I want to look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 where Paul says “that that day will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin the son of perdition is revealed” and he says that “the Lawless one will be revealed” and then and he says “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work”.
I apologise for the poor audio quality
https://youtu.be/hrjNrl75QYc?si=dwyK249X9eM6GP8J
so as I’ve been teaching and preaching that to fall away is to Fall From Grace as Paul taught in the book of Galatians especially chapter 5 – to go back to the first Covenant the old Covenant is to fall from grace and to become estranged or separated from Christ in your mind at least.
You might be born again, received of his Spirit but if you go back to self-effort and trying to keep the law to please God trying to be obedient any sort of trying rather than resting then you are, you have fallen from grace and as I’ve mentioned Hebrews chap 10 tells us “we are not those who go back to perdition but we are those who go on to the saving of the Soul”
Paul was talking to those who were walking in the New Covenant but there are Christians who do “go back to perdition” or destruction loss and ruin…they are the ones who go back to the old Covenant that’s why Paul warned them in Galatians.
the Galatians were going back they were beginning to be circumcised and keep the law and Paul said if you do that “Christ will profit you nothing”..so it’s a sober thing.
so here in 2 Thessalonians 2 he speaks about the mystery of lawlessness. Now there is a “mystery of godliness” and there is a “mystery of lawlessness”… so outwardly on the surface of things there are those who are Godly and do Godly things and there are those who sin and do sinful things.
that’s not the mystery of lawlessness or the mystery of godliness…all people are capable of doing good things whether they believe in the Lord Jesus or have Jesus in them or not so there’s no mystery in that.
This is the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil at work in humans. We are children of Adam and so his nature or his mindset was to choose self-effort to try to be good and try not to be bad in order to be like God but all he did was become like Angels.
So the mystery of godliness is “Christ in you the hope of glory”. Jesus Christ the holy perfect complete life of God come to live inside a believer’s heart to fill you full with himself that you might be the visible manifestation of God in the earth filled with all the fruit of the spirit of God…um , revealing God without trying to do anything.
the mystery of lawlessness on the other hand is a person who is relying on themself to please God whether they call themself Christian or not they are acting out of Their Own Strength trying to be good – trying not to be bad in order to appear to be righteous and to be right with God. It’s self deception. It’s a powerful deception.
We can deceive ourself if we do lots of good things… you know? Perhaps our job we help people in our job and just because we do those things we convince ourself that we’re right with God… you’ll often find that when you talk to people who don’t believe in Jesus and they say “I don’t need God I’m a good person” exactly! exactly my point! You don’t need God.
and Jesus said I didn’t come for the righteous but to bring Sinners to repentance…he didn’t come for those who think they’re good enough because they don’t ..they’re not interested … they don’t need God….but in reality they’re blind and uh filthy and naked before God and all their good works are filthy rags.
This going back to the old Covenant is this mystery of lawlessness where you imagine that you’re righteous because of your obedience to God when it’s Jesus alone who lives in you who makes you right with God. Jesus alone every day lives in you it’s not your obedience that makes you right with God it’s not your obedience that makes you a Son of God it’s Jesus who lives in you that makes you a Son of God it’s Jesus who lives in you that qualifies you for the inheritance and the opposite is true.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2 that “the spirit of the air now works in the son’s of Disobedience”. now eneros so the Zeal someone may have as Paul said he was “more zealous than any of his contemporaries”…when he was a a religious Jew and so that Zeal was the spirit of the air…Satan…working in him through religious zeal to try to please God by keeping the old Covenant, the first Covenant, Moses’s law….and we saw the result of it. He went around murdering Christians having them locked up having them tortured in jail and that’s the result of fleshly zeal which is energized by a another Spirit not the spirit of God.
The mystery of lawlessness which is already at work is this false Spirit imitating God imitating what it is to be a Christian through their own efforts in their own Zeal fleshly Zeal energized by another spirit and it’s not easily discerned not easy to see.
Reece Howells who was the subject of a book by Norman Grub “Reece Howells-The intercessor”
He tells the story that when Reece was a churchgoing man in Wales that his Pastor thought that Reece was the best member of the congregation that he had but then Reece himself came to realize that he wasn’t born again that he wasn’t saved and he had a battle with the Holy Spirit for a week where he lost a lot of weight through um anxiety because the Holy Spirit was laying it hard upon Reece that if He came in to Reece then Reece had to die and he saw the cost of it he saw what it meant and he battled against the Lord but he was wanting to yield but he found he couldn’t and the Lord wrestled with him for a week until he surrendered and he knew that when the Holy Spirit when Jesus came in Reece had died and he was a new man and so we saw a quick work done in him… amazing..but the thing is the pastor thought that Reece was a Christian because he was so good but he wasn’t even saved and this is the mystery of lawlessness which is already at work…a good man is not saved it’s those who have Jesus Christ and then those who rest in the work that Jesus did and stop trying to do the work stop trying to be obedient stop worrying about what you have to do and allow God just to fill you.
The mystery of godliness is resting in Christ. The Mystery of lawlessness is being busy about being good and doing the good right thing. You will find that people go to war over this. People join armies to try to do the right thing and be good…to kill the enemy and to bomb people…it all comes out of the same misguided um Zeal which is energized by Satan…That’s who energizes it! He uses religious flesh to do his
will. Hallelujah!
https://denrhodes3.wordpress.com/2025/06/23/fallen-from-grace-part-4/