one verse on all of these because I want you to see how much we have perverted very simple words that Paul wanted us to get a hold of. Colossians chapter, uh, three, chapter 2, where are we at here? Chapter 3:3. Are you ready? Are you ready? All right. Here you go. We need to understand what died means. What died means. Here it is. "Your crucifixion with Christ, that's when you die." Paul said, "I've been crucified with Christ." Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life. Severed the tie to this life. And now your true life is hidden away in God, in Christ. You, you got it. Your, your death with Him at, at the cross severed every connection to Adam. Don't let anybody put that trip on you that you have an Adamic nature. You were born in Adam. You were born in sin. You were born separated from God. That's all a lie. Now, those that are espousing it, a lot of guys, ladies that are pastors, teachers, whatever, that's what they were taught. They've never questioned it. All these words that I'm bringing to you were never questioned, never challenged, never looked at. I, I, I lived there. I took what my gray-haired PhDs back in school fed me and accepted as absolute truth. Who was I as a kid preacher back in the back in the late 60s? Who was I to challenge a gray-haired PhD? I didn't even know the questions to ask. I would now. I'd love to be back in that situation now. But see, people have just accepted it. Your death with Him at the cross severed your connection to Adam and the old man. Only when you know that you have died can you really live. That's when the *zoe* starts to flow. If you're, if you're still fighting the flesh, right? I know you were taught to. If you're trying to crucify the old man, Paul said another place that our old man was crucified with Christ. Why do we perpetually try to resurrect that which is dead? You empower it when you resurrect it. Let me read Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. And, and, and, and Paul addresses this, this very thing. Romans chapter 6. Let me read just verses, uh, 6-8. Romans chapter 6 and verse 6. "Could it be any clearer that our former identity is now and forever deprived of its power?" When they tell you that you got to, you got to die daily. You got to crucify the flesh. That, that old man, you got to put him on the cross. That's not so. "Could it be any clearer that our old former identity is now and forever deprived of its power? So why do we try to resurrect it? For we were co-crucified with Him to dismantle the stronghold of sin within us so that we would not continue to live one moment submitted to its power. Obviously, verse 7, obviously a dead person is incapable of sinning. And if we were co-crucified with the Anointed One, we know that we will also share in the fullness of His life." Isn't that powerful? Isn't that good? I mean, that, that is good news. Nobody ever told me. Nobody ever explained that to me. I'm explaining it to you. And we need to redeem this word died. It is done. It is. It is history. To the degree that you see you dead this morning, to the degree that you understand that you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God, to that level, you can walk in newness of life. But if you're still fighting the old, you'll never reach the new. You'll never experience it. Now, objectively, it's done. Where we've been held back is in the subjective experience. We have not subjectively experienced it because we have not objectively accepted it as a fact, as a done deal.

