If someone asks me if I am a Christian and therefore believe in Jesus, my answer is an unqualified “Yes.” I believe He is my Savior, died on the cross for my sins, rose from the dead, ascended to Heaven, and reigns now at God’s right hand. I believe I am therefore completely forgiven for my sins, and the Holy Spirit now lives within me. I am thus qualified to call myself a Christian. But what kind of Christian believer does that make me?…
Previously we have discussed that there is no syncretism between law and grace in the economy of God. There is a clear distinction between God’s law, the foundation for all of our relationships “beneath us” on the earth, and God’s grace, the sole component of our relationship “above us” with God, and they do not mix. Obedience to the law and living by faith are, in fact, exact opposites. The law is what God tells us to do; grace is what God has already…
To discover that the Christian stands before God completely free from the demands of the law in order to please God, as we discussed in our last post, is exhilarating news. Jill and I have been learning this gradually, reluctantly, and painfully over the years, as doing so is a lifetime endeavor. As she often would say in the early years, “This gospel seems too good to be true!” But it is true. The bondage that comes from our inability to please God by…
A good friend of mine is married to a woman who grew up in a very religious, legalistic family. She discovered the gospel of the grace of God through my friend before they were married. She loves her new relationship with God, but often, in crunch time, she reverts back to her old way of life—trying, with diligent effort, furrowed brow, and seemingly with the weight of the world on her shoulders, to please God by doing her very best to obey Him. My…
Watching the current war on men in our country, you would think that to be the case. It must be admitted that murder, robbery, assault, rape, sexual abuse and all manner of lawlessness is running rampant in our land, and men are the primarily perpetrators. However, before we can attack the problem and attempt to solve it, we must properly define its root cause. Is all this lawless activity really, as commonly proposed by many of our leaders today, caused by “toxic masculinity?” I…
One of the benefits of growing older is getting to be a grandpa, and I am loving the experience that my ten grandchildren are providing for me to be one. Getting to watch them mature, get married (my two oldest grandsons), begin their families and then learning to relate to them as adults has been incredibly enjoyable to me. As I have gone through each of those steps with them as their grandfather, I have realized that I am not only getting better at…
Last week we made the case, with supporting scripture, that living by faith is the freedom to do exactly what we want to do. The response to that admittedly unconventional idea is generally either “This is heretical, antinomian and non-Christian,” or “This is too good to be true!”, and there are two perfectly logical reasons for those reactions. Both heredity (I am a fallen son of Adam-”nature”) and environment (I grew up in today’s legalistic version of Christianity-”nurture”) militate against any other response. However,…
The gospel of the grace of God we discuss weekly in this blog is audacious, scandalous, and even licentious to typical, unknowingly legalistic Christians, still alive and well in today’s church, just as they were in Paul’s day. “What shall we say then? (“Paul, it sounds like this is what you are saying”). Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound” (Romans 6:1)? Wherever the gospel of the grace of God is preached, this same question is asked today, just as in Paul’s…
Why do I find myself always thinking I know what’s best, not only for me but for everyone else as well, and then being so reluctant to face the results of those decisions? Because I am still a selfish sinner who has not yet learned to consistently, as Jesus admonished me to do, “deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me,” i.e., “walk by faith.” I am still trapped in an unredeemed, corrupt body that still makes me want to live by…
We have seen over the past few weeks that 1.) a new birth and 2.) a new spiritual understanding of the reality of my own sin and God’s limitless forgiveness constitute going through the gate and beginning the walk down the path of “walking by faith,” a very familiar but little-understood phrase for most Christians. Today we will investigate the only way of experientially continuing, or “keepin’ on keepin’ on” in that journey—3.) a new, daily, cross experience. In Luke 9:23, just after Peter’s…