Much to my delight, I learned shortly after arriving here at my friend Trish’s in rural eastern Texas that she has a good-sized collection of C.R. Stam’s Bible commentaries.

Taking a super-long bubble bath the other morning (she has a Jacuzzi-like bathtub—a real luxury for me!), I flipped through Stam’s Romans commentary from 1981 and came across what I think has to be the perfect summation of the biblical concept of “Law vs. Grace” (something I always feel so inadequate in explaining).

Stam writes, “Under the Law God’s people were not invited to seek the leading of the Holy Spirit in their walk. Their fellowship with God depended rather upon their obedience to the Law. ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ were the characteristic phrases of God’s Word through Moses . . .

“The believer in this ‘dispensation of the grace of God’ is not only saved from the penalty of sin, but is accepted as the Father’s fullgrown son in Christ, God’s beloved Son. He is given a position in Christ in the heavenlies at God’s right hand, with free access to all the riches of the Father. . .

“The Apostle (Paul) specifically states that as fullgrown sons we come into a deeper appreciation of the fact we are God’s children by birth . . . As ‘joint-heirs with Christ’ we share in all of Christ’s riches; not part belonging to each, but all to both. All He has is ours. . .

*****

Stam continues, “Thus, immediately, without any period of probation, He places us not under the Law but, as and in His Son, under grace. . .

“But will not this produce careless living? NO! Such love will accomplish what the Law never could. It is natural that those whose hearts have been won by grace will now long to serve God acceptably, that their hearts will call upon Him as ‘Father,’ for love begets love . . .

“The Law from without, with its prohibitions, commands and threatenings, could only produce fear, but the Spirit resides within to produce that revolutionary change that causes us, as grown sons, to look to God and call Him ‘Father’ with an intimacy that the Law forbade. No threat hangs over God’s people today.”

*****

Adam and Eve were made in the image of God with a big “G” and yet when Satan toyed with them and their self-esteem, they became unthankful and discontent.

This is exactly the same problem Paul delineates in Romans 1 in relation to the Gentiles and why God gave up on them at the Tower of Babel’s destruction.

Jordan explains, “They developed a totally desire-oriented life; oriented toward what they wanted and that only. Their self-consciousness became self-indulgence and selfishness.”

Once Adam and Eve first sinned by eating of the grape, their newly inherited sin nature produced the sinful emotional responses designed to immobilize them and create false, or psychological, feelings of guilt.

“Three emotions they went under—fear, shame and rejection,” says Jordan. “They wound up turning on each other as well as on God. Those emotions immobilize and make a person unable to experience godly sorrow and true repentance. Instead, you have worldly sorrow—meaning basically you’re sorry you got caught.

“Worldly sorrow produces some destructive techniques of false guilt. (Adam and Eve) developed little techniques—one is a performance system; doing something to take care of it themselves.

“Under a performance system, maybe it’s religion or maybe it’s rationalism, but it’s doing things and gaining security in what you’re doing. Legalism is what it is. It can be intellectualism and rationalism as well as religion. It’s simply resting your security in extra rules that you establish to protect yourselves. We do it all the time.

“We set up self-imposed expectations around us so others will fail to meet those expectations and we can then condemn them and exonerate and exult ourselves. We do it to ourselves and we do it to others. And that’s the performance-system mechanism—develop some rules. Not rules God gave you, but extra rules over here that you can rest your security in the performance of those rules.

“Then there’s avoidance of accountability: Don’t face the issue. Avoid any semblance of personal accountability for what was done. The other thing is to shift the blame to everybody else.”

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Religion puts self at the center of the activity and makes it vain, worthless glorying.

Jordan says, “Everything that passes for worship of God isn’t something that has value; some of it is absolutely worthless. It’s vanity; empty. Jesus told some people in Matthew 6, ‘In vain do you worship me.’ ”

Paul writes in Galatians 5. 24-26, “And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”

Jordan explains, “Provoking one another means competing with one another; making yourself look good by making others look not so good. Putting yourself in front of them. Envying one another. Seeing someone else have a victory and a triumph that you . . . so desirous of having the praise that they’re getting. . .

“All that’s over there and Paul says we’re over here, living in this, not that over there. Religion focuses over there and it puts self at the center, never satisfied with anything less than first place, always thinking about yourself and how it affects you and so on.

“You know, I was talking to some people recently about (TV preacher Les Feldick). He has a recommendable ministry teaching wise, but everything he does—people say, ‘The Bible’s never so clear as when (he) teaches it,’ and he’ll say himself, ‘My teaching does this, and my teaching does that, and people say nobody ever heard it until they heard me teach.’

“I think, ‘Boy, we better not ever let him die because the Bible will never be so clear! Nobody’s ever going to be rescued!’ You know, people, it’s never your teaching, it’s what you teach! It isn’t him; it’s the message! The Bible’s never so clear as when it’s rightly divided.

“But, you see, religion wants self out front and it’s all about having first place. You know it dawned on me many moons ago—look at what Paul says in verse 24: ‘They that are Christ’s.’ If you belong to Jesus Christ, and you’re in Christ, don’t you already have first place in Christ? People are striving to get first place—you already got the first seat in Him! So it’s okay just to relax!

“One of the great lessons you learn under grace is it’s okay to look like you lose. It’s okay to look weak. It’s in your weakness that His strength is made perfect, so it’s okay.

“I had a Brother comment to me just today, ‘You seem to have great peace about your physical problems.’ My question would be, ‘Why not?!’ You have peace with God; you have the peace of God. . .

“Paul says ‘Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.’ See, it’s that desire! Of vainglory. Just religious status, provoking one another, envying one another.

“Philippians 1:15 says, ‘Some indeed preach Christ of even of envy and strife.’ Notice he didn’t say error is preached? Here’s some people preaching Paul’s message; some out of sincerity, knowing it came from Christ through Paul, teaching it for the truth of God, but others doing it out of envy and strife.

“Some people took advantage of Paul’s imprisonment to gratify their own jealousy of him by pressing themselves to the front. The thinking is, ‘He’s in jail, he’s on the shelf now; we’ll do it!’ They’re making themselves the issue. They think, ‘We can have first place now!’ Paul says, ‘That doesn’t bother me; what matters is Christ is preached and truth is proclaimed.”