Who Am I? [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. There is an intense attraction to the law.

The law helps identify in a superficial, unsatisfying, and futile way, who's in and who's out. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Galatians, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month made to Allen Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, you can go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAllen.org. That's PastorAllen.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. That blessing is the blessing that was promised to Abraham that you would have your name made great, and that you would be a blessing, that you would be included in the family of God. And what Paul has been saying everywhere in Galatians is this came not by your works, but by the promise of God.

What I'm saying, beloved, to put it plainly, if you are attracted to the law, it is because you're insecure in your justification. It was playing upon insecurity in the Galatian Christian hearts for a Judaizer to say, yes, you need Jesus, but you also need to be circumcised. In other words, the devil wants to introduce a question about the certainty and assurance that you have of who you are and how you belong forever to God. But what God said to Abram over and over in Genesis is, I want you to know for sure, and he cut a covenant with him. The covenant of God that he cut with Abraham was a unilateral promise from God.

He didn't want Abraham ever doubting who he really was. This goes far to explain why Paul, not only here in Galatians, but throughout most of his epistles, is found saying things like, I pray that the eyes of your heart would be enlightened so you could see how much God loves you, so you could see your glorious inheritance in the saints so you know who you really are, so that you would know the glorious, great, incomparable power of God that is at work within you. I pray that you would know that which surpasses knowledge, he says in Ephesians, that you would know the love of God. What he's saying is, I want you to know for sure that you are loved, that you are accepted through Jesus Christ by no other means but by faith alone. Accept it, believe it, because when you believe it, when you accept it, it'll change everything about who you are, how you relate to people, how you relate to God, and you will fulfill your destiny in the world.

And this is why we have to say with Paul, no to any mixture of law into our gospel, because if you start mixing the law into our gospel, you not only create a dividing wall of hostility, you are training people to doubt their own salvation, to doubt their own justification. But the power of the gospel is released when you realize that through Christ alone, you are justified, it's just as if I hadn't sinned, and it's just as if I'd lived a meritorious life. When you see this deeply, profoundly, this is when you know you're accepted.

If there's one gift that I, just yearning to give as I meditate on Galatians 3, 28, it's just, Lord, that we could have our eyes open so that we could see more deeply than ever before how radically we have been accepted through Jesus Christ. People that know that they are accepted don't need stars on their bellies, they don't need black tape on the nose. The desperate need to know who I am and where I belong is the thing that the enemy uses and leads to the sometimes subtle and sometimes blatant practice of exclusion based on external matters of conformity.

Racism is essentially a protective sin designed to make me feel like I have an identity and that I belong and it's based on the fact that I have determined that you do not belong. Your sense of belonging and who you are is in no way tied up with somebody else. Your sense of belonging and who you are is in every way guaranteed by what Jesus has done for you. That's why we live radically different lives. It's not to say that Paul is erasing distinctives, the Bible celebrates our distinctives.

Don't think that Galatians 3, 28 is to say that it doesn't matter whether we're male or female, that we have no distinctives, I'm glad he made us male and female. I miss David Smith, he was our music minister for a long time. He one time was at some kind of a little party, they didn't know people and they're doing an icebreaker thing, sitting around a pool at some resort or something. It was that little game where you put a name on your back, you don't know what the name is there, some famous person and you get to go ask yes or no questions of other people so you can try to figure out who you are. You're trying to figure out who am I?

It's a mixer, it's an icebreaker thing. David Smith, he was always having stuff like this happen to him at Galatians. So he goes over to a man who's sitting next to the pool and he says, am I a man or a woman? And he said the man looked at him real funny.

And then David made it worse by saying, you're not playing this game are you? Paul's not talking about there's no male or female in the sense that we're all the same and we should be gender neutral. What he's saying is that the distinctiveness of our life is celebrated in unity, not in uniformity. What the New Testament celebrates about the body of Christ is we're so different. We are one in Christ.

