Legalism vs Grace

Individual Topics — Steve Gregg

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Legalism vs Grace

Individual TopicsSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg explains that legalistic tendencies in Christians involve imposing rules on others and trying to make them better Christians, which is not productive. Instead, the Christian life is about receiving grace from within and living a life that pleases God. A legalistic mindset can lead to a critical spirit towards others and can divide the body of Christ, while grace establishes us and teaches us how to love and live righteously. Furthermore, Christians should extend grace towards others and continue to grow towards the standard of perfection set by Christ.

Transcript

The tendency toward legalism among us, and once in a while I encounter it in a graphic sort of way and I'm just amazed by it again. I was fortunate enough to be raised in a home and a church that taught salvation by grace and that's the gospel that I received from my childhood and I never really, well I can't say I never was legalistic. I did go through my phase.

I think most young Christians do go through a phase where they're kind of legalistic at one point, but I attribute that to my very juvenile period in my Christian life. And once in a while I find that there are Christians who have been Christians a long time who haven't grown out of this legalistic phase and I wonder if they're going through a phase at all or if this is just a different religion than the one I know. And I always hope the best that these people are just going through a passage in their Christian life where they're maybe a little bit too critical but they'll hopefully mature beyond it.

But I find that some people remain that way year after year after year and that's a real cause of concern because legalism is a real spiritual poison, a real spiritual disease in the body of Christ and we certainly should have no tolerance of it in ourselves. If you don't know what I mean by legalism, I'm talking about the mentality of making Christianity a matter of keeping certain rules. In Bible times, in the New Testament times, of course, the tendency was for people to impose the Jewish law, at least some people wanted to do so, to impose the Jewish law upon new converts and to say, well, you know, being a Christian is fine, having faith in Jesus is all right, in fact it's good, but you also have to keep the law of Moses if you're going to really be sanctified.

Now, we don't have very many today saying that to us. There are a few groups that say that, some of them even within the Christian definition. There are some denominations or some would even consider them fringe cults that teach that we should keep the law of Moses even though we're Christians.

But most of us don't fall for that one. We know what Paul said about the Jewish law, we know that we're not under the law anymore, but still we make up our own arbitrary sets of rules. Even if we don't believe that you have to keep the law of Moses anymore, we have our own set of standards that we develop, and most of them are extremely arbitrary.

They're either based on the rules that we're living by or the rules that we imagine we're living by, but we usually put ourselves squarely within the realm of safety in whatever set of rules we set. It's always something that we're doing right, but someone else isn't doing right as well as we are, and we use these rules as a criteria for evaluating each other's Christian life. And it is true that the Christian life produces good works, but that's exactly the way it must be understood.

The Christian life produces good works. Good works are not what the Christian life consists of. The Christian life is life.

It's something vital, something living inside. It's the grace of God inside. And it produces works naturally.

And the Apostle Paul said that in Romans chapter six, that if we really have had the grace of God come into our lives, then we don't really have to worry about putting ourselves under a lot of rules because the grace of God will itself lead us to live a life pleasing to God. Now, a legalistic person, a legalistic Christian is usually one that feels that you've got to put some kind of rules on people in order for them to really be good Christians. And they could point out the fact that the scripture tells us that we're supposed to do the things that Jesus said, and I point that out all the time, by the way.

The Bible clearly teaches we're supposed to obey the words of Jesus. We're supposed to teach others to observe the things he commanded. But I understand that to mean people who have a heart that's converted, that love the Lord and want to know how to please him, that the teachings of Jesus delineate for us the way that those people can live to please God as they as they desire to do so from their heart.

But to begin to teach any legal code, whether it's the mosaic legal code from the Old Testament or whether it's the Sermon on the Mount as a legal code that you put on people and say, now, just do these things and then you'll be a normal good Christian, that is coming at it from the wrong end. That's definitely putting the cart before the horse, because those actions are supposed to spring from a quality of life that already exists. They don't produce it.

By learning to turn the other cheek or by learning to acquiesce when somebody wants to sue you at a court of law, like Jesus said to do, if you begin to practice those things, that doesn't produce a quality of life in you. That is a Christian life. It can produce even a worse quality of life than you would be having before if it's not coming from your heart.

Christianity, if it's genuine, comes from inside. It's written on the heart and it comes out of the heart. It doesn't move into the heart from just keeping rules.

