The doctrine of grace

The plan of God, operation grace, was provided for man before man was created. Therefore man cannot earn and cannot deserve this grace. Under grace God does the work and man is only the beneficiary. Under supergrace God does the pursuing and man does the benefiting.

1. Grace is all that God is free to do for man on the basis of the cross. God is free to express His love through grace and He does this without jeopardising His essence. No one can truly give apart from freedom and God gives out of total freedom because of the cross to us. Grace is the work and the plan of God on behalf of man beginning at the cross. It is God’s plan and God’s policy for mankind. It is a plan, a policy, a function, a mechanic, a divine modus operandi, a divine modus vivendi.

2. Under the principle of concept grace depends upon the essence of God, therefore grace depends on who and what God is. Grace is what God can do for man and still be consistent with His own character.

3. The believer must sort out the difference between grace and legalism. Legalism is man’s ability and works intruding upon the plan of God. Man’s works cannot coexist with God’s works. Such an implied coexistence is blasphemy. Grace excludes human works.

4. Grace, sanctification, and the angelic conflict all meet in the plan of God. The greatest thing God can do for a believer is to make him exactly like His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only celebrity of the Church Age. Ultimately it is the objective of God’s plan to make everyone like His Son. Man was created to, resolve the angelic conflict and since man was given free will it is inevitable that he would fail. Adam through his free will sinned. Jesus Christ had to become a human being and not an angel in order to resolve the angelic conflict — Hebrews 2;14-16. In other words, the first Adam lost the victory through the fall and the last Adam wins the victory through the cross — Colossians 2:14. Grace found a way to take man created inferior to angels and make him superior, and this is accomplished in all three stages of the plan of God for mankind.

Stage one is positional sanctification in which the believer enters into union with the glorified Jesus Christ. Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, this is an application of current positional truth. Every believer is in union with the Lord Jesus Christ therefore believers are positionally higher than angels. When Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father in His humanity He is higher than angels, we are in union with the God-Man, Jesus Christ, and we are now positionally superior to angels.

Stage two is our life on this earth and under the construction of the edification complex of the soul and the entrance into the supergrace life it is possible for our experience to represent in an effective way what was provided for us at the point of salvation. In other words, the supergrace life is the only normal Christian life which expresses the priesthood of the believer. Believers who do not grow up never live the normal Christian life. So stage two is designed through grace whereby God can tale a believer living in the devil’s world in the intensified stage of the angelic conflict and make it possible for this individual to adequately represent the Lord Jesus Christ.

Stage three is comparable to phase three in which the believer receives a resurrection body exactly like that of the Son of God, minus the old sin nature, minus human good. As a result he is exactly like the Son of God fulfilling Philippians 3:21, and this is the ultimate.

5. Every believer has tasted the grace of God at least once — Hebrews 6:4; 1 Peter 2:3. At the moment of salvation every believer receives from God 36 things and he never loses these things. This grace package of salvation cannot be cancelled or destroyed either by God Himself, by angels, or by mankind. Among the 36 things received by grace at salvation we have the principle of propitiation in 1 John 2:2 whereby the believer regardless of spiritual status is always under maximum love from God. But grace can only find a place to lodge where there is capacity for grace and capacity for grace only comes through the supergrace life.

6. The occupational hazard for believers is disorientation to grace in the field of reversionism. Under these conditions, in Galatians 5:4, reversionism is called “falling from grace,” and in Hebrews 12:15 it is called “missing grace.” So reversionism is a great danger after one has erected and ECS.

7. The divine attitude in grace: God is constantly waiting to pour out His grace to every believer in phase two — Isaiah 30:18,19.

8. Grace in phase two is found in such passages as Psalm 103:8-12; Romans 3:23,24; 4:4; 5:20; Ephesians 2:8,9; Hebrews 2:9.

9. Grace in phase two is the believer in time.

a) The prayer of the supergrace life — Hebrews 4:16. You will use prayer to the maximum once you enter the supergrace life.

b) Grace is suffering — 2 Corinthians 12:9,10. Supergrace suffering is designed for greatest possible blessing.

c) Grace in growth — 2 Peter 3:18.

d) Grace in stability in phase two — 1 Peter 5:12; Hebrews 13:9.

e) Grace as the modus vivendi — 2 Corinthians 1:2; Hebrews 12:28.

f) Grace in the production of divine good — 1 Corinthians 15:10; 2 Corinthians 6:1.