All right. Word, word number, word number eight is the word new. New. All right. Let me read my, let me read my, my little statement here. "The gospel of grace is not the hope that we can extend this broken down life immediately. It is the announcement that in Christ, the old has gone and the new has come." I mean, it was pretty plain what we read in Romans chapter 6, 7, and 8. We just read that under, under the died, died. We need to, we need to reclaim this word new. "If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation." Are you in Christ? If you were crucified with Him, co-crucified, co-resurrected, co-ascended with Him, you can't be in Him anymore than you are. When Jesus said, "In that day, you'll know that I'm in you and you're in Me and the Father's in Me and the Father's in you and you're in the Father and our life is hidden inside of Him." That means for anything to get to you, I got to retrace for just a minute. Anything to get to you, it's got to come through Jesus and the Father because you're inside the Father and the Father is inside of you. Stop giving place to some imaginary conjured up evil that Jesus made an open show of and defeated. You are a new creation. You were born again at the resurrection. Peter said you were born from death to life, a new man. You are part of that new man, that new creation, that new breed, that, that, that that never existed before, that part of humanity that walked out of the tomb brand new. Brand new. I love this verse. First Corinthians, uh, uh, where is it here? 1 Corinthians or, uh, Colossians chapter 1:13. I, I almost read this little, little earlier because it, it's been really rolling them around in me. Uh, every time I read this, it makes me want to do a happy dance. "He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and He has translated us into the kingdom realm of His beloved Son." Now, see, a Calvinist would look at that verse and say, "Well, yeah, that's only for those that, that He predestined to be saved." In an Armenian, most of your backgrounds, your Pentecostal, charismatic, word of faith would say, "Yeah, that's for people that have accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior." But that's not what Paul says. Paul says He has done this. Do you think every person at Colossae that He wrote this to was, was a raging on fire burning? Absolutely not. This, this, this is what I meant when I said earlier that religion looks through every to every verse as being limited, as being conditional, as being transactional. I just gave you the true transactions. Calvinist says that's only for people predestined to be in the kingdom. Armenian says that's only for those that made a decision. No, the objective fact is He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness. And the objective truth is He has translated us into, into the kingdom of His dear Son. It's either, it's black and white. There's no gray in this this morning. Either you're in one kingdom or you're the other kingdom. You can't have one foot in each kingdom. That's kind of how we lived back in our religious days. We, we had one foot in the kingdom. We were trying to get the other foot in there. But man, we were held up all the time because we didn't think we were worthy, didn't think we were holy, didn't think we deserved it. It was always just a little bit more. The carrot in front of us. We were striving for this. The, the, the stick was beating us from behind with the law saying, "Come on, go faster. Do better. Try harder." And we could never get that carrot until we took a step forward. A carrot moved a step. So, we lived a life of futility. I'm telling you, the words I'm giving you are done deals. How you see yourself, your perception, your consciousness has got to be. He's a kingdom dweller. He has rescued us completely from the rule of darkness. And translated, I love that word translated. That to me, I, I didn't look up the definition, but translated to me means like, boom, there it was. There it is. It happened in a second. And it did when you walked out of the tomb. Now, it's a, it's a lifetime of awakening. It's a lifetime of the veil being removed from our eyes. It's a lifetime responding to the impulses of the Spirit as mature sons do. Now, it's a, a continual unveiling of seeing Him as He is, knowing that as we see Him, we're transformed into the same image from glory to glory. Right? But it doesn't change the fact that we are in the kingdom now. The kingdom is not out in the sweet by and by someplace that you're trying to strive and get to and working, hoping you can make it someday, just a hoping and a praying. No, you've been translated into it. It's, it's history. It, it is, it is fully done. It's about your pedigree, not your performance. It's about your nature, not the transaction. The new creation is a fact. Kingdom dwelling is a fact. And now you're totally free to discover everything that's involved with it. As long as, as long as they could keep you trying, striving to attain, you could never enjoy. Now, we can rest, we can trust, we can believe because we know who we are. I heard for, for decades, "You need to know who you are in Christ." But every time they wanted me to find out who I was in Christ, they put a stipulation on it. It was never unconditional. It was always a transaction. It was never unlimited. There was always, always fine print to this. We, we, we got people in, but then we gave them the fine print that you, you, you got to do that. You want to be a good Christian, don't you? You've accepted Jesus into your heart as your personal savior. Now, you want to, you, here's what you need to do to really make Him happy. And we had our list of rules and regulations and have toss, and nobody could ever enjoy the experience that they had just uncovered.

All right. Word number nine is this. Word number nine is this. The word reign. Reign. Right. Let me read my little statement. "The gospel of grace is not a vague notion that you get to rule and reign after you die. Won't heaven be wonderful? I mean, you can walk on streets of gold, look at crystal seas, float around with, with, uh, angel wings. It's going to be the ultimate weekend. It's going to be a resort like no other. Oh, you just got to work to get there now. But oh, it will be worth it all." The gospel of grace is not a vague notion that you get to rule and reign after you die. It is a royal announcement. Reigning is a royal announcement that you are to rule and reign in the earth. We, we've, we've, we've been renters, not owners of the earth. We've just been part-time inhabitants. Why? I mean, we're going to leave this place. Jesus could come before breakfast. Rapture could happen any second. Every prophecy has been fulfilled. Not making light of all that. I'm just telling you, we were duped. And because we were duped, there's been no kingdom now. No government of, of God set upon the earth. The leaven in the lump has not been active. Our light has not been shining because we were trying to get the switch turned on. The switch is already on. Let the current flow through that grace wiring and become who He was designed you to to become by recognizing, by awakening, not by striving. Are you with me?