Now, there's a place where in our hearts we decide that we want to obey the Lord and so we do begin to keep the sayings of Jesus. And these things become habitual and they do become more natural for us because we're cooperating with God. We're submitting to God's word by faith.

And they do begin to bring about changes in our thinking and in our patterns. But the only reason we do these things in the first place is because it's in our heart to do them. But a lot of times you can tell a person doesn't have it in their heart to do it because when they do the things that Jesus said, they feel like they're making a great sacrifice and they're very critical of others who don't seem to be making the same sacrifice and don't seem to be keeping them quite the same way they are.

They rise earlier than everybody else to pray. They stay longer at all the religious functions and so forth. And they go later into the night and so forth.

And they just do more than other people do. And the fact that they're critical of others who don't do it indicates that they don't enjoy doing it really at all. If you really enjoy eating ice cream, you're not going to resent other people who aren't eating ice cream.

You're going to say, well, sorry for them. You know, I'm going to enjoy it anyway. And if you really enjoy doing the things that are pleasing to God, you're not going to be sitting around being critical of people who aren't doing as many as you are.

The fact that you feel critical or judgmental shows that you are doing it against your will and therefore it's legalistic. It is imposed, something you're imposing upon yourself instead of something that's arising out of a gracious response of love to God. See, if you love somebody, you'll want to do the things that please them.

Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. He didn't say keep my commandments so you can learn to love me. But he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

But the legalist is afraid to remove the structure of rules in the way that they judge other people. They think that if you don't present some kind of a legalistic structure for people to submit to, and if you don't judge them by that, well, then they're just going to run wild. They're like the people who Paul anticipated would respond to his remarks in the book of Romans.

He said, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Shall we continue in sin because we're not under the law but under grace? That's what he thought some people would think. Now, Paul wasn't just dreaming. There are people who think that way.

In fact, almost, there's more people who think that way than think rightly, it seems to me. These are people who mistake grace for lasciviousness. Jude tells us in the book of Jude in verse four that there were false teachers crept into the church who'd changed the grace of God into lasciviousness.

And that means that they misunderstood what the grace of God was all about. They thought grace means you can do whatever you want, even sin. Grace is just a license to kill, a license to sin.

And, of course, the legalistic person who has this same notion about grace can't believe that grace is the right thing because, obviously, a person who's out sinning isn't pleasing God and isn't a good Christian. If they're living in sin as a habit, they're not a Christian at all, the Bible indicates. But that's not because we put them under rules.

But if a person is really living to sanctify Christian life, it's because there's really been grace come into their lives. And a person who's afraid to preach the message of grace, and we hear many times people say, if you don't put some rules on people, they're just going to go wild. Well, they will go wild if they're wild people.

But if they're wild people, they don't have a new nature. And you might as well let wild people go wild, because then it'll show that they were wild all the time. Why make them look sanctified when they're not converted? Why give a false impression, give them the false notion that they're saved when they're not? By putting them under a bunch of rules which they keep legalistically, and they think that they're Christians now because they fit into these structures.

But in their heart, they're as wild and rebellious against God as they ever were. Better to let people who are wild and rebellious against God manifest what's in their heart instead of putting them under a bunch of artificial rules. You see, when grace has come into a life, it changes the life.

It changes the heart. It changes the motivation. And what the legalist doesn't understand is grace.

He mistakenly thinks grace just means, grace means you can do whatever you want. If you tell people they're under grace, they're going to go out and do a bunch of sins. Well, not if they're really under grace.

The Apostle Paul said, whoever you yield your members as servants to obey, his servant you are. And what I think that means is you can look at your own life and see the members of your body. Are they serving sin or are they serving God? What are they doing? Well, that will show whose servant you are.

If your body is serving sin, then you're a servant of sin. You're not converted. In other words, you're not saved yet.

You can't be a slave of sin and a slave of God. Jesus said you can't serve two masters. But if you're living a life pleasing to God, following his commandments by nature, from an inward desire and desiring to do so, enjoying doing so, you of course won't be critical of others who aren't doing that.

You'll just feel sorry that they don't have the enjoyment of God that you have. But this legalistic spirit is really something, and it is a spirit. The Apostle Paul was writing to a legalistic church in Galatia, or to a group of churches in Galatia that were coming under a legalistic teaching of Judaizers who were trying to put the church under the law of Moses.