10. Grace and giving — 2 Corinthians 8:9; Philippians 4:14-18. Grace orientation is the bona fide motivation for the thought pattern involved in giving.

11. Grace in suffering — 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.

12. Some axioms concerning grace.

a) God is perfect; His plan is perfect.

b) A perfect plan can only originate and function from a perfect God.

c) If man can do anything meritorious in the plan of God it is no longer perfect.

d) A plan is no stronger than its weakest link. For this reason grace excludes all human merit, all human ability. Grace also excludes any form of human good.

e) Legalism and human good is always the enemy of grace.

f) Therefore works of human righteousness have no place in the plan of God.

g) All human good is associated with the greatest mental attitude sin of pride. Reversionism is characterised by pride, jealousy, and other mental attitude sins.

13. There are four areas of pride which reject God’s grace. This explains Satan’s pride, human pride, why pride is the worst and most devastating of mental attitude sins.

a) The pride of the believer who rejects the doctrine of eternal security. To say that you can commit a sin that is greater than the plan of God is blasphemous. Hebrews 12:28.

b) The pride of the believer who succumbs to pressure and adversity. He thinks his pressure and suffering is greater than the grace provision of God — 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.

c) The pride of pseudo spirituality, the believer who thinks his human systems of spirituality are greater than the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. These systems usually include some system of personality imitation, observation of taboos, confusing the means and the result, assuming that witnessing to 10 people a day is the filling of the Spirit whereas in reality the filling of the Spirit results in effective witnessing, relativity which says in affect “My sins are more refined than your sin, therefore when I compare myself with you I’m spiritual and you are carnal,” the operation of the holy roller who thinks that their pseudo tongues somehow has spiritual content.

d) The pride of the believer in emotional revolt of the soul who assumes that his feelings and his emotions and his experiences are more important than Bible doctrine — 2 Corinthians 6:11,12.

14. Grace is related to the divine assets of John 1:12,16,17; 1 Corinthians 1:4,5; Ephesians 1:6,7.

15. The principle of supergrace is taught in James 4:6 were it is called “greater grace.”

a) The supergrace of the Lord Jesus Christ — John 1:14,16,17.

b) The supergrace of the believer in phase two — Philippians 4; James 4; Ephesians 3:19,20, 2 Corinthians 12:8-10.

Notice a progression of grace in our context. In Ephesians 1:6 we have “his grace.” In verse 7, “the ruches of his grace.” In 2:7, “the exceeding riches of his grace.” There is a principle involved here. Once grace starts pursuing you you go from grace to the riches of His grace to the exceeding riches of His grace.

The doctrine of grace, part #2

1. Grace is all that God is free to do for man on the basis of the cross, on the basis of propitiation. God is actually freed from the confinements of His own perfect character to do something for us. So grace is God’s freedom to express His love to mankind without jeopardising any part of His essence. The cross freed God to save us and to save us permanently. Therefore grace is the plan of God, grace is the work of God, the expression of God’s perfection. Grace means very simply that God does all the work and man does all of the benefiting without work. Grace is a plan, a policy, a function, a mechanic of divine modus operandi.

2. Grace depends upon the essence or the character of God. Therefore grace depends on who and what God is. Grace is what God can do for man and be consistent with His own character or essence. This is why propitiation is so important.

3. The issue. The believer must sort out the different between grace and legalism. Legalism is man’s ability, man’s works, man’s actions intruding into the plan of God. Anything that man throws into the plan is no good. If is was accepted it would neutralise or destroy grace. The plan of God, however, is not destroyed or neutralised because grace rejects our talent, our ability, our plans, our concepts, anything that we have and regard as beneficial. Man’s plans and God’s plans cannot coexist. This immediately sets up in the soul a great conflict.

4. Grace, sanctification, and the angelic conflict all meet. The principle is that under grace the greatest things that God can do for any believer is to make that believer like His Son who is the only celebrity of the Church Age, as well as the head of the Church. Man was created to resolve the angelic conflict, therefore when the first Adam blew it through his free will and sin [the Fall] Jesus Christ as the last Adam became human — not an angel, as per Hebrews 2:14-16. The first Adam lost the victory through the Fall and the last Adam wins the victory through the cross and then operation footstool — Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 2:14. So grace found a way to take man, created inferior to angels and in fallen condition, and make him superior to all angelic creatures. This is accomplished in three stages of sanctification.