All right. My, my verse here is Romans chapter 5, verse 17. Let me, I'm going to, I'm going to quote it. Uh, I, the reason I read out of the Passion is because I just love the way, I love the way that he, he gets this. Here's what, here's what I memorized back in the day and I taught on this a lot, this verse, but I, I had no idea what I was saying, really. "For if by one man's offense death reigned by one." This is from way back in 1996. I, I was teaching on this. I, I didn't know what I was doing. I was, you know, four, five, uh, six years away from getting some understanding. "For if by one man's offense death reigned by one, much more, much more, they which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by the one Jesus Christ." Much more they which receive. And see, what what we're stuck on is that word receive in religion because that was something you had to do. Something you had to do. I mean, receive it. Receive it. You got it. Receive it. Let me tell you something. You cannot receive anything that grace has not already deposited into your life. Grace has given you everything that religion told you you had to somehow muster up. You're a receiver and your believer. See, believing, believing and receiving are, I should have probably included those words because receiving is a full understanding of what grace has given. Then you, you get it. See, I'm imparting to you. If you can receive this, if you can hear what you have by grace, it's, it's a natural response, which is what believing is. Believing, I used to work so hard to believe. I believe, I believe, I got it. I believe it. No, believing is a natural, effortless response to revelation. When you see it, you will believe it. When Paul on the Damascus road saw it, to Paul, what changed him was he saw it. And once he saw it, he could believe it. Now, it took him years out in the desert to unwind it. It took him years out in the desert to get some, some full revelation on what grace had given to him. What he, what he believed. See, but when, when he saw it, he believed. "Lord, what would You have me to do?" That's the natural response to seeing. That brings in the *metanoia*, the repentance. Amen. The change of mind, the change of direction, which is what salvation has made us whole and complete, entire, wanting nothing. Wanting nothing. I may read that verse in a minute.

Now, here's, here's the way, here's the way the Passion reads. Remember King James, "For by one man's offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and a gift of righteousness." And we just went through this. The gift of righteousness, the divine exchange, His righteousness for your sin, "they shall reign in life." Not when you go home to heaven. Not when you go home to heaven. People look at God today say, "God, why do You allow so much to go on?" He, He's not. He's wondering why we allow so much to go on. "The heavens," the psalmist said, "belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to the sons of men." Religion has allowed us to put everything way off out into the future someplace. And that's why earth has not changed. That's why you see hurricanes and tornadoes and sickness and disease is because we didn't know who we were. We didn't know what we really possessed. And the form that religion put together enabled us to never know because we were continually striving to get. And Don Keithley is here to tell you this morning that you already got it.

Now, here's, here's what it says. Here's what the Passion says. "Death once held us in its grip. And by the blunder of one man, death reigned as king over humanity. But, but now, how much more are we held in the grip of grace and continue reigning as kings in life in joy now today?" I, I put that in, "enjoying a regal freedom through the gift of perfect righteousness in the one and only Jesus the, the Messiah." See, reigning in life doesn't mean you, you have all the answers. Doesn't mean they're not mysteries. There are. I, I, I, I can't tell you everything. I don't, I can't answer every scripture. You might be able to say, "What about this and what about that?" I don't know. But I tell you what, when I see it, I'll believe it. I'll walk in it. I'll live in it. The, all the help comes not from reading your Bible. It comes from a relationship. And out of that relationship, you read your Bible different. You start to see through the lens of Paul and not through the lens of religion that you were, that you were so, uh, so ingrained in that it did not enable you to even consider any other view.

All right. So, in a grace culture, in a grace community, we, we know that we are unconditionally loved, unconditionally forgiven, in one union with the Lord. We're accepted without question. We're whole, holy, we're righteous. We're dead to the old. We're a new creation in Him. And we're walking this earth as royalty. That's what a grace community has got a hold to. And that's what we want to impart to other people. That understanding that's who you are. That in a nutshell is who you are in Christ. What He has made you to be apart from any effort that you put in. You brought no skin to the game, my friend. And to think you did is to bring a message of law and grace, which Paul called a false gospel, propagating another Jesus.