And he said, who has bewitched you in Galatians 3.1 that you should turn from the gospel? He said that they had been bewitched. The Philips translation says, who has put you under a spell? And I really believe legalism is almost like a spell. I believe it's a spiritual thing.

It's a spirit of bondage. It's a spirit of fear. And the legalist is fearful.

He's fearful of imperfection. He's afraid to be imperfect. But the irony is that he's made up his own standard of what perfection is anyway.

Think of the Pharisees. Perfect example. They strained at a net.

Why did they strain a net out of the drink? They were afraid to let the slightest violation of their code be transgressed by them. They were afraid to even have a small little unclean animal go into their bodies because that was to eat an unclean animal would be, you know, against the law. They were, I mean, that is, that is terror of imperfection.

And yet at the same time, their idea of perfection was so far different than what God's was. And they were essentially, as Jesus said, swallowing a camel at the same time. They would tithe of their mint and anise and cumin.

That's being very meticulous about keeping rules that they thought were important because they wouldn't be caught having not tithed on even the smallest little spices that they had grown in their garden. That's how fearful they were of doing anything wrong. And yet, Jesus said, you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy and faith.

You've swallowed the camel. You've got a whole different standard than God does of what you think perfection is. And you're so afraid of imperfection that you're very meticulous and scrupulous about keeping this code that you've set, this arbitrary thing.

And all the while you're doing things that are offensive to God all the time. And what's offensive to God is your attitude. You're neglecting mercy.

You're neglecting justice. You're neglecting faithfulness, Jesus said. And many times that's what legalism essentially is.

It's a fear of imperfection, but it's also at the same time being out of touch with what perfection is. And it's an attempt to be perfect in the flesh through keeping a set of rules and finding some security in the fact that they have kept those rules. But there's no security in that.

No real security. Because we're not going to be accepted by God on the basis of rules. We're accepted in the beloved, the Bible says, in Christ.

If we're in him, we're accepted apart from rules. We learn the teachings and the commands of Christ because they show us what pleases him. And if we are really saved inwardly, there's been a change in our heart.

And we want to do what pleases him. And we delight to do it. What did Jesus say himself as he was in a Messianic psalm quoted in Psalm 40? He said, speaking to his father, he said, In sacrifices and offerings you had no pleasure, but my ear you have opened, or as it's quoted in the book of Hebrews, a body you have given me.

He says, Behold, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will. Thy word is in my heart.

That's what Jesus' attitude was. Your word's in my heart. I delight to do your will.

Why? Because my heart has your word in it. There's something in my heart that's changed. Now, Jesus didn't have to go through a change.

He was like that apparently from the beginning of his life. But we, in being born again, receive a new heart and a new spirit. And that new heart delights to do the will of God.

And if there's no delight in doing the will of God, and it's just a drudgery, then a person really ought to look at their spiritual life and say, Is it genuine? Do I really have the real thing at all? Let me tell you something about grace, if it's present. There's three things the Bible says it does that are very important for us to know and are often overlooked. First of all, let me turn your attention to Titus chapter two.

And this is why it's not dangerous to preach the gospel of grace. Because if you understand grace properly, and if grace really does come into a person's life, you'll see that the things that grace does remove all danger of that person exploiting the situation or abusing the situation. In Titus chapter two, verses 11 and 12, it says, For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

The grace has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. Paul says that the grace of God has appeared and the grace teaches us. Grace is alive.

Grace is a dynamic of God's own nature that is implanted in us and takes action in our lives and actually begins to change our way of thinking, begins to teach us a new way of looking at things. The grace of God teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. Now, I would say if a person is not convinced that they need to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, they don't have any grace.

Grace, if they had it, would be teaching them that because grace teaches us that. I can be very confident that if I preach the gospel of salvation by grace alone, that those who receive the message will not go out and live ungodly in this present world. Because if they receive the grace of God through the gospel, they will be taught by that grace inwardly to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world and to deny ungodly lusts.

Grace does that. Now, I may have to share with them exactly what the details of that are. If they say, well, what does it mean to live a godly life? Well, Jesus said this and this and this.

Okay, those are some of the particulars of what pleases God, of the, you know, what a person, how a person reacts to certain situations and so forth in a way that pleases God. But you see, the person inwardly is taught by grace to seek to do the will of God and to deny the world and to deny lusts. That's what grace does.