Stage one: By means of the baptism of the Holy Spirit whereby every believer is entered into union with Christ every believer became positionally higher than angels — Hebrews chapters 1 & 2.

Stage two: Because of this it is possible under the construction of the ECS and the entrance into the supergrace life to become experientially higher than angels. There is nothing that tears the devil up more than for some believer to reach supergrace because positionally the devil can’t do anything about what happened in a second. But he can try to head off building a cup in the soul because one the believer has a cup God starts pouring, and He pours, and He pours. Once the ECS has been constructed and once the believer enters into supergrace and maintains it then he is under what is known as experiential sanctification. At this point God is able to so benefit in the devils world human beings to a greater extent than the devil’s own original crowd, angels, are benefited. Demons are miserable, that’s why they are always trying to possess a body. When God through grace can start pouring in your cup and benefit you way above the demons it just tears them all apart. While God is blessing you God is glorified. The other side of the picture is that the demons are weeping and wailing. It tortures them to have you blessed under supergrace. The biggest issue in your life is supergrace blessing.

Stage three: That is when the Church receives their resurrection body and becomes the bride of Christ. When Church Age believers receive the resurrection body at the Rapture this is ultimate sanctification, and at that point the believer in Jesus Christ is physically superior to the angels.

5. The entrance factor into grace. Every believer has entered the grace of God. That means he has tasted grace at least once, the moment he believed in Jesus Christ — Hebrews 6:4; 1 peter 2:3. At the moment of salvation every believer receives 36 things and hey are irrevocable, they are just as immutable as God Himself. This grace package at salvation cannot be cancelled or destroyed either by God or by angels or by human beings. At the same time God is freed to love you regardless of your experiential status of this life. Maximum love frees God to pour out maximum grace, but grace can only find a place to lodge where there is capacity for grace, and that is the supergrace life. Therefore God in grace has provided supergrace in order that this might be demonstrated to us, to angels, to the entire heavenly convocation. By the way, grace never goes where grace is not wanted. The issue here is Bible doctrine. God found a way through doctrine, through GAP, to put this into operation.

6. The occupational hazard of believers in the field of grace: ignorance, lack of cognisance with regard to the concept of grace, therefore leading to disorientation of grace, leading to the field of reversionism — Galatians 5:4; Hebrews 12:15. Reversionism is the greatest enemy, the greatest antagonist to the whole plan of God in operation phase two.

7. The divine attitude: God is constantly waiting to pour grace into the cup of the soul — Isaiah 30:18,19. When a believer reaches supergrace he has supergrace capacity and God pours.

8. Grace in phase one is documented from the following passages: Psalm 103:8-12; Romans 3:23,24; 4:4; 5:20; Ephesians 2:8,9; Hebrews 2:9.

9. Grace in phase two sees the believer in time and every aspect of our life is related somehow to grace, like prayer in the supergrace life — Hebrews 4:16; in the field of suffering — 2 Corinthians 12:9,10; growth through the function of GAP — 2 Peter 3:18; stability — 1 Peter 5:12; Hebrews 13:9; modus vivendi — 2 Corinthians 1:2; Hebrews 12:28; the production of divine good — 1 Corinthians 15:10; 2 Corinthians 6:1.

10 Grace and giving. The best part of giving comes when maximum materialistic blessing meets maximum doctrine in the normal function of the supergrace life. Giving becomes meaningful as an act of priestly worship — 2 Corinthians chapters 8 & 9; Philippians 4:14-18.

11. The axioms of grace:

a) God is perfect, therefore His plan is perfect.

b) A perfect plan can only originate and function from a perfect God.

c) If man can do anything meritorious in the plan of God it is no longer perfect, and obviously not longer grace.

d) A plan is no stronger than its weakest link. For this reason grace excludes human merit and human ability. Grace also excludes human good. Do-gooders never make it under the plan of God.

e) Legalism and human good are the enemies of grace.

f) Therefore works of human righteousness have no place in the plan of God.

g) All human good is associated with the great mental attitude sin of pride. Pride seems to be the expansion of the self-consciousness of the soul in reversionism to the point of total disorientation to the grace of God.