It's glorious, world shaking, revolutionary, bold and audacious. And it's the gospel. To try to go a little deeper with what I mean by how law and grace affect our sense of ourselves as either a personage as Tournier calls it when we just relate on the basis of outward conformity or a person who knows his or her identity is to say that the freedom that grace brings is a freedom to know that you're accepted through Christ's sacrifice and that therefore you can accept yourself and therefore you can accept a destiny and therefore you can accept others as well. Theologian Paul Tillich was not by any means orthodox theologian, not one that I would recommend you build your theology on, but all truth is God's truth and what Tillich wrote here is profound. As long as we feel rejected by him, we cannot love God. He appears to us as an oppressive power, as he who gives laws according to his pleasure, who judges according to his commandments, who condemns according to his wrath. But if we have received and accepted the message that he has reconciled, everything changes. Like a fiery stream, his healing power enters into us. We can affirm him and with him, our own being and the others from whom we were estranged and life as a whole.

Then we realize that his love is the law of our own being and that it is the law of reuniting love. He continues by writing this, he who is accepted ultimately can also accept himself. Being forgiven and being able to accept oneself are one and the same thing.

No one except himself who does not feel that he is accepted by the power of acceptance which is greater than he, greater than his friends and counselors and psychological helpers. What Tillich is saying is that there is a process that takes place when the gospel is revealed to our hearts and we believe and receive it in faith. When you see that through Jesus Christ you are no longer estranged from God but are reconciled to him perfectly, you might still stumble and sin. You are not yet perfected. You are being sanctified.

You are growing in his likeness. But in terms of your relationship with God as your Father, what the Bible clearly teaches is you are guaranteed through your faith alone in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ dying for you and accepting that for your life, you are made into a perfect reconciliation with God. You are not perfected but your relationship with God has no doubt upon it whatsoever. And that truth of your acceptance by God is forever. It's forever. It's forever. As you grow older, you're just like a kid getting closer to Christmas Day.

It's just going to get better. And you're guaranteed this by a deposit who is the Holy Spirit within you showing you you're a child of God. The spiritual battle that is at hand even at this moment is a battle for our minds whether we will believe this astounding gospel truth. You are God's treasured possession forever. Who are you? You are the sons and daughters of God.

It's so astounding that it almost beggars our belief. But when you accept this truth in Jesus Christ, then and only then Tillich is saying you can accept yourself. You will forever be rejecting yourself, hurting yourself, or sabotaging yourself If you believe that you are not fully reconciled, you'll be drawn to the law.

And the law will always be a taskmaster, will always be a prison guard. And in some way or another, you will try outwardly to conform to some standard to make yourself fit in and know that you're belonging. But the Christian gospel does not need any law mixed into it whereby we identify who's in and who's out. We have one way of knowing that we belong, and it's the cross of Jesus Christ and His grace saved by faith and by faith alone, and there's nothing else that we can ever add to it. You, when you trust Christ, are accepted in the beloved.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine, for 99 days in a row, someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you, wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12-message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians, and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. You are brand new, and now you are parented, you are fathered by a Father who knows how to father perfectly, who loves you perfectly, who accepts you at every moment, knowing all your sin in the past, all your sin in the future, and all your sin in that moment, but sees you through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ fully redeemed. You have been reconciled with Him, your Father, and you are made new. This is part of the image Paul is referring to. He says you've put on Christ. Your image of baptism is you come out and they put a new robe on you.

They put a new thing on. You're new now. You've got a new identity. You've got a whole new being. You're in Christ.

You're not under the law. You're in Christ. You're born again. You've got a Father who loves you perfectly. Now let Him love you.

Let Him teach you and let Him tell you who you really are. Hallelujah. It is a mysterious tie that holds us together with God and with one another in the body of Christ. We had a fun time at Anne's Mother's Family reunion. The Bennett clan was together Friday and Saturday as they always are after the 4th of July week up in the mountains.

It was fun to see everybody. I'm usually out playing with the kids or something during the family meeting but this year I was at the family meeting. The family meeting, everybody goes around. The matriarchs and patriarchs tell about what's going on in their family and what people have done and where the grandchildren are and who's doing what. We've got half the matriarchs and patriarchs in the family are in heaven now.

We've got some including my mother-in-law who couldn't be there. So Bill, he's there. He's 90.

He wants to be 100. They've been married, Bill and Barbara, 67 years maybe. Still getting along okay on that one leg. He never complained about that. He was a pilot in the war. His girls, their family, they gave us a report on how everybody's doing.

