Who in the world told you that you were forgiven?

Steve Brown:
Who in the world told you you were forgiven? Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. I’m Matthew, executive producer for the program, and our host is author and seminary professor Steve Brown. The church has suffered under do more, try harder religion for too long. And Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Jerry.

Jerry Parries:
Hey Dr. Steve. Glad to be back again.

Steve Brown:
Jerry Parries has been, he’s one of the voices of Key Life and he’s been spending the week in our studio. And we’ve been talking about some lies that Christians believe. And by the way, if you are in Central Florida, you might want to check his church out. Give us the website again.

Jerry Parries: Yeah, the website is CFWCorlando.com

Steve Brown:
And what does CFWC stand for?

Jerry Parries:
Christian Family Worship Center House of Grace. HOG is not in there, CFWC is.

Steve Brown:
But it is a House of Grace.

Jerry Parries:
It is definitely a House of Grace.

Steve Brown:
You might want to check out that website and, but at any rate, Jerry’s a voice of Key Life and we’re spending this week talking about lies and Jerry’s teaching us about that. You know, you hear the phrase a lot of times, I know you tell me that Jesus is forgiven me, but how can I forgive myself? And I’m so bad that I don’t think Jesus can forgive me. I mean, if I’d stolen a quarter from my mother’s pocketbook when I was 13, maybe that, but you don’t know me, Jerry. I’ve done some really, really bad things. Can God forgive really, really bad things?

Jerry Parries:
Oh, absolutely. In fact, you are forgiven. God does forgive. I remember when we did our grace conference, Steve. And I preached a message about Barabbas, just a great, great, great story in the Bible where Jesus is getting ready to be crucified. And they come out and they say, who do you want to be set free? Jesus or Barrabas, and Barrabas was a thief, a robber, a murderer, a rapist. He was all of these things that encompass all of the things that we do, and they said, crucify Jesus and let go of Barabbas. Do you know who Barabbas is in the Bible? It’s me and you.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. It really is, isn’t it?

Jerry Parries:
We are Barabbas, and so God set Barabbas free so that Jesus can take Barabbas’ punishment.

Steve Brown:
Oh man. And your name is Barabbas.

Jerry Parries:
Yes, it is. So, no matter what you’ve done, no matter who you are, God has forgiven you because he’s already taken care of your sins. I tell my church every Sunday when I preach, I make them make this confession.

The favor of God is over my life.

And listen to the second one.

God is a hundred percent pleased with me because of Jesus Christ.

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah. And he is.

Jerry Parries: Yes. Yes. And God is able to make all grace abound towards me because I am forgiven.

Steve Brown:
You know, one of the things that you say, and I quote you in a lot of places where I’m teaching or preaching, and I love this statement, it’s, you know, there are about 10 different statements made by people I love, that I quote over and over again and you say that God.

That you will run out of sin before God runs out of grace.

I love that statement.

Jerry Parries:
And it is, it is absolutely the truth. The Bible will tell you that, or the enemy will tell you that God will not forgive you and God’s going to forgive you of that? And you have to realize the Bible says.

While you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you.

And here’s one of my favorite Scriptures, Steve. It’s found in Colossians the first chapter, it says. 19th verse. I’m reading from the New Living Translation.

Steve Brown:
Okay.

Jerry Parries:
Listen to this. This is so powerful.

God, in all his fullness, was pleased to live in Christ and through him, God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything, in heaven and in earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Here it is, verse 21

this includes you. This includes you who were once far away from God. You were not his, you were his enemy, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

verse 22 says

but yet now he has reconciled you.

He’s talking about you, whoever you are, and whatever you’ve done.

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself.

How did he do it?

Through the death of his Son on the cross. And as a result

Here it is.

He has brought you unto his, into his own presence.

This is the part Steve that I love.

And you are holy, blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Steve Brown:
Oh my.

Jerry Parries:
Oh my goodness. Isn’t that incredible news?

Steve Brown:
It really is, and it’s not. You know, people, you get the feeling that there are those teachers that say, alright, you’ve been forgiven and now it’s up to you.

Jerry Parries: No.

Steve Brown:
You’ve been covered, but you, now you’ve got, you’ve got to be the kind of Christian that you’re supposed to be. And if you are not, this isn’t going to work. That’s a lie too.

Jerry Parries: That is a lie from the pits of hell. The Bible says that you are holy, you are blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. You have to confess. Here’s what I tell my church, is you have children, and if you call your children stupid, guess what they’ll become? They’ll become stupid. If you call them bad, they’ll become bad. But here’s what God is saying, when you confess that you’re holy, when you confess that you’re blameless, when you confess that I don’t have a single thought, you will start lining up and your life will start imitating what you declare. So, you have to declare what God says about you. And in fact, the 23rd verse says.

