The Royal Law of Love

The Royal Law of Love

The late Carl H. Stevens Jr. was pastor of the Greater Grace World Outreach in Baltimore, Maryland, until 2005, and he also founded thriving ministries in Maine and Massachusetts. Pastor Stevens’ death in June 2008 marked the completion of a ministry that spanned four decades and included the establishment of Maryland Bible College and Seminary in Baltimore and the development of “The Grace Hour,” an Angel Award-winning radio talk show that is still heard on Christian stations throughout North America and via the Internet.

This booklet was created from a message preached by Pastor Stevens.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the King James Version. Italics for emphasis are ours.

Grace Publications 6025 Moravia Park Drive BALTIMORE, MD 21206 Printed in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. Copyright © 2010 From a message preached in October, 1994 Grace Publications is a ministry of Greater Grace World Outreach, Inc. ISBN # 1-57907-566-5

Table Of contents

Introduction............................................. 5 Chapter 1.....................................................7 The Honest Heart Chapter 2................................................... 11 Beating the Blame Game Chapter 3................................................... 16 Getting Over Yourself

INTRODUCTION As a believer, I am a member of the royal family of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, I am lovable, valuable, and capable. I am somebody and I am significant. I am God’s child. I am entitled to hold certain values and have certain needs and feelings. I am entitled as a human being to make mistakes. I am entitled to express my uniqueness. Simply, I am entitled to be human. And I am entitled to be happy through Jesus Christ.

Three things are very important to people and these are significance, security, and impact.

When a person doesn’t recognize his significance, he certainly doesn’t have security, and he cannot make an impact. As a child of God, every believer has significance. Through his position in Christ, he should see himself as lovable, valuable, and capable. The saddest thing is when a child of God measures every single thing by his experience and by his feelings. He puts his brain in neutral and the cosmic atmosphere takes control. This is the same atmosphere that promotes pharmaceutical drugs as the way to tame the old sin nature. When our brains get stuck in neutral, feelings become our guide and experience becomes our substance.

As this booklet will reveal, it is vital to have an honest heart. It is important to stop playing games with God. Our sins find us out. Our lies leave a trail. Our negligence limits our capacities. If we are honest before God, then we can also understand His forgiveness. We can realize that we are lovable, capable, and adequate. We see our humanity, recognize its limitations and, for this reason, our mistakes don’t cripple us. We are significant, we can be secure, and we may make an impact. Upon these premises, every child of God must begin life with an honest heart that is governed by the royal law of love.

Chapter One

THE HONEST HEART Let God be true, and every man a liar; for God is not a man that He should lie (see Numbers 23:19). It’s imperative that we establish the integrity of our hearts. My challenge to you is this: forget everything about yourselves, your relationships, and your circumstances. Put aside how you feel and what you’re experiencing. Ask God to give you an honest heart. Believe God when He says you are valuable for He gave His only Son to die for you. Christ paid the ransom to purchase you from the slave market of sin. You are that significant to God. So significant that He seated you together with Christ. You have potential because Christ lives in you. You have immeasurable possibilities because of faith. One day you will be perfected forever to live and to reign with Him. Now if these statements are true, an honest heart accepts them. A dishonest heart brings in the substitutes that are feelings and experience.

If you are struggling with your sense of security and significance, then you are letting your feelings lie to your mind. Set your mind over all your matters. Have guts enough to tell your feel

ings to go to hell. Have the intestinal fortitude to tell your experience that it’s not going to be the measure for your realities in life.

Let’s learn to be Christians with integrity, saying with our honest heart, “We will not judge life by experience. We will not judge truth by emotional responses. We will measure our value by the measure of love it takes to forgive us of our weaknesses. We will measure ourselves at all times by the truth that Jesus Christ loved me so much He died for me, cared so much that He resurrected me, and had such an amazing acceptance of me that He has seated me in heaven.”

May our lives be a mirror of His grace, a reflection of His mercy, a manifestation of His love, and an experience of His peace.

I have significance. You have significance. I have security and His integrity, and you have confidence in His veracity. I make an impact when I simply live out what He’s imparting to me through His Word in the power of the Spirit.

Demons are real. Many people have definitely subjected themselves to demon activity.

Demons attempt to play with our minds. We must learn to discern and recognize this activity. Demonic possession is impossible for a believer, but demons do flirt with our feelings with their projections. These forces can leave us with wrong experiences because of their communica

tion and influence.

I am in sin when I internalize pressure. If I get so weird that I cannot even receive the Word, I am in transgression. Some people never want to hear about sin and transgression. We need to know these things. If I am feeling ill, I go to the doctor. I expect him to tell me what’s wrong. Suppose he diagnoses a cancer, but he says nothing about it. “You are fine,” he says, and sends the bill for his time. We have a word for that—malpractice. There’s no malpractice with Jesus. His Word gives definition regarding sin. The Bible speaks about sin and its effects. If I never get the news about my cancer, I will soon feel its effects and before long I will probably be dead.

