What shall we say then? Shall we continue in
sin, that grace may abound? (Romans
6:1)
There is one recurring argument
by many believers (sadly, ministers) when we challenge sin in the church or
individual believers. Many are quick to push the argument that we are fronting a
salvation by works doctrine. The implication is that if I challenge believers
to deal with sin I am saying that Christ did nothing for our salvation or at
best that what He did is not sufficient to guarantee it.
Some have become so offended by
my constant brushes with sin in the Christian camp that they have come short of
saying that those who challenge sin and inspire holiness are not saved. I
suspect they fear to say so because they have not found any verse to even
remotely support their position.
I hope I will be allowed to hit
back at those accusers. But it is not for the sake of defending my position. I
want people to stop fooling themselves with a comfortable yet Christless
salvation when they think that grace covers immaturity and spiritual folly. Our
mouths can be so full of grace and we end up in hell. Our lives can overflow
with the miraculous and prophetic and we still miss the road to heaven.
Otherwise explain what I call the most sobering and probably my most quoted
verses in the Bible, Matthew 7: 21 – 23?
Do you realize that the driving theme
of 1 Corinthians is sin and immaturity? Just read it soberly. Do you also
realize that the recurring theme of Christ’s sermons was a falling short of
God’s standards (which is what sin really is) and a showing of what those
standards are (which is where righteousness or holiness leads)?
Get me a book in the New
Testament that does not mention sin or address it in one way or the other. Just
show me a book that does not address sin in the Bible and we can start talking.
Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry,
but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly
manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing. For godly sorrow worketh
repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world
worketh death. (2Corinthians 7: 9, 10)
It is a fallacy to think that
confronting sin demeans grace. If that is the truth then Christ was as removed
from grace as the evil one. Otherwise tell me why He called people brood of
vipers, white washed tombs and even told them that they were of their father
the devil. Why did He address His closest disciple as satan (get behind me
satan)?
Follow peace with all men, and holiness,
without which no man shall see the Lord:
(Hebrews 12:14)
If without holiness no man can
see God, how can we even imagine that God does not care for what we do since
grace has covered it all? Isn’t it deception to preach all these good things to
people and neglect that holiness which is their key to seeing God?
For I say unto you, That except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye
shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)
Is it in order to look the other
side when sin is thriving under our spiritual care all in the name of Christ’s
finished work? Are we leading people to heaven if we are not dealing with the
obstacles to that destination?
But I want us to look at two main
reasons that doctrine thrives. They are spiritual ignorance and immaturity. These
are people guided by the externals. In other words they use the external to
evaluate the internal. They use the material to evaluate the spiritual. And they
use the temporal to evaluate the eternal.
What do I mean?
A miracle worker must be very
spiritual according to their assessment irrespective of his character. He could
be sleeping around with prostitutes yet in his performances release enough
miracles and our spiritual infants will call him anointed.
I will just give one verse in
response and probably add another one for effect.
For the gifts and calling of God are without
repentance. (Romans 11:29)
To God starting well does not
mean ending well. Another thing grace will tell us is that the gifting is not
dependent on our performance and therefore performance has absolutely nothing
to do with our relationship with Christ. A miracle is God doing His thing to
draw people to Himself.
But there is another thing they
overlook. The miraculous is not limited to God. Christ Himself warned us that
there will be deceiving miracles from the other side.
For false Christs and false prophets shall
rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even
the elect. (Mark 13:22)
Could you be using someone sourcing
his miracles from the other side as an example of grace?
The second thing I will mention
is that there is a standard Jesus set for establishing who His servants were.
And it kills the argument of these empty grace advocates.
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the
way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Beware of false
prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening
wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or
figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a
corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil
fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. (Matthew 7: 14 – 18)
Look at this also
And he exerciseth all the power of the first
beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship
the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so
that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And
deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he
had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the
earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a
sword, and did live. (Revelation
13: 12 – 14)
This is what Christ meant when He
talked about fruit. Prophecies and miracles are a poor guide as they don’t all
come from God. Running after miracles can very easily take us to the other source.
Remember that even Pharaoh’s sorcerers were able to reproduce several miracles
that Moses did?
Immaturity is simply the lack of capacity
to accurately assess available facts to come to the right conclusion. A child
can be kidnapped by being offered a very small and worthless tinklet. It might
love the most worthless uncle or aunt because they bring sweet things and
despise the one who spends their time guiding them since in their eyes he
wastes their play time and offers nothing of value.