But you must continually, to believe this truth and stand firmly on it.

And that’s what the enemy comes to do, is to try to get you not to believe that you’re holy. You’re not holy because of what you did last night, it has nothing to do with what you did, it has everything to do for what God has done for you. You are holy because of the blood of Jesus, not because of your life or what you’ve done. You stand in the blood of Christ and you are in Christ, any man be in Christ, you are a new creature, a new creation. So, I am in Christ. I am covered by Christ. I am covered by his blood, so he has forgiven me of my past, my present, and my future sins. So, I am sinless in Christ, and so therefore, I am holy. I don’t care what it looks like, I don’t care what it feels like, it’s not about my feelings, sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don’t. It is about what God says. And when you stand on what God said, you stand on the word, that’s when you will start seeing the manifestation. And don’t you let the enemy tell you that you are full of sin. No, you are full of righteousness because of the blood of Jesus that have covered your life. That’s the grace of God.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that is so good. You know, Paul in the seventh chapter of Romans, it says things that a preacher ought not say.

Jerry Parries: Yes, he does.

Steve Brown:
He begins to confess his sins and he says.

The good

Now, he’s not talking about his past testimony. He’s talking about the present experience of every Christian.

The good that I’m want to do isn’t what I do. The evil I don’t want to do, that’s what I find myself doing.

Jerry Parries: Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And then he cries out

Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me.

Then you move into the eighth chapter of Romans.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Jerry Parries: Yeah. And I like what he says.

Oh wretched man, that I am, who shall deliver me from this wretched life?

And he says ahh. He takes a breath. It says.

Ahh, thanks be to God. Who has given us the victory.

Steve Brown:
That is so good.

Jerry Parries: Ah, so he, he tells us, I do all this screw up stuff, I mess up, I do this. I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to do this. And then he says, oh my God, who’s gonna deliver me from this? And he takes a breath and says, Jesus did.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Jerry Parries: He did it on the cross. Thanks be to God. And then he goes in the Romans eighth and says, now

Steve Brown:
No condemnation.

Jerry Parries: There’s no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

Steve Brown:
Now, you referred to it a little bit earlier, but what do you say to people who say, preacher, you’re encouraging sin. If you don’t do some condemnation and some guilt producing, you’re just encouraging people to sin and they’ll go out and they won’t be faithful to Christ.

Jerry Parries: Yeah. That’s because they don’t know, the Christ we know.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Jerry Parries: When you love somebody, you sin less, the more you love him, the less you sin. People sin when they have given up on God. The Bible says the strength of sin is the law. The more law you preach, the more sin people do. The less law you preach, the less sin people do.

Steve Brown:
And the more grace.

Jerry Parries: And the more grace is given. In fact, I’ll say this, when Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God and God came and said, where are you? Say we heard that voice in the garden, we were afraid, naked, and we hid. Who told you? See, when you understand what sin is, you hide from God. When you understand that God has covered your sins, you come out and have relationship with God.

Steve Brown:
Oh man, that’s so good. It’s how I became a spiritual giant.

Jerry Parries: Yes indeed.

Steve Brown:
And I didn’t, but I got better and that surprised everybody and it has surprised me because of what you were just teaching. It’s the central message of the Christian faith, isn’t it?

Jerry Parries: Yes, it is. You are forgiven. God came, John said, behold the lamb of God that take away the sins of the world.

Steve Brown:
Oh man.

Jerry Parries: And he did just that.

Steve Brown:
And he did for you.

Jerry Parries: Yes sir.

Steve Brown:
Make sure you run to him because he’s the only one who can do that. Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
That was Steve and our friend Jerry Parries continuing to teach us about the five lies that the enemy tells us. And today, we touched on the truth that we will run out of sin before God runs out of grace. Mm. What can you call that, except good news. Steve and Jerry will wrap up this week of teaching tomorrow, do not miss that. So, there’s a website that we’re really big on around here. Maybe you’ve heard of it, Wikapedia? No, just kidding. It’s Key Life. Keylife.org is what we’re talking about here. And if you go to keylife.org/biblereading or just go to the main page, then look in the left hand menu, you’ll find an ongoing project we launched last year, Steve, reading entire books of the Bible. We recently started uploading chapters of the Gospel of John. Also, check out Keylife.org/simplysermons that’s our newest podcast. And it features digitally remastered full length sermons from Steve with no commercials. Oh, and you can find the entire archive of our digital magazines at Keylife.org/magazines and of course, all of this is still completely free thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, call 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to key life.org/contact to find our addresses. Or e-mail [email protected]. You could charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course now you can give safely securely by texting Key Life to 28950. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.