12. Four areas in which pride rejects God’s grace.

a) The pride of the believer who rejects the doctrine of eternal security. To reject eternal security you have to be very proud because inevitable the person who does thinks that his sins are greater than the plan of God. He is more impressed with his sins than he is with what God has done for him.

b) The pride of the believer who succumbs to pressure and adversity and who thinks that his sufferings are greater than the grace provision of God — 2 Corinthians 12:7-10.

c) The pride of pseudo spirituality: the believer who thinks that his human systems are greater than the ministry of God the Holy Spirit in his life. The systems may be anything from personality imitation, observation of taboos, confusion of means and results, the concept of relativity (my sins are more refined than your sins, therefore I am spiritual), the speaking in tongues, the ecstatics, the asceticism, the programs, the ritualism, all are involved in that type of pride.

d) The pride of the believer in emotional revolt of the soul. he assumes that his feelings, his emotions, his experiences, and his areas of reaction — disillusion, boredom, discouragement, self-pity, loneliness, frustration, jealousy, bitterness, being jilted or phased out. These are reactors that lead to the frantic search for happiness which triggers emotional revolt and which comes back and intensifies the ones involved. So there is an intensification of reactors through emotional revolt.

13. Grace is always related to divine assets — John 1:14,16,17; 1 Corinthians 1:4,5; Ephesians 1:6,7.

14. The principle of supergrace — James 4:6, “greater grace/supergrace.” Supergrace in the life of Jesus Christ is described in John 1:14-17; in the life of the believer in phase two is described in chapters like Philippians 4; James 4; Ephesians 3:19-21; 2 Corinthians 12:8,10.

15. The concept of the pursuit of grace — Ephesians 1:6. The pursuit of grace is the perpetuation of supergrace in the believer’s life. God is glorified when we are blessed under supergrace.

16. Under grace [supergrace] the believer reaps what God sows — Psalm 13:5; under reversionism the believer reaps what the believer sows — Psalm 13:5.

The doctrine of grace

1. Definition.

a) Grace is all that God is free to do for man on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

b) Grace is God’s freedom and consistency to express His love to mankind without compromising or jeopardising His essence.

c) No one can truly give and rightly give apart from freedom. God gives out of total freedom because of the cross, because of propitiation.

d) Consequently grace is the plan of God on behalf of man beginning at the cross. Grace is actually a one-word description of God’s plan. Therefore …

e) Grace is also God’s policy. God’s policy in dealing with the believer is always in grace.

f) Grace in summary is the plan, the policy, the function, the mechanics of divine modus operandi. Under grace God does all the work, all of the providing, and man does all of the receiving and all of the benefiting totally apart from human merit.

The concept: Grace depends upon the essence or the character of God. Therefore, grace depends on who and what God is. Grace is what God can do for man and be consistent with His own character. Grace is God’s relationship with the believer as well as God’s way of salvation. So that under its concept grace is all that God can do for man from salvation to eternity, totally apart from man’s merit, man’s ability, man’s talent, man’s planning.

This brings up an issue: The great enemy to grace is legalism. Legalism is simply, by definition, man’s intrusion in the plan of God with his own works, his own ability, his own talent, his own schemes, and using these in order to gain the approbation of God. Legalism has many forms. One form of legalism is religion: man by man’s efforts seeking to gain the approbation of God. One thing Christianity is not is religion. As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ you are in the plan of God, the plan of God is grace. Grace excludes religion, grace squeezes religion out of your soul like a strong man squeezes a sponge and squeezes the water right out of it. Religion is the worst enemy of man. Religion is the devil’s ace trump — Satanic systems of human ability and works used as substitutes for God’s works in grace. The believer must learn to sort out the difference, then, between grace and legalism, between grace and religion. The believer often clings to some talent or some ability, some plan, some gimmick, and actually tries to infiltrate into the plan of God with this gimmick. But anything that man adds or throws into the plan of God, if accepted, would destroy operation grace. The plan, operation grace, is never destroyed or neutralised because grace rejects all energy of the flesh, all human talent, all human ability, and all human viewpoint ideas. Therefore you must understand the issue that legalism and grace can never coexist. One entire book is devoted to this, the book of Galatians. Great portions of the book of Romans are devoted to this subject, and throughout the Word of God you will constantly see references to the fact that grace and legalism are mutually exclusive. In other words, a little leaven of legalism leavens the entire lump.