So if those, if those nine are true, I told you we got 10 words. If those nine are true, then word number 10 has got to be complete. It has got to be complete. Those, those nine words pretty well describe complete. You have the full package. You have everything that the gospel of grace gives. Free, no strings, no conditions. It belongs to you. He's turned you loose. He says, "Now you can live in it." Can I just put the cherry on top of the sundae? Colossians chapter 2:9. Here's my verse for complete. Colossians chapter 2:9. And again, this is one of those verses that I, I read to you fairly often because I want you to get it. Colossians chapter 2, here we go. And verse 9. "For Jesus is the complete fullness of deity living in bodily form." Jesus was the full package. You want to know anything about the deity? Look at Jesus. You never saw the Father, but we saw Jesus. Jesus walked the earth. We saw His attitude. We saw the way He dealt with people. We saw the anointing that was upon Him to, to bring sight to the blind and set the captives free. All, all the things that He said He's going to do. His mission statement in Luke 2:18-19. Everything is in Him right now. And our completeness is now found in Him. "We are completely filled with God as Christ's fullness overflows within us. He is the head of every kingdom and every authority in the universe." If that is His completeness, if in fact He is the head of every kingdom and authority in the universe, so are you. As He is, so are we. Now, when we die and go to heaven, so are we in this present world. John said, "He is the complete fullness and you are completely filled with God as Christ's fullness overflows within us." It's so, He overflows within us. See, that's a matter of recognition. That's a matter of saying, you know what, I've got the whole package. I am complete in Him. Now, don't strive to try to make that completeness happen. You just, you just walk as the Spirit gives you impulses. You just walk. When He gives you a door, when you go to the mall, when you go to the store, when you fill your car with gas, you go in to pay your bill, man comes to service your air conditioner. If he, they're going to say something to you because of where you're positioning yourself now, they may well open the door. All you got to do is just say a word. You don't have to say, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?" Because if you don't, you know, you're going to hell. That's not bringing somebody into completeness. That's trying to make a transaction. That's trying to get another notch on your Bible belt, right? No, we don't. We don't do that. We have calls to celebrate and rejoice from this day forward because we're absolutely fully complete in Him. And that's the message that we carry to work, to the world. That is the message of reconciliation. These 10 words encompass the fullness and the complete reconciliation that the Father made through the Son at the crucifixion. He was in, in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. Uh, I think I got one more verse I wanted to read out of the mirror. Let me see if I can, I can find it. Yeah, James 15. James 15. This, you're going to like this. I'm going to close with this. I'm done. The only thing we could possibly lack is wisdom. James chapter 1, I'm sorry, verse 4. What was I thinking? James chapter 1, verse 4. "Steadfastness provides you with a consistent environment. And so patience prevails and proves your perfection." How in this is what I want you to get. Here's what James chapter 1, verse 4, mere translation. "How entirely whole you are and without any shortfall. You are indeed perfect and complete and lack in nothing." All right. Life is going to be, as long as you're, you're sucking air, taking a breath, and your physical body's on this earth, it's going to be a continual deeper revelation with the depths of His grace. And as long as this, this guy's got breath to proclaim, I'm going to keep taking this as deep as I can go. And every time I, I see another layer, I'm going to bring it to you at the digital cathedral. Thank you so much for being with me today. This has been, this has been profitable even for me as I studied these words. It has certainly driven them deeper into my heart and given me a firm conviction that I want others to understand what I have come to see and embrace as my reality. God bless you. See you next week. Again, thank you for your monthly support, man. It, it makes the difference, believe me, in the outreach, the Grace Awakening Television Network, the GAN Plus. I hope you're taking advantage of all those things, all those platforms because of your contributions and your faithfulness, we've been able to develop and we got, we got some more things in our, our mind that we want to do and you're partnering with me as we make this journey. See you next week, same time, right here at the digital cathedral. And don't forget Secret Place Wednesday night, 6 Central on my public Facebook page. See you then.

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