And it is not much different in
the spiritual realm. A pastor who drives a big car may have stolen church money
or coerced the church to buy it. But he is being looked at as a successful
pastor simply because successful corporate magnates drive similar ones. A
heretic with a mega church is treated as successful because of all these people
he is leading to hell.
What do we use to assess what we
call success or spirituality? What do we use to argue our beliefs?
I will never push a position that
is not guided by the scriptures. And I do not want to argue with someone who
uses commonsense and externals to argue their position. Do not push your
argument if it does not have the complete support of the scriptures. Even your
experience will be trashed if it comes to my argument without the proper
backing of scripture.
And I will not stop confronting
sin, even if it so offends you. Just go to the Bible to look for stones to throw
back at me.
And I appreciate grace, probably
more than you do. And grace keeps me from sin. In fact grace creates in me an
allergy of sorts for sin. Sample this.
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we
keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. (1John 2: 3 – 4)
And
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth
them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. (John 14:21)
Then
My little children, these things write I unto
you, that ye sin not…. (1John
2:1a)
The presence of commandments
means that they can be kept as well as broken. Fronting a grace that overlooks
those commandments is in effect nullifying that grace and being a teacher of
rebellion as were the prophets of Jeremiah’s time. And we know they were judged
very harshly and directly by God Himself.
Christ calls us from bondage to
freedom, but not the freedom to do our own thing. Look at this.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
(Matthew 11: 28 – 30)
He takes the burdensome yoke that
we had but does not let us go free wherever we want. He gives us His yoke that
is lighter, convenient, fulfilling. We are therefore free from doing wickedness
and bound into doing righteousness. By the way that was the argument Christ was
handling when He told the Jews that the devil was their father.
Being yoked to Christ offers
greater freedom than any other freedom.
Let me give an example. A young
person feels that they are grown up and therefore free to do adult things. They
therefore resort to experimenting with sex that they were warned against all
their life.
The exhilaration they get after
experiencing that freedom may be compared with heaven in their narrow
experience. But is that freedom?
A few years later that freedom
becomes bondage worse than the confines of a prison cell. Even assuming they do
not contract deadly STDs or cause or get pregnant, they have opened themselves
up to a deadly pastime that will destroy their whole life because they have
demolished the materials that make the foundation of a stable marriage and life.
Worse still is that the experimenting will rarely stop when they get married,
meaning that infidelity can almost be guaranteed. What kind of setting will
they have for raising children?
Mark you I have taken the safest
route, no diseases, no jealousies and fighting to be the only one, no
discoveries of cheating which are all an assured consequence of sexual
experimenting (in the Bible called fornication).
Compare them with this young one
yoked to Christ and is therefore free from that experimentation because he is
yoked to Christ’s commandments. These free youth may laugh at this yoked one
like I was laughed at a lot in my youth for taking that yoke too seriously that
I ran away from the ‘fun’ things and concentrated on the ‘dull’ life of walking
with Christ (in their eyes). Yet many of them are now dead or look much older
and the ones around now look at me with respect as they have come to see the
reality of who really was free.
That is what Christ meant when He
said we will know them by their fruit as fruit takes time to be produced.
But let me get to the weakest
point of these free to do anything grace proponents. My experiences with them
paint them as the ones with the least grace to offer. In other words they will
judge others very harshly if they disappoint them – and they are very easily
disappointed. What I am saying is that they do not mind people walking in sin,
unless it touches them. Then they become porcupines.
They simply do not have any
capacity to deal with what they profess. I have heard this statement many times
from them. I will never deal with so and so for the disappointment they caused.
Their grace is as narrow as their theology.
The one who knows grace as Christ
offers it extends the same grace positively to others. He will never trash
anyone as he is cognizant of the fact that the same grace is available for all.
The drug addict, the alcoholic, the prostitute will find acceptance so that
they can access the same grace. And the backslider especially will find that
grace being extended so that he can be restored.
You see it is impossible to
restore someone unless there is a standard one has fallen short of. The
restoration is therefore a working toward that standard. And we also cannot
talk about sin without a standard. That is the main problem with this doctrine
I am refuting.
Of course growth is also not
practical without a standard. There must be a goal one aims at. This explains
why proponents of that doctrine have issues with Bible reading and study,
especially challenging people toward that as there is no standard for growth or
anything else.
I will close by quoting probably
the only verses they quote, but add the verse that follows it.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man
should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good
works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2: 8 – 10)
Then
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always
obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you
both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
(Philippians 2: 12, 13)