2. Grace and the new contract for the Church.

a) The glorification of Christ by resurrection, ascension and session is the strategic victory of the angelic conflict. When our Lord was brought back from the dead and ascended into heaven and seated at the right hand of the Father, that point is the strategic victory of the angelic conflict. The reason it is related to the angelic conflict is brought out by Hebrews 1: now Jesus Christ as a man in a resurrection body is higher than all angels. He is supreme and superior to all angels. He sits there as the God-Man in hypostatic union forever. Now He is higher than the angels and some day we in resurrection bodies will be physically greater than angels. In the meantime we are positionally greater than angels. This is the strategic victory that broke the back of Satan in his great angelic revolution. This dramatic victory interrupts the Jewish age in order that the royal family of God might be formed. Until Jesus Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father there never was a royal family. All believers were family of God, now we are royal family.

b) Positional sanctification is a part of God’s grace plan. Under positional sanctification the greatest thing that God the Father could do for the believer is to make him like His Son, Jesus Christ. This is accomplished positionally at the point of salvation by means of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. All the Old Testament believers were regenerated by the Holy Spirit at the moment of faith in Christ. This act of regeneration is tantamount to being in the family of God forever. The same thing was accomplished at salvation for every believer in the Church Age. For the first time in history the baptism of the Spirit occurred through which every believer was entered into union with Christ. This is what God did when Jesus Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father. He began the great process of calling out a royal family. By being entered into union with Christ immediately, at salvation, you became superior to all angelic creatures. Man was created to resolve the angelic conflict, therefore when the first Adam failed through sin Jesus Christ became true humanity and won the victory at the cross, according to Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 2:14. So that believers in union with Christ have two factors of grace: positionally all Church age believers are higher than angels, and all Church Age believers are royal family of God forever. Therefore, paragraph one of our new contract is called the new covenant to the Church or the new contract.

We are in a new grace contract, and in this new grace contract paragraph one is the entering paragraph. It provides for royalty plus the fact that each member of the royal family is positionally higher than angels. This is grace, we don’t earn it or deserve it. In addition, the royal family all have the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit as a sign or as the escutcheon of the royal family. The sealing of the Spirit is our security.

The second part of the paragraph deals with experiential sanctification. Paragraph two of the new contract provides for the tactical victory of the angelic conflict. This is, again, a strictly-speaking grace provision of God where He has provided numerous things for tactical victory:

i. The principle of living grace by which the believer remains alive in the devil’s world. What good to have a contract unless you could stay alive? Satan would like to destroy you and all royal family. Satan would like to rid the earth of the royal family of God, even as he would like to rid the earth of the Jew. The Jew must be destroyed, says Satan, because God has unconditional promises to the Jew. And God is going to keep the Jew alive in spite of Satanic efforts. The same thing is true of the Church or the royal family of God. God guarantees under paragraph two of the new contract to keep us alive in the devil’s world for a determined length of time. The length of time is strictly a matter of the sovereign policy of God. How long we live is strictly up to Him.

ii. He has provided for us a pastor-teacher. He has provided the local church as a classroom, and the Bible as a text book. In other words, He has provided spiritual factors for the spiritual growth of the royal family. He has provided factors in life that we might grow physically; He has also provided the spiritual factors for growth.

iii. He has provided a grace apparatus for perception whereby Bible doctrine can be transferred from the page of the Bible to the soul of the royal family, and the system is a grace system of perception, it has nothing to do with human IQ.

iv. Through GAP, the filling of the Spirit, and academic discipline, the local church exists for your spiritual growth. It is the only place for spiritual growth.

So in paragraph two we have the perpetuation of supergrace status through God’s grace provision. Experiential sanctification, therefore, or paragraph two, is designed to take you as a member of the royal family of God on earth to take you from salvation to the supergrace status. That is where the normal function of the royal priesthood begins. And your tactical victory compliments the strategical victory of Christ seated at the right hand of the Father. The supergrace blessings that you receive as you reach SG² are in three categories: spiritual blessings, temporal blessings promoted by God, and dying grace.

c) The third and final paragraph of the new contract has to do with ultimate sanctification. This deals with eternity.

All three paragraphs in the new contract: paragraph 1, salvation — all that God does at the moment we are saved, the moment we believe in Christ; paragraph 2 — all that God does for us in time; paragraph 3 — all that God does for us in eternity. These paragraphs all form the new contract to the church. This is the contract under which we live and in all three paragraphs there is no room for human merit or human ability.

