male announcer: In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “Grace: Our Only Hope.” Dr. Charles Stanley: According to the Scripture, there are three lifestyles. One is a lifestyle of living under sin, the bondage of sin. A second is living under the Law, and a third is living in grace.
And all of us fall into one of those three categories. We’re either under sin, under the Law, or in grace. Which one best suits you and which one would you believe that best describes you? Two of those are lifestyles of bondage, but only one of them is a lifestyle of freedom. And this is our third message in this series: “Grace-God’s Second Chance.
” And the title of this message, “Grace-Our Only Hope.” I want you to turn, if you will, to John chapter 1, and let’s beginning reading in the fourteenth verse of this Gospel. John chapter 1. John says, beginning in verse 14, speaking of Jesus: “And the Word became flesh,” which refers to the incarnation, “and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John,” that is, John the Baptist, “bore witness of Him, and,” carried out–or “cried out, saying, ‘This was He whom I said, “He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.”‘ For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; but grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
” What I want to do in this message is make a comparison of how two different groups of people live. One is that group of people who attempt to live by the Law. And secondly, I want to talk about that group of people who live by grace. Now, all of us who have been saved have been saved by grace, but what happens is that oftentimes a person is saved by grace and then, without knowing or having been taught properly, they just naturally fall into attempting to live the Christian life by Law.
And that is, attempting to live the Christian life the best they know how, doing the best they know how and trying to read the Bible and pray and go to church and give and do all the things that a Christian, quote, ought to be able to do and should be doing. The only problem is that most of us discovered pretty soon after we became a Christian that something wasn’t working.
And I remember when I was twelve years of age, when I was saved and I went to a particular church and they told me that I was to do certain things now that I was a Christian. You know what, I tried and I tried and tried and tried, but I found a bunch of things in the Bible that really bothered me. “Thou shalt not do this and thou shalt not do the other.