Duddy was there. Douglas was telling me the story how it was that he many years ago got into college, I mean into high school football. He became the coach at Swansea High in South Carolina. Many state championships impacted lots of kids' lives. Doug Bennett, we talked a little football.

You know what's interesting? He's got a grandson who's playing football at Stanford. He's one of the quarterbacks. So I'd be able to talk to the daughter and they talked about Stanford football. Who'd think about that at a retreat?

I'm talking about getting the inside scoop on the quarterbacking at Stanford. And we've got a couple preachers in there in the family. We've got a funeral director. We've got cousins all over the place. I don't even know who these people, I mean what is a cousin first removed, second removed?

I don't even know who, all we know is that one way or another we're all Bennets. And my son Bennett posted on his Facebook. He said I'm going to the Bennett family reunion.

He said yes, they named the whole family after me. And I don't know, it's just a beautiful thing sometimes just when there's so many different people that are so different in so many ways but you get one moment like that and you're gathered and there's only one reason and that's because we all in one way or another by blood or by marriage or adoption we share the name Bennett. That's why I love church. It's not because we're all the same. It's because we all bear one name, Jesus Christ. It's the place, it's our family, where we don't do it perfectly but we proclaim by the grace of God every moment we open our mouths we want to proclaim there's acceptance in the beloved through Jesus Christ. So be radically different, be men and women, be from different socioeconomic pathways, be different nationalities and different colors of skin. Please be distinct, be all these things and be one in Christ.

It's just an extraordinary thing that happens. You get a chance to be born again and have in a sense, spiritually speaking, your childhood all over again and that means you get to hear God tell you who you are. Who are you? The book of Revelation says you're a radiant bride. Matthew 5 says you're the light of the world. 2 Corinthians says you're a treasure and an earthen vessel.

You're the son who was lost and now found, Luke 15. Who are you? You once were no people but now are God's people, Romans 9. If you're in Christ then you're a chosen one, blessed with every spiritual blessing. You were known in the womb, you were fearfully and wonderfully made, you're clay in the potter's hands, you're the seed of a great fruit tree, 1 Peter 1.23.

You're blessed with every spiritual blessing. Ephesians 1, the salt of the earth, Matthew 5. You're a brother or sister to Christ.

Wow! That's what Ephesians says. You have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians says you're His witnesses.

You're free. You're Abraham's offspring. You're a disciple of Christ. You're a sheep in Christ's flock.

You're branches on a true vine. You're washed whiter than snow. You are His holy temple. You're God's co-laborer. You're an overflowing cup.

You're rich in every way. You're Christ's body. You're a royal priesthood.

You're a holy nation. His strength is perfected in you. You have the wings of an eagle. You're a daughter. You're a son of the Father. You don't need a star on your belly.

You don't need a piece of black tape on your nose. You don't need to keep a certain law, look a certain way, or prove anything to anybody. In Christ, you're all one.

You're heirs, sons and daughters. And that's the gospel. for Allen Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Allen Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up, I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well, just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Allen Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Allen Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. In this series on Galatians, and we've come through another teaching that talked about our declaration of independence, it really is about finding our identity in Christ.

And this is an unmixed gospel, untainted good news. And once we get these things lined up and we can really see who we are through the lens of Jesus, the way God sees us, wow. Seeing yourself as God sees you.

Yeah, that's it. And I just think that so much of our spiritual growth is day by day increasingly just believing what has actually been transacted on your behalf through the cross and resurrection of Jesus and to really, really receive and believe what God has said. It's better than we know, it's getting better every and every day in the revelation of the gospel. If someone's listening right now and they see themselves based on their past failures and their mistakes and they even call themselves that, I'm a mistake, I'm a failure, I'm a nobody, we really just pray this message sinks way down deep into their soul. Yeah, that's my prayer today for anyone listening that your identity has been formed by what influential people have said, the messages of the culture, and you're in a process right now of God correcting that identity and bringing it into agreement with who you really are. And you really are, as soon as you accept Christ, you really are His child. And if you're His child, you really are a co-heir with Christ Himself. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.