3. The five stages of grace:

a) Stage one is saving grace. Every believer hast tasted the grace of God at least once, and that was the point of his salvation — Hebrews 6:4; 1 Peter 2:3. The moment of salvation brings the believer 36 irrevocable items of grace. These cannot be cancelled and they cannot be destroyed. Because of propitiation every believer is also under maximum love from God — 1 John 2:2. Maximum love frees God to pour out maximum grace, but grace can only benefit where there is a capacity for grace. The capacity for grace, like capacity for life is based upon the amount of doctrine resident in the believer’s soul. However, the believer is saved by grace which is all the Trinity has accomplished for our salvation — Romans 3:23,24; 4:4; 5:20; Ephesians 2:8,9.

b) Stage two is living grace. Living grace is all that God must do to keep the believer alive and on the earth in this dispensation. Under that principle God provides everything.

c) Stage three is supergrace, which is equivalent to maturity in the spiritual life. In 1 Timothy 1:14 supergrace is described as the abundant life. Supergrace is the adult stage of spiritual growth, attended by maximum blessings from God which glorify God. Supergrace is the ultimate in spiritual growth in time and the basis for the normal function of the normal priesthood. Supergrace is the sphere of life in which the royal family reaps what God sows in eternity past. Therefore the fulfilment of Romans 8:28. James 4:6 says, “But he gives greater grace [or supergrace], and therefore he says, God opposes the arrogant [reversionist] but gives grace to the humble.” Ephesians 1:6 — “Resulting in the recognition of glory from the source of his grace, from which he has pursued us with grace in then beloved.” Cf. Ephesians 3:20,21; 1:16-19.

d) Stage four is dying grace. This is the permanent change of station from time to eternity, the greatest blessing that can exist in life, the highest decoration of life. Dying grace is the experience of physical death under special grace provisions whereby no matter what the type of death may be it is nothing but blessing all the way. The principle of dying grace links the supergrace blessings of time with the surpassing grace blessings of eternity — Hebrews 11:13. Therefore dying grace is the extension of the glory road over the chasm between time and eternity. It is that high golden bridge by which we go from paragraph SG² to paragraph SG³. Cf. Psalm 33:18,19; 116:15; Philippians 1:20,21.

e) Stage five is surpassing grace. This is the second of the special blessing and reward paragraphs for the believer. This one lasts forever; this one is in eternity. This is above and beyond the normal blessings of heaven which belong to all believers. Beyond these normal blessings of heaven are the special blessings and rewards for the mature or supergrace believer — Ephesians 2:7. Again, God is glorified forever for those believers who are decorated in eternity.

4. The modus vivendi of grace.

a) Grace is the means of growth — 2 Peter 3:18. All growth comes through knowledge of doctrine. Knowledge of doctrine gives us love for Jesus Christ.

b) Grace is the basis for stability in life — Hebrews 13:8,9; 12:28; 1 Peter 5:12.

c) Grace is the basis for production — 1 Corinthians 15:10; 2 Corinthians 6:1.

5. The failure to utilise grace. This is describes as reversionism — Galatians 5:4, reversionism is defined as drifting off course from grace; Hebrews 12:15, reversionism is described here as falling back from the grace of God. Whichever definition you use they all add up to neglect of Bible doctrine.

6. Grace and suffering. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, we have the importance of the grace apparatus for perception [GAP], the importance of the constant and daily intake of Bible doctrine. The grace principle meets every exigency of life.

7. The axioms of grace.

a) God is perfect, therefore His plan is perfect.

b) A perfect plan can only originate and function from the source of a perfect God.

c) If mankind can do anything meritorious in the plan of God it is not longer perfect. Why? Man is imperfect, he cannot contribute to a perfect plan. His imperfection only contributes imperfection, therefore man’s contributions are excluded.

d) A plan is no stronger than its weakest link. There are no weak links in God’s plan.

e) Grace excludes, therefore, all human merit, all human ability, all human good, all legalism, all self-righteousness and arrogance.

f) Legalism, therefore, is the enemy of grace. There is no place for legalism or human good in the plan of God.

g) All legalism and human good is associated with the greatest of mental attitude sins which is pride. Arrogance has no place in God’s grace plan.