And if a person doesn't have that in their heart, they don't have grace yet. And rather than interpreting the gospel of salvation by grace as this, you're saved by grace, therefore go out and do whatever you want, you're still saved because it's by grace. We need to understand that you go out and do whatever you want and whatever you do will show whether you have grace or not.

Yes, do whatever you want. But if what you want to do is sin, then you don't have grace in your life teaching you. Because if you did, it would teach you to renounce worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously and godly.

So grace is itself sufficient. There's another thing that is said about grace that makes it quite futile for us to worry about people receiving the gospel of grace and then going out and living in sin. In Romans chapter 5, Romans chapter 5 is talking about, in the latter part of that chapter, how Adam brought sin into human experience and through sin, death.

And death and sin reigned in human history in our lives. And of course, that discussion begins around verse 12. But at the end of the discussion, in verse 21, the last verse in Romans 5, Romans 5, it says, that as sin has reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, he says, in the same way that sin used to reign, resulting in death, the wages of sin is death, and before our conversion, sin reigned and resulted in death. But what does it mean that sin reigned? Sin governed our actions. Sin motivated us.

Sin controlled our lives. We were controlled by sin. He says, but now, as sin has formerly reigned in that position, today, because we're Christians, grace reigns.

Grace holds the control in our life. This same grace that teaches us to deny worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world is now reigning in the hearts of those who have received the gospel. Therefore, we don't need to put a bunch of rules on them.

Grace holds the reign. Grace is directing the life, just like sin used to. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that a Christian doesn't ever commit any sins, any more than we could say that a sinner doesn't ever do any good things.

A person who's unconverted sometimes does some good things. Now, maybe they're not good in the sight of God in the sense of pure and done from a perfect motive or whatever. But after all, it is better to feed the poor than to trip a blind man as he walks down the road.

I mean, sinners aren't always doing wicked things. I mean, overtly wicked things. A lot of them are doing things that we would admit are decent things to do.

But that doesn't make them good people. And it doesn't mean that grace is reigning. I mean, sin can still be reigning in their lives, though they have incidental cases where they do something that's nice to someone, maybe even seemingly selfless.

Maybe they even, you know, the guy jumps down on the hand grenade and saves his his companions from being blown to bits and loses his life. That sounds like a real valiant thing to do. And some non-Christians have done that kind of thing.

That doesn't mean they were good in themselves. Some people do heroic and valiant things, even though they're sinners. And some Christians, even though they aren't sinners by nature, occasionally do wicked things, bad things, which they oughtn't to do.

And that, of course, is because, and Paul goes into that later in Romans 7, because there is still the influence of the old nature. But we have the more overwhelming power of grace governing our lives so that our lives will not be characterized by sin any longer. There may be times when we fail to yield to God when we should have yielded to him.

In those cases, we'll find that we sin. But the person who has received the gospel has had the invasion into his life of the powerful grace of God that takes the reins and the control of his life and changes his whole direction. And you don't have to put him under a bunch of rules to change his life.

Rules never change anyone's life anyway. You want to know who had the best set of rules anyone ever had? The Jews. The Jewish nation received the purest set of rules that anyone ever received.

God wrote them himself on stone with his own finger. But it didn't help them. It didn't make them any better.

Rules never have changed anybody's life for the better. The quality of your life will not improve by having a legalistic, rule-oriented religion, but only by receiving the grace of God. Grace teaches us, and grace also reigns in the life of those who are saved.

And one other thing, I'd like you to look at Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13 in verse 9. I'm just cutting a little piece out of the message I was going to give because I just don't feel in my heart to go along tonight. But we'll just take this.

Hebrews 13 in verse 9. Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines, for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with meats which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. Now when the writer of Hebrews mentions meats, of course he's not, he's talking about the legalistic restriction of eating certain meats that are not clean, according to the Jewish law. There were certain, every Jew who was devout was very careful about not eating meats that were unclean.

If they lived in a Gentile country, which many, many Jews did, they would have to make sure that their meat had been butchered by a kosher butcher who had drained all the blood properly, and who made sure that the meat that they bought was not the remnants of something that had been sacrificed to idols or something like that. They had to be very careful about those things if they were going to avoid contamination of unclean meats. The writer of Hebrews says, those who've been so concerned about meats, which just stands as a representative of the whole legalistic Jewish system.

Meats is just one aspect of it, but that's, in mentioning meats, he's calling to mind the whole system of the law. He says, that has not profited those people who've done it. It hasn't changed them.

Just like I said a moment ago, rules have never enhanced a person's spiritual life. Only the grace of God does. And so he says, it is good, it's a good thing that the heart be established with grace, not with legalism, which doesn't profit those who are exercised in it.

Now, what this tells us is that the heart is established by grace. That is, grace actually establishes a person. A person who's legalistic is not stable.

For one thing, he's not consistent. He's always trying to pick specks out of other people's eyes, and then sometimes he doesn't know it, and occasionally he finds out that he's got a beam in his own eye, and then he has to flagellate himself a little while until he feels like he's done enough penance to be back on the road again. And there's no consistency in the life of legalism.

Because even though you may set a standard that you never change, you never live up to it, so you're up and down and up and down all the time. But when grace is ruling in the heart, the heart is established. And I can tell you very honestly that my Christian victory, my relationship with God, is not something that I feel is based on my performance at all.

Sometimes I perform better than other times as a Christian. I mean, performing meaning living up according to the standards of perfection as I perceive them. Sometimes I approach it more nearly than other times, but it really doesn't affect my relationship with God.

Because my performance is not what my relationship with God is based upon, but upon the fact that by grace I have been accepted in the beloved. And it's bad enough, I think, that a person who's legalistic has the wrong notions about his own Christian life and doesn't understand upon what his own Christian life is based, but what makes it worse is that almost, well, I think in every case a legalistic person is very critical and judgmental of other people. And that's the hardest thing about it, because it poisons other people.

It's a critical negative kind of a thing. And it's sick. I mean, it's a sickness that comes into the body of Christ and really hurts the health, and it certainly divides the body.

When Paul was writing to the Galatians about their legalistic tendencies, he said, if you bite and devour one another, beware lest thou be consumed one of another. Now, if you're backbiting and criticizing another person all the time, you may turn around and he won't be there anymore. He'll have been consumed.

And for this reason, legalistic people often find themselves alone after a while. They've eaten everyone else up around them. Legalism only thrives in isolation or in small groups.

If a whole big group becomes legalistic, eventually it isn't big anymore. And I can say that with certainty. I've seen individuals who get real critical and real judgmental and real legalistic toward others, and they go from church to church to church, and they can't find any church that measures up to the standard they've set arbitrarily that they think everyone has to measure up to.

And so they remain by themselves. And occasionally they'll run into another person who's just as legalistic as they are, and they say, ah, fellowship, like-mindedness. And sometimes they'll even find that maybe there's a little group of these people somewhere, meeting off in some home or somewhere, you know.

And they say, wow, we finally have found the true remnant, you know, of people who are equally legalistic as us. And as long as that group stays small, their desperation for companionship may keep them from being too critical of each other. As long as they can be the small group and they can look outward and criticize all the other people who aren't in their group, then they'll do well.

But as soon as that group gets very big, then suddenly they begin to look at each other, too. And eventually, if that group's large enough and if the spirit of legalism is strong enough, they begin breaking up. We saw this happen in our own church in Santa Cruz.

There was a point where there were four elders in our church. This was before either Jim or I were elders in the church. In fact, those four elders were there before either Jim or I even came into the church.

But eventually, Jim and I were there in the eldership. But originally, there were four elders. Two of them were led off into this real legalistic doctrine, which I won't name, but it was just a real legalistic state.

The other two were much more grace oriented in their whole approach to Christian life. And the church split. And these two elders who were very legalistic took a bunch of zealots off with them and they started their own church.

Their own legalistic church. And within a few years, the two guys' names were Dale and John. Within a year, I think it was, the church kicked Dale out.

And then it wasn't much longer before they kicked John out. Here are these two elders who started the church. First, one of them kicked the other out.

And eventually, the other members of the church kicked the other guy out. It's like they just couldn't get along with anybody, even though they all started out really, you know, like, oh, we're all like-minded here. But they were a large enough group that they had the luxury of beginning to criticize each other.

Like I said, if it's a small group of people, five or six people, and meeting in a home, they probably won't criticize each other. They need each other too much. They're too desperate to find someone like-minded.

But once it gets to be 20 or 30 or larger, then they break up. And you see, that's because legalism divides. Legalism tears apart.

Legalism isolates. And it's really a wicked spirit. And the Bible says God has not given us the spirit of bondage again to fear.