Sin is the cancer of Adam. We like to blame it on our chemicals or on our genetic makeup.

We like to blame it on being imbalanced in some fashion. Those are lies from the devil. Let the Word define sin for you. Let the Spirit convict your heart. Make confession (see 1 John 1:9) and walk on with God. The Lord never convicts without opening the way to conversion. He converts and never condemns in His process of grace I don’t listen to blamers. Psalm 119:165 tells me, “Great peace have they who love Thy Law and nothing shall offend them.” Have you suffered an offense? Go to Jesus with it. Ask Him to help you love His Word. Offenses? No one

endured more offenses than the Son of God during His moments on earth. Yet, you will not find one verse in the Scriptures in which Jesus Christ blames the filthy, rotten world for having to die for its sins.

Your husband is not the problem. Husbands, don’t talk about how much trouble it is to live with your wife. Love your wives. Wives, love your husbands. Stop the blame game in its tracks. The issue is you. It’s you! It’s you, not your spouse. It’s you! And still you’re loveable and you’re capable and you have value. All you have to do is walk in integrity.

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Chapter Two

BEATING THE BLAME GAME Blame games, what a mess. Adam blamed Eve for the Fall and Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed God for giving him Eve in the first place. The cycle began there in Genesis and its spins on in the world today.

I could bring up all kinds of reasons why I should be mentally ill—a little less than you are maybe, but mentally ill nonetheless. Let’s see, I was brought up in poverty. My dad died when I was three. We didn’t have running water, radios, or electric lights. My classmates mocked me in my freshman year of high school because my teeth were so decayed. I could go on in this blame game and find all kinds of reasons for poor behaviors.

It doesn’t have to be this way. A Bible believer who understands Leviticus 16 should understand how to stop this cycle—at least in his own circle of fellowship and influence. “…Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send 11

him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: “And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:21-22).

All the iniquities and sins and transgressions of Israel were transferred to that goat. The goat was then sent away to an uninhabited wilderness. That’s where God put all of our sins. He removed them from us as far as the east from the west. He buried them in the deepest sea because Christ took upon His body all the wages of sin.

I offend, you offend—it’s a part of the human dynamic. Each and every one of us needs that scapegoat at one time or another. Let’s learn to forgive and reckon those things as being gone, gone, gone. Want to blame something? Then put the blame where it belongs: on the scapegoat. Want to complain? Complain to Jesus and let Him comfort your wounded heart. Christ doesn’t even want a person to blame himself after the moment of confession. Our confession rights our fellowship with God. We agree with Him and walk on in integrity from there.

Any time you promote your feelings or your experience above Christ, you enter into resistance. Ecclesiastes 5:2 tells us, “Let your words on earth be few, for you are on earth and God 12

is in heaven.” Fewer words mean fewer problems, so is the truth of Proverbs 10:19: “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise.” When you speak, never speak in self-condemnation. Speak in selfedification. Confess forgiveness when you fail, confess love and confess that you’re lovable even when you don’t feel lovable. Confess that you have value when Satan says you don’t. Confess you are capable when he tells you you’re dull.

Confess that you’re a child of the King when he will not let you believe it. And realize that you have significance, that you have security, and that you make an impact.

You are a member of God’s royal family, right? Why not live in His royal law of love?

Allow the Spirit to shed His love abroad in your heart for others and for yourself. You are seated on a throne. You are a king—a queen if you are a lady. You’re a priest unto God. You represent men to God and represent yourself to God. Your life comes from above and not from the dust below.

1 Corinthians 13 puts it right there for us to read. Love thinks no evil. Love believes and endures all things. What kinds of churches would we have if we operated in integrity such as this?

Here’s how it should go: I love God and, with His love for me, I love myself, and I love others 13

as I love myself.

Have you found something nice to talk about today, or are you dwelling on a problem at home? I recently endured one of most negative lunch appointments I have ever had. All kinds of great things are happening around this guy, but he sees none of it. The heat is getting to him and his sentences were just a long string of negatives.

At one point, I felt like saying to him, “Would you mind recording your conversations and not let anybody listen to them but yourself?” I should have said exactly that to him. This could represent an amazing new approach in counseling. Force negative people to hear themselves.

They just might realize how much negativity comes out of them.

What would have to happen today to make you happy? And don’t say, “The Rapture.”

You’re lovable. You have value. You have significance. You’re seated above. You’re a member of God’s royal family. In God’s eyes, you’re precious. Think these thoughts. Speak to yourself in this way. Failure will come and at that moment, admit it, repent from it, and go on in grace.

Deliver those negative imaginations to death.

A person that lives in experience and feeling is a person who sees the Cross of Christ as a symbol to be hung on the wall or worn around his neck.

At Calvary, Christ tasted death for all men. As a 14

result, He does not behold iniquity in us.

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

“Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.

“He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them” (Numbers 23:19-21).

God could say so much about Jacob’s shortcomings and Jacob’s faults, for He alone knows the whole story. But God sees Jacob and his descendants in the light of His love. His summary of Jacob’s life is that He didn’t behold his iniquity. That’s a pretty good summary. His summary of David’s life is that he did perfect all the days of his life. There was no king like him. I could say that in another way but I don’t dare to. No king like David? There’s no king like him. The Lord says David fulfilled all the will of God. The Bible tells us some things about David, but God doesn’t see David in the darkness of those things.

No, God sees David in the light of His love.

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Chapter Three

GETTING OVER YOURSELF Do you feel like a failure? You cannot make God feel that way about you. So, you might as well get over yourself. Don’t live by your feelings. Express them when necessary, but don’t live by them. Don’t live by your experience. Instead, choose to live by every word of God. Develop your Bible I.Q. and believe what the Book says about you. The Word represents the mind of Christ. It is divine communication; words from the Throne of Grace. Live in these words and walk in integrity.

How do you do this?

Believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe.

Obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey.

That’s how you do it, with no condemnation when you fail.

We go from to faith to faith, and the righteousness of God is revealed unto us (Romans 1:17). Refuse to live by your experience. Reject the temptation to live by your feelings. Don’t wilt in the face of people’s influence or circumstances. You do not see the heat when it comes because you see Christ. You set Him before your 16

face (Psalm 16:8). People and circumstances are not your identity. See yourself in Christ and realize that every one of your steps is ordained of God (Psalm 37:23). All things are of God (2 Corinthians 5:18) and all things are for our sakes (2 Corinthians 4:15). You believe the Truth; believe it and accept it and walk in it. Refuse to confess things that are outside of truth. Confess truth—it is this simple.

The royal law of love is wonderful. The royal law means I love you and God through God’s love and I love myself. I love you, I love God, I love you, and I love myself with Calvary’s love.

That’s the royal law of love. After I have sinned, there remains the Finished Work, accomplished with the blood of the New Covenant. No sin is imputed; there is no condemnation, no retrogression, and no fear of failure.

Failure gets the ego out from the center of our self-essence. God’s goal is not to rid us of ego, but to have us lose the ego of Adam and then to take on the ego that comes from Christ living in us.

You can have joy in your life. Power is possible for you. We will never earn these things.

But Christ is in us and salvation is a gift, grace is a gift, and love is a gift. What Christ—and Christ alone—has done brings joy and power over the devil, and demons, and hell. You have been lib17

erated to be the royal priest and the king that you are unto God. Accept the things that are freely given to you and don’t feel bad about it. This is another great deception of Satan. He projects guilty feelings when a blessing comes our way. Once, a couple of men in our church found a beautiful, black Cadillac with low mileage at an auction. They bought and presented it to me. The car needed a bit of body work, but proved to be one of the most reliable cars I ever drove. I can remember feeling bad about having such a car every now and then because it looked so nice. Some of us have felt this way when we bought a new car and it wasn’t a luxury car or something, but we felt guilty for three days because it looked good.

I had to get over it and enjoy the blessing of the car. This happens sometimes to people who receive healing and then learn of someone whose sickness lingers.

Glorify God whether you are abased or abounding. Resist the devil. Resist him and really start enjoying the life that is given freely from God. If I said to you, “You are the apple of God’s eye,” would you believe me? If I said to you, “God will never, no never, no never leave you, fail you, or forsake you,” would you believe me? If I said to you, “God the Father never sees you outside of Christ,” would you accept 18

that reality from the Bible and stand it against your experience and feelings? If I said that God loves you with an everlasting love, would you say, “Amen”?

Value, significance, impact—these words describe you. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to make you worthy. This is the beauty of holiness.

He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become His righteousness.

Isn’t this counsel better than the latest prescription? I’m not against prescriptions when you have to have them, there’s a place for medicine in our lives. I know beautiful and precious doctors who work hard and do all they can to keep people off pills. At the same time, these men and women aren’t afraid to hear from God and use their great knowledge to make the right diagnosis and use the right tools to get people back on their feet.

When we agree with God and walk in integrity, I believe some of these cases could be eliminated. I think this is a fair and balanced way to say it. Oh, so many problems would go away if believers simply believed what God says about them in His Book.

Sit down with your Bible today and let the royal law of love exercise its influence in your heart and mind. Start reading and start thinking with God as He speaks to you from the pages.

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Take His Word for it: you have value, you have significance—to Him—and you will make an impact in this world.

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