8. The four areas in which pride or arrogance reject God’s grace.

a) The pride of the believer who rejects the doctrine of eternal security. The believer who rejects eternal security thinks that his sins are greater than the grace plan of God. This is the quintessence of arrogance.

b) The pride of that believer who succumbs to pressure and adversity. He assumes that his sufferings and adversities are greater than the grace provision of God.

c) The pride of reversionism. The reversionist assumes that his form of reversionism is greater than supergrace blessings. He assumes that his emotions, his ecstatics, his experiences, his legalistic functions, or even his phallic stimulations are more important than Bible doctrine, the daily function of GAP and the resultant supergrace blessings.

d) The pride of pseudo-spirituality. The pseudo-spiritual believer thinks that his system of spirituality, his system of energy of the flesh, is greater than the true function of God the Holy Spirit in his life and in the life of the royal family. In his arrogance he becomes a holy-roller, becomes involved in the tongues movement, he ejaculates verbal nonsense which he calls tongues, or enters into spiritual functions like witnessing and prayer in the energy of the flesh, or observes the taboos in the name of asceticism, or functions under some point program which impresses him and impresses his friends. He changes his personality to become sombre, or he changes his personality to be one of the ‘happy boys’, but whatever he does it is pseudo and it is phoney.

Hebrews 13:9b — “not with meats”, the strong negative o)uk plus the instrumental of brwma which means food. It is in the plural here and it should be translated literally, “not by means of food.” This is a reference to the food taboos of Judaism which are mentioned in Romans 14:1-4. It means a system of pseudo spirituality here. Our spirituality does not depend on what we take into the mouth, it is what we take into the soul that counts.

“which” is a prepositional phrase — e)n plus the locative of the relative pronoun o(j. It should be translated “in which.”

The next phrase “have not profited” is the aorist passive indicative of wfelew which means to profit. Here it has the negative o)uk, so “they have not been profitable” or “they have not been benefited.” The aorist tense is a constative aorist contemplating the action of the verb in its entirety. It means that there is no spiritual benefit in observing certain food taboos; health to the body but no spiritual blessing to the life. The point is that the issue is found in spiritual food, not in physical food. The passive voice: legalistic believers who are observing food taboos for spirituality are not benefited [spiritually] by these taboos. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. Food is very important to your health but of no importance in your spiritual life.

“that have been occupied therein” — the word “therein” is not found in the original; “that have been occupied” is a present active participle of the verb peripatew which means to walk, and the linear aktionsart of the present tense indicates that people have kept walking. It doesn’t mean occupy, it means to walk. They have walked in a system or a pattern of life where they used food taboos as a system of spirituality. But they are not benefited by food taboos — much better that they get on Bible doctrine.

Translation of verse 9 — “Do not be carried away [into reversionism] by means of diversified and alien doctrines. For it is a noble thing that the right lobe be stabilised by means of grace; not by foods in which those who keep walking were not benefited [spiritually].”

Conclusions

1. Taboo reversionism is a form of legalism in total opposition to God’s grace plan.

2. Jewish taboos failed to stabilise the soul.

3. Only Bible doctrine resident in the soul of the believer can stabilise and add to the spiritual life of the royal family.

4. In the Church Age each member of the royal family must function under his own priesthood and totally reject any form of legalistic dictatorship.

5. The only legitimate taboos in the life of a believer are those things which you give up as a result of taking in doctrine and growing up spiritually.

6. Under these conditions of spiritual growth Bible doctrine will dictate certain taboos and spiritual growth causes one to change his scale of values and his lifestyle. But don’t get saved and give up something immediately because what you give up and what you take on is going to be based upon the values that will develop in your life. That scale of values will come with Bible doctrine.

7. Any change in your lifestyle is based upon doctrine resident in the soul and the filling of the Spirit applying this doctrine. Taboos are not the result of legalistic bullying but spiritual growth and the attainment of the supergrace status.

8. Anything forced out of the life by doctrine is certainly legitimate. So here is the great principle. The royal family must function on the basis of doctrine in the soul causing the believer to be spiritually self-sustaining in his priesthood and stabilised by the grace of God. The congregation of royalty must concentrate on the teaching of doctrine, the message of the pastor-teacher, recognising his authority in the pulpit, and as a result, taking in doctrine. In other words, you develop your own dictator. Doctrine in your soul is your absolute dictator. The kingdom of royal priests does not exclude authority but emphasises becoming spiritually independent and grace oriented. Therefore it is extremely important that you continue to be consistent in your intake of doctrine in order that inside of your soul might be the absolute dictator of your life — Bible doctrine. When doctrine in your soul becomes the absolute dictator you are doing the will of God.