And legalism is the spirit of bondage to fear. And, you know, I think that's the only thing that can really cure it is love. The Bible says perfect love casteth out fear.

And I believe that people who are wrapped up in a legalistic mindset, a lot of them are just blinded, of course. But whether they're blinded or not, they're in bondage. And they need to be set free.

And the only thing that'll cast that out is perfect love. It's coming to a place where you love like 1 Corinthians 13 describes love is supposed to be. Where you don't vaunt yourself.

Where you believe all things about the other person. Where you hope all things for the other person. Instead of looking for every failure and defect the other person has and jumping upon it and thinking that that's now giving you a clear picture of where that person stands.

Grace teaches us and reigns in our lives and establishes our hearts. And if we aren't taught the things that Paul said grace teaches us, then we lack grace. That's all there is to it.

If grace isn't reigning, grace isn't there. And there is very much counterfeit Christianity. And it looks so much like Christianity because it's outwardly, it looks about the same as real Christianity.

Because it is made up of outwardly conforming to the rules and to the structures and so forth that we've come to associate with true Christianity. But real Christianity always has love and joy and peace associated with it. And people who are loving and joyful and peaceful aren't going around sniffing out sin in other people to see whether they measure up.

As I said, if you're out looking for faults in other people, it's because you're not pleased being a holy person yourself. You figure if you're going to make the sacrifices of being a godly person, then they'd better make those sacrifices too by golly. Why should you be the only one suffering? And that's a shame.

It's a shame, but it's a shame that I encounter quite a bit. And we've encountered it recently, even among us. And it's saddened our hearts because we thought we'd taught more clearly than that.

We certainly, in our teaching here in the school and everything, we try to emphasize a totally different spirit than that, but we still find it. And it's just a pernicious weed, a root. It's a perversion of Christianity.

It's a cancer. It's a spirit. We sometimes use the term a critical spirit.

Well, the term critical spirit isn't in the Bible, but it is true that Paul treats it like it's a spiritual thing. You've been bewitched, he says to the Galatians. You've had a spell put over you.

There's a demon involved here. And I just want to put out a word of clarification. That's what I wanted to do tonight, is just clarify that we preach a high standard here.

I was told recently by someone that they don't understand why I'm not as critical as they are of some of the other people around here because, after all, I do preach the same high standard that they think we should do. And it's true. We do preach the high standard here.

We don't preach anything short of perfection because we don't have the liberty to preach anything short of perfection. If we present a standard lower than perfection, then people might reach it and say, well, I've arrived. We have to present the standard the Bible does.

That's absolute perfection, the likeness of Christ. Until people are like Christ, they should never feel like they've arrived anywhere. We need to keep growing.

But just because we present that as the goal and the target and the standard, it doesn't mean that we reject or in any way even are inclined to be critical of people who fail to meet that standard, who are nonetheless attempting to follow God with their hearts. And that's something that I want at least those who live here, and the majority of people here on Friday nights usually are those who live here. I don't know if that's the case tonight.

But at least those who live here, it's our position that Christianity is all of grace. It's all grace. And holiness and sanctification is the work of grace in a person's life.

And we are required by God, if we want to talk about requirements, we're required to extend grace toward others and to treat others on that basis. And he shall lift you up. And he shall lift you up.

And he shall lift you up. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord.

And he shall lift you up. And he shall lift you up. And he shall lift you up.

Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord. And he shall lift you up.

And he shall lift you up. And he shall lift you up. In the holy place where we can enter in the blood of Jesus Christ.

He has given us atonement and the love gift sacrifice. Now let's sing to the one who's called I Am. As we praise his holy land.

As we lift our hands in this holy place. This holy place. In the holy place where we can enter in.

By the blood of Jesus Christ. He has given us atonement for our sin. And the love gift sacrifice.

Now let's sing to the one who's called I Am. As we praise his holy land. As we lift our hands in this holy place.

This holy place. I will celebrate and sing unto the Lord. I will sing to him a new song.

I will celebrate and sing unto the Lord. I will sing to him a new song. I will praise him for he has triumphed victoriously.

I will praise him for he has triumphed victoriously. I will celebrate and sing unto the Lord. I will sing to him a new song.

I will celebrate and sing unto the Lord. I will sing to him a new song. I will praise him for he has triumphed victoriously.