Three Frameworks of Understanding

1. Legal Transaction
2. Covenant Relationship
3. New Creation

1. Legal Transaction

• Justified. Price paid for my sin. Forgiven
• But I am still a “sinner”
• Now I go through a long process of “Sanctification” where I sin less and less
• But ultimately I am forgiven

2. Covenant Relationship

• God has brought me into his family
• He has adopted me
• I am no longer under law, but under grace
  • although now I won’t want to sin because I love God
• I can have victory through the Spirit

3. New Creation

• United with Christ in his death and resurrection
• In his death, we died to all that we get from Adam:
  • law, sin, guilt, mortality
• In his resurrection we are a new creation
  • Spirit, faith, new commandment

Living in the Old Creation

• Trying to please God by keeping the law
• Our own strength
• Constant guilt & failure
• What is different about the New?

Roman 7:14-24

14. For we know that the law is spiritual — but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin.
15. For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want — instead, I do what I hate.
16. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good.
17. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me.
18. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it.

Roman 7:14-24

19. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want!
20. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.
21. So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me.
22. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.
23. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.
24. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Romans 8:1-9

1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
2. For the law of the life-giving Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death...

5. For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit.

Romans 8:1-9

6. For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace,
7. because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so.
8. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him.

John 14:15-25

15. “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.
16. Then I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever—
17. the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides with you and will be in you.
18. I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you.

John 14:15-25 cont’d

19. In a little while the world will not see me any longer, but you will see me; because I live, you will live too.
20. You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.
21. The person who has my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him.”

John 14:15-25 cont’d

22. Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “Lord, what has happened that you are going to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”
23. Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up residence with him. ²⁴The person who does not love me does not obey my words. And the word you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

25. “I have spoken these things while staying with you. ²⁶But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you...

John 13 — The New Commandment

34. “I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
35. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another.”

John 15

9. “Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love.
10. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.
12. My commandment is this — to love one another just as I have loved you.
13. No one has greater love than this — that one lays down his life for his friends.
14. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

John 15 cont’d

15. I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father.
16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that remains, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.
17. This I command you — to love one another.

John 6:28-29

28. So then they said to him, “What must we do to accomplish the deeds God requires?”
29. Jesus replied, “This is the deed God requires — to trust (believe) in the one whom he sent.”

• Galatians 5:6

6. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision carries any weight — the only thing that matters is faith working through love.