You must be in fellowship prior to your Bible study, so that the spiritual information you receive can become a source, of blessing to your soul and produce spiritual growth.
4 Christ [Christos] is become of no
effect unto you [apo][katargeo], whosoever of you [hostis]
are justified [dikaioo] by [en] the law [nomos]; ye are
fallen from [ekpipto] grace [charis]. KJV-Interlinear
4 You have
been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have
fallen from grace. NASB
There is a dual spiritual principle to be derived from this verse and the study that Paul is now formulating since way back in the first chapter.
Everyone who has been born into this world has two potential lives.
Your first life is obviously your physical life due to your physical birth.
Your second life is your spiritual life, which you acquire when you believe in Christ. This is often times called being reborn or being born again, due to the creation of your human spirit at the moment of your initial faith in Christ.
Prior to your faith in Christ, you are a dichotomous person, which means that you are a two part person, body and soul.
Once you believe in Christ, from that instant, God creates in you a human spirit, thus making you trichotomous, or a three part person, namely body, soul and spirit.
These three parts, body, soul and spirit, are three containers which house three different lives.
The body houses your biological life. The soul houses your human life. The spirit houses your eternal life.
Once you have grown up for so many years, and become aware of God and can responsibly accept or reject Him, then you have reached the age of responsibility, which means that you are now responsible and accountable for your decisions as to whether or not you believe in Christ.
From that moment on, your life is in grave jeopardy while you are an unbeliever. The only important issue for you in life as an unbeliever is, ‘will you believe in Christ or not?’
To reject Christ means eternal separation from God and thus the Lake of Fire.
To believe in Christ, means that you are saved and will have eternal life with God.
As an unbeliever, there is but one issue, faith in Christ.
As a believer there is a continual daily issue, which is spiritual growth, or lack of it.
And so we have our current verse.
When you rely on works to get yourself ahead, then you in effect reject Christ by default. By saying that you look to yourself, then you also say that you do not need the help or aid of another. That is a rejection of Christ.
For unbelievers, who look to some work, or act, or thing that they can do themselves in order to be saved, then they are looking in the wrong direction. God accepts the work of Christ only, never you or anyone else for that matter.
To do something yourself with the presumption that God will accept your effort, is likewise a rejection of Gods rules and plan for salvation. If anyone could save themselves, then there would have been no reason for the Cross or for the work of Christ.
Likewise, for the believer who is already saved, their lot in life is to pursue their completion. When a person is born, they are an empty vessel. They have to learn and grow and thus advance toward a defined completion of themselves.
Again, God has rules for that growing up process.
And guess what? Try to do all of your growing up, yourself, and you lose.
Again works is an issue that is rejected by God. To reject Gods learning process is to reject God. To reject learning doctrine as it is supposed to be learned and understood and used, is to reject Christ, for Christ is the living word, and what you are reading or hearing as far as the teaching of bible doctrine is concerned, is in fact receiving Christ into your soul.
Reject this process and there is no benefit, no spiritual benefit for you.
Therefore, works which is the sum total of any and all efforts on your part, to do or accomplish something that God has provided, is a rejection of those provisions and therefore there is no benefit to you.
Reject faith in salvation and you are not saved. Reject the spiritual growth process and there is no spiritual growth.
In order to be saved, you have to have believed in Christ. Which by the way, takes only but a second to believe in Christ, and has to be done only once in your life.
Spiritual growth is a daily process. You have to be in fellowship, accomplished by confession, you have to engage in a daily study from legitimate instruction, and as you learn and begin to understand things in life, you have to apply those spiritual principles to your daily life.
Learning bible doctrine constructs a spiritual apparatus within your soul. Applying doctrine is the spiritual production aspect of your life. Together they formulate, round out, and complete your life. This also helps you to understand and survive the many difficulties that this world will throw at you.
Human works, or your effort, means no benefit from Christ.
Grace, which is Gods policy and plan and work, means meaning and purpose and completion and certainly benefit beyond imagination